Lengthy earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was increase a following together with his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Kids’s Well being Protection, and turning into one of many world’s most influential spreaders of concern and mistrust round vaccines.
Now, President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll nominate Kennedy to guide the Division of Well being and Human Companies, which regulates vaccines.
Kennedy has lengthy superior the debunked concept that vaccines trigger autism. He has additionally pushed different conspiracy theories, resembling that COVID-19 might have been “ethnically targeted” 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 docs and researchers have confirmed that dangers from illness are usually far larger than the dangers from vaccines.
Vaccines have been confirmed to be secure and efficient in laboratory testing and in actual world use in a whole lot of tens of millions of individuals over many years — they’re thought of among the many best public well being measures in historical past.
“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better 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.”
The World Well being Group has estimated that international immunization efforts have saved not less than 154 million lives prior to now 50 years.
In a research 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 thrice 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 resembling 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 data.
An Related Press investigation discovered one chiropractic group in California had donated $500,000 to Kennedy’s Kids’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 collection, the place he was ranked among the many Prime 10 for the collection’ “Overall Sales Leaderboard.”
His group has co-published various anti-vaccine books which have been debunked. One, referred to as “Cause Unknown,” is constructed on the false premise that sudden deaths of younger, wholesome persons are spiking because of mass administration of COVID-19 vaccines. Specialists say these uncommon medical emergencies should not new and haven’t grow to be extra prevalent.
An AP assessment 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 individual died in 2019.