Zealous anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reviving a long-defunct federal vaccine panel that anti-vaccine advocates, including Kennedy, have long sought and health experts fear will be used to dismantle evidence-based recommendations for life-saving childhood shots.
The panel is a task force outlined in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which is best known for setting up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The law states that the task force's goal is to "promote the development of childhood vaccines that result in fewer and less serious adverse reactions than those vaccines on the market on the effective date of this part and promote the refinement of such vaccines."
The federal government has multiple overlapping procedures and systems that evaluate, review, and continuously monitor the safety of childhood vaccines, which have gone through rigorous testing and are well-established to be safe. Further, the government does, in effect, promote improved vaccines by providing grants to academic and industry researchers to develop advanced shots. It also conducts its own vaccine research toward that goal. For instance, researchers at the National Institutes of Health were critical in developing the mRNA vaccine technology that enabled the swift creation of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that saved millions of lives at the height of the pandemic.
As such, the task under the 1986 law has never been active. Though there are federal records of the task force existing between 1990 and 1998, it didn't produce any reports to Congress in that time. According to the law, it's supposed to report to Congress every two years.
But anti-vaccine advocates have for years fought for the creation of the panel, likely seeing it as a tool to further erode confidence in the safety of childhood vaccines. Kennedy himself sued the government in 2018 for information on the task force.
Earlier this year, the outside counsel for the anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded and previously ran, Children's Health Defense, filed a lawsuit against Kennedy, seeking the creation of the task force. "Why is he not dealing with vaccines? This is not the Bobby we know," the lawyer, Ray Flores, said in a video posted to social media about the lawsuit last month.
Immediate concern
It's possible that Kennedy did not immediately set up the task force because the necessary leadership was not in place. The 1986 law says the task force "shall consist of consist of the Director of the National Institutes of Health, the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention]." But a CDC director was only confirmed and sworn in at the end of July.
With Susan Monarez now at the helm at CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday that the task force is being revived, though it will be led by the NIH.
"By reinstating this Task Force, we are reaffirming our commitment to rigorous science, continuous improvement, and the trust of American families," NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said in the announcement. "NIH is proud to lead this effort to advance vaccine safety and support innovation that protects children without compromise."
Kennedy's anti-vaccine group cheered the move on social media, saying it was "grateful" that Kennedy was fulfilling his duty.
Outside health experts were immediately concerned by the move.
"What I am concerned about is making sure that we don’t overemphasize very small risks [of vaccines] and underestimate the real risk of infectious diseases and cancers that these vaccines help prevent," Anne Zink, Alaska’s former chief medical officer, told The Washington Post.
David Higgins, a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, worried about eroding trust in vaccines, telling the Post, "I am concerned that bringing this committee back implies to the public that we have not been looking at vaccine safety. The reality is, we evaluate the safety of vaccines more than any other medication, medical intervention, or supplements available."
Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, worried about a more direct attack on vaccines, telling CNN, "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an anti-vaccine activist who has these fixed, immutable, science-resistant beliefs that vaccines are dangerous. He is in a position now to be able to set up task forces like this one [that] will find some way to support his notion that vaccines are doing more harm than good."
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