Building on his longstanding anti-vaxxing crusade, Kennedy has followed a multi-step program that will worsen the next outbreak.

RFK Jr.’s Guide to Making America Sick Again

Steven Harper in Common Dreams

He should be prosecuted for perjury

Someone should have told Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that President Donald Trump’s mishandling of the last pandemic probably cost him the presidency in 2020.

Building on his longstanding anti-vaxxing crusade, Kennedy has followed a three-step program that will worsen the next outbreak.

Step 1: Reduce vaccine availability. Three weeks ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—one of Kennedy’s HHS agencies—announced that for healthy Americans under 65, Covid-19 vaccines will not be approved until they pass large scale and time-consuming clinical trials. That is a daunting obstacle.

Kennedy said that the firings were necessary to restore public trust in vaccines. They do the opposite.

Step 2: Reduce vaccine eligibility. The following week, Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would no longer recommend the Covid-19 vaccine for children and pregnant women. Within days, the CDC had to walk it back somewhat, stating that whether to vaccinate a child should be the product of “shared decision-making” involving parents and physicians. But pregnant women remain in the limbo world of “no recommendation.” In any event, the negative impact on overall public health will be enormous.

Step 3: Eliminate vaccine expertise. On June 9, Kennedy fired the entire CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—all 17 of them. This committee of outside experts reviews the most recent data on all vaccines to assess safety, efficacy, and clinical need. It develops a recommended guidance schedule for all vaccines, including seasonal flu shots and Covid-19 boosters. Physicians rely on that guidance in counseling patients, and insurance companies and government programs use it to determine the vaccines they will cover. Committee members received their termination notices via email sent two hours after Kennedy announced their firing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

With Kennedy’s selection of his first eight replacements on June 11, we’re getting a sense of the disaster that will accompany Step 4.

Action Based on Lies

Kennedy’s stated justifications for terminating every member of the vaccine advisory committee are a combination of lies, half-truths, and misinformation.

Fact: Committee members are screened for major conflicts of interest. They cannot hold stock or serve on advisory boards or bureaus affiliated with vaccine manufacturers. If members have a conflict of interest, they disclose it and recuse themselves from related votes.

Lie: But Kennedy asserted falsely that most members of the committee had received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies. “The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” he said falsely.

Fact: Individual working groups may meet in private, but committee meetings and members’ materials are public. Over several days of meetings, they review safety and effectiveness data, debate policy, hear from experts, and entertain public comment.

Lie: Kennedy asserted falsely that the committee worked secretly “behind closed doors.”

Misinformation/half-truth: According to The New York Times, “Kennedy claimed that 97% of financial disclosure forms from committee members had omissions. But the statistic came from an inspector general’s report in 2009, which found that 97% of the forms had errors, such as missing dates or information in the wrong section, not significant financial conflicts.”

Kennedy said that the firings were necessary to restore public trust in vaccines. They do the opposite. Thanks in large measure to Kennedy’s years of anti-vaxxing leadership, support for vaccinating children is eroding. Now he can stack the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee—the key medical and scientific body responsible for determining which vaccines protect and promote public health.

Seen Enough Yet, Sen. Cassidy?

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the physician who reluctantly provided the key vote that resulted in Kennedy’s Senate confirmation, sees the mess. He was instrumental in creating it. Cassidy could have killed Kennedy’s nomination and thought seriously about doing so.

But like almost all Republicans in the Senate, his spine failed him. Before voting on Kennedy’s nomination, Sen. Cassidy took the Senate floor to explain his decision. He said that Kennedy had assured him that, if confirmed, he would “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.”

Reacting to Kennedy’s mass firings, Sen. Cassidy posted on X:

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion…”

Two days later, Sen. Cassidy’s fears came to life.

On June 11, Kennedy named eight replacements. Among them are anti-vaccine activists, conspiracy theorists, vaccine misinformation promoters, a co-author of and a signatory to the pandemic-era Great Barrington Declaration that recommended widespread exposure to Covid-19 as strategy for dealing with the outbreak (instead of widespread vaccination), and individuals who lack the expertise required for the board’s task. One new member testified as an expert witness in a case against Merck over its Gardasil vaccine (for HPV)—mass tort litigation that Kennedy played a key role in organizing.

Steps 5, 6,…

Kennedy included 4 of the 8 new members in the dedication of his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci. Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a physician and scientist who reviewed it for the Claremont Review of Books, observed, “When I looked up at random five of the medical papers Kennedy cites, I found that he had misrepresented all of them… He asserts things that are simply not true.”

Kennedy is at it again. Announcing his selections on X, he wrote, “The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians.”

Do you agree, Sen. Cassidy?

Kennedy’s vaccine advisory committee meets on June 25-27. We should all fear the outcome.

Steven Harper is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, and author of several books, including Crossing Hoffa -- A Teamster's Story and The Lawyer Bubble -- A Profession in Crisis. He has been a regular columnist for Moyers on Democracy, Dan Rather's News and Guts, and The American Lawyer. Follow him at https://thelawyerbubble.com.