Long earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was increase a following together with his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Youngsters’s Well being Protection, and changing into one of many world’s most influential spreaders of worry and mistrust round vaccines.
Now, President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll nominate Kennedy to steer the Division of Well being and Human Companies, which regulates vaccines.
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Kennedy has lengthy superior the debunked concept that vaccines trigger autism. He has additionally pushed different conspiracy theories, equivalent to that COVID-19 may have been “ethnically focused” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese language individuals, feedback he later mentioned had been taken out of context. He has repeatedly introduced up the Holocaust when discussing vaccines and public well being mandates.
No medical intervention is risk-free. However medical doctors and researchers have confirmed that dangers from illness are usually far larger than the dangers from vaccines.
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Vaccines have been confirmed to be secure and efficient in laboratory testing and in actual world use in tons of of hundreds of thousands of individuals over a long time—they’re thought-about among the many simplest public well being measures in historical past.
Kennedy has insisted that he’s not anti-vaccine, saying he solely needs vaccines to be rigorously examined, however he additionally has proven opposition to a variety of immunizations. Kennedy mentioned in a 2023 podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that’s secure and efficient” and advised Fox Information that he nonetheless believes within the long-ago debunked concept that vaccines could cause autism. In a 2021 podcast he urged individuals to “resist” CDC pointers on when youngsters ought to get vaccines.
“I see any person on a mountaineering path carrying a little bit child and I say to him, higher not get them vaccinated,” Kennedy mentioned.
That very same 12 months, in a video selling an anti-vaccine sticker marketing campaign by his nonprofit, Kennedy appeared onscreen subsequent to 1 sticker that declared “IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION.”
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The World Well being Group has estimated that international immunization efforts have saved at the least 154 million lives previously 50 years.
In a examine of verified Twitter accounts from 2021, researchers discovered Kennedy’s private Twitter account was the highest “superspreader” of vaccine misinformation on Twitter, answerable for 13% of all reshares of misinformation, greater than 3 times the second most-retweeted account.
He has traveled to states together with Connecticut, California and New York to foyer or sue over vaccine insurance policies and has traveled the world to satisfy with anti-vaccine activists.
Kennedy has additionally aligned himself with companies and particular pursuits teams equivalent to anti-vaccine chiropractors, who noticed revenue in slicing off a small portion of the bigger well being care market whereas spreading false or doubtful well being info.
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An Related Press investigation discovered one chiropractic group in California had donated $500,000 to Kennedy’s Youngsters’s Well being Protection, about one-sixth of the group’s fundraising that 12 months. One other AP investigation discovered he was listed as an affiliate for an anti-vaccine video sequence, the place he was ranked among the many High 10 for the sequence’ “Total Gross sales Leaderboard.”
His group has co-published numerous anti-vaccine books which were debunked. One, known as “Trigger Unknown,” is constructed on the false premise that sudden deaths of younger, wholesome persons are spiking attributable to mass administration of COVID-19 vaccines. Consultants say these uncommon medical emergencies will not be new and haven’t develop into extra prevalent.
An AP evaluation of the guide discovered dozens of people included in it died of recognized causes not associated to vaccines, together with suicide, choking whereas intoxicated, overdose and allergic response. One particular person died in 2019.
Youngsters’s Well being Protection at the moment has a lawsuit pending in opposition to numerous information organizations, amongst them the Related Press, accusing them of violating antitrust legal guidelines by taking motion to determine misinformation, together with about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took depart from the group when he introduced his run for president however is listed as one in every of its attorneys within the lawsuit.
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