RFK Jr. has long history of spreading false or misleading vaccine claims
- Published on February 27, 2025 at 14:49
- 6 min read
- By Chloé RABS, AFP France
- Translation and adaptation Rob Lever
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Kennedy was confirmed February 13, 2025 in a 52-48 Senate vote after heated debate over his position on vaccines.
The son of a former US senator and nephew of former president John F. Kennedy has spread debunked claims linking vaccines to autism and led an activist group that amplified multiple false claims about Covid-19 vaccines.
Following his confirmation, Kennedy said he was "not going to take away anyone's vaccine," while also asserting: "We lack comprehensive safety studies on nearly all vaccines."
Kennedy has dismissed critics who say he is anti-vaccine, claiming his views were mischaracterized and insisting he was advocating for "common sense" policies.
"Vaccines should be tested, they should be safe, everyone should have informed consent," he said.
Kennedy has been previously quoted as warning of a vaccine-linked "holocaust" and his nonprofit Children's Health Defense group raised millions of dollars as it spread misinformation about Covid-19 and other vaccines.
Context on vaccine safety
Nonetheless, numerous studies and scientific experts point to the life-saving properties of vaccines, suggesting Kennedy's comments are largely false or misleading.
A 2024 study in The Lancet (archived here) concluded that routine vaccinations over the past 50 years had saved 154 million lives, mostly infants and other young children. Global health officials cite sharp reductions in outbreaks and deaths from measles, polio and other pathogens due to vaccination.
Despite Kennedy's claims, vaccines undergo an extensive process for testing and approval in the United States through the Food and Drug Administration and its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
This requires clinical trials and reviews by scientific expert panels. Vaccine safety remains subject to ongoing review after they are approved.
"Vaccines undergo some of the most stringent testing of any medical intervention before approval, and pediatric vaccines are tested specifically for safety and effectiveness in children before being recommended," said David Higgins, a researcher and professor of medicine at the University of Colorado (archived here).
"Before testing in humans, vaccines are studied in laboratory and animal models to assess their potential safety and effectiveness."
Higgins noted that vaccines for children "go through the same rigorous process but with additional considerations, such as dosing adjustments to determine the safest and most effective dose for different age groups."
The approval process (archived here) includes numerous steps starting with a small group of generally fewer than 100 people, followed by a larger clinical trial to evaluate safety, effectiveness and dosages.
After a vaccine is approved, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which includes medical and public health experts, decides on whether it should be included in the recommended vaccine calendar archived here. But a February meeting of this panel was postponed following Kennedy's confirmation.
Even after approval, the FDA monitors all batches of vaccines to ensure they are working as intended (archived here).
The ACIP evaluates vaccines based on a number of criteria, such as safety and effectiveness, estimating how preventable the disease is and how many people would likely be affected if there were no vaccine. It uses a handbook known as "GRADE" (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation) in this process (archived here).
Following the ACIP recommendation, the Centers for Disease Control made a final decision on recommendations for who should receive the vaccine.
There have been cases where authorities have withdrawn vaccines, notably a rotavirus vaccine RotaShield in 1999 after it was linked to cases of bowel obstruction (archived here).
Higgins said that contrary to claims from Kennedy and vaccine critics, vaccines "are tested and monitored just as rigorously if not more than FDA-approved drugs and medications and significantly more than many of the over-the-counter medications and supplements people frequently use."
CDC maintains a list (archived here) of vaccines approved in the United States and all research associated with them and a page on possible side effects (archived here), which most frequently are short-term swelling or soreness at the injection site, dizziness, as well as some more serious impacts such as allergic reactions.
"Any vaccine can cause side effects. For the most part these are minor (for example, a sore arm or low-grade fever) and go away within a few days," the website says.
Placebo trials
Kennedy and others have voiced concerns that many childhood vaccines have not been subject to placebo-controlled trials where participants are given either the active vaccine or an inert ingredient. These claims lack context -- US and global health authorities have long debated ethical considerations of such tests.
Higgins notes that some but not all vaccines for children have gone through placebo-controlled trials.
"There are times when a placebo-controlled trial is not done because it would be unethical," he said, adding that such experiments could "withhold a life-saving vaccine from children, putting them at significant risk for serious and potentially fatal diseases."
Guidelines from the National Institutes of Health (archived here) say it may be ethical to use placebos when there is no known safe and effective vaccine available; but that it is "clearly unacceptable" to subject participants to the risks of delaying or foregoing a vaccine that could prevent a harmful disease.
The World Health Organization offers similar guidelines, noting that "the use of placebos in these situations may arguably violate fundamental ethical principles because randomization to a placebo arm deprives research participants of an effective vaccine... and placebo use may appear to take unfair advantage of the poverty and vulnerability of participants."
Paul Offit, a professor of pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, pointed to the well-known experiments for the polio vaccine in the 1950s using a placebo over the objections of inventor Jonas Salk.
"How did we know that Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was effective?" Offit asked in a blog post.
"We knew because 16 children died from polio in that study -- all in the placebo group. We knew because 34 of the 36 children paralyzed by polio in that study were in the placebo group. These are the gentle heroes we leave behind."
More of AFP's reporting on vaccine misinformation is available here.
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