Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. escalated his anti-vaxxer agenda at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, peddling the line that “my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant” to the American public and claiming nobody should “take advice” from him on whether to get one — despite the fact that his role as HHS secretary entails just that, upholding standards for public health guidance.
And Kennedy’s seemingly self-effacing posture is in and of itself a position on vaccines: It implicitly encourages people who are hesitant toward or skeptical of vaccines to shun evidence-based guidance on their effectiveness and safety. That in turn could accelerate the dangerous decline in vaccination rates.
Kennedy’s position is a shocking dereliction of duty.
During a House Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., asked Kennedy whether, if he had a young child today, he would vaccinate the child for measles.
“For measles? Um, probably for measles,” Kennedy replied, with hesitation. Then he went on to say:
What I would say is my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant. I have directed [the director of the National Institutes of Health] Jay Bhattacharya to do the science so that everyone can make that decision. I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me. If I answer that question directly that will seem like I’m giving advice to other people and I don’t wanna be doing that.”
When Pocan responded, “That’s kind of your jurisdiction, because the CDC does give advice,” Kennedy replied, “What we’re gonna try to do is lay out the pros and cons, the risks and benefits, accurately as we understand them, with replicable studies.”
Pocan then asked Kennedy whether he’d vaccinate a young child against chicken pox or polio, and in both instances Kennedy declined to answer one way or another, saying again that he didn’t want to “give advice.”
Kennedy’s position is a shocking dereliction of duty. He is one of the most influential public health officials in the federal government, and vaccinations are certainly under his purview. (Marissa Levine, a professor of public health practice at the University of South Florida, has likened Kennedy’s refusal to give advice on vaccines to a transportation secretary refusing “to answer a question about whether he would fly.”) And Kennedy must know that his refusal to “give advice” and affirm long-held childhood vaccination health guidance backed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is itself a kind of directive to the public.
Coming from a champion of the anti-vaxxer movement which has long pushed false claims about the effectiveness and dangers of vaccines, Kennedy’s comment insinuates that vaccines are risky enough that the federal government ought to stop recommending them. And his language suggesting that standard, demonstrably safe vaccines require new studies — such as his new initiative to study the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism — implicitly casts doubt on the vast bodies of evidence on how well they work and the systems of ongoing monitoring of vaccines that are already in place to guard against hazards.
Kennedy had his now-adult children vaccinated in the past, but he has also claimed he regretted doing so.
Kennedy knows it’s his job to advise the public on vaccines. His refusal to offer any guidance on them reduces the credibility of the government as an authority on vaccines, and encourages a mode of conspiracy-fueled health libertarianism at odds with the premise of public health thinking. Similarly to his advice for Americans to “do your own research” on vaccines, the effect is to sow mistrust in credentialed institutions, and compel people to turn instead to self-declared experts on the internet and pray for the best.
