Kennedy renews attacks on vaccines at Children’s Health Defense conference
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. returned to his roots on Thursday with a keynote at a conference hosted by the Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit he helped start, STAT reported. The speech served as a victory lap for Kennedy at a key moment for the MAHA movement, just before midterm elections that could determine the viability of his agenda and act as a referendum on the GOP's approach to health care reform.
Kennedy's remarks initially recapped his agenda over the past year—flipping the food pyramid, scrutinizing chemical additives, and changing hospital meals. About halfway through, after mentioning agency work on electromagnetic frequency and 'chemtrails,' he pivoted to vaccine safety for his vaccine-distrusting base. He asked whether chronic illnesses might be associated with vaccines as an image of a hepatitis B vaccine package insert appeared on screens; the insert's 'ADVERSE REACTIONS' section described how researchers collected adverse reaction information from 147 healthy infants and children in three clinical trials. Kennedy said they were monitored for only five days and there was no placebo, arguing that no other product would get FDA approval with that few people.
STAT provided context: at the time, the FDA accepted the 147-participant trial alongside data from thousands of babies vaccinated with an older hepatitis B shot, and later trials including thousands of children after the hep B vaccine entered the market provided further evidence of efficacy and low risk. Universal newborn vaccination led to a 99% drop in chronic hepatitis B infections among children and teens, though the Trump administration ended the policy last year.
Kennedy spent more than 20 minutes casting doubt on vaccine safety, saying the public had 'no idea' about the risk profile of shots administered tens of millions of times. While saying serious harm from vaccines was probably 'very rare,' he suggested without evidence that vaccines were underpinning an epidemic of chronic illness in the United States, using the package insert as proof. The insert notes that vaccine makers must disclose conditions people reported after vaccination that are not necessarily correlated with vaccination, and it states that it is not possible to reliably estimate their frequency or establish a causal relationship to vaccine exposure. Nevertheless, Kennedy linked chronic disease to the 18 vaccines previously recommended for American children.
The address underscored how Kennedy, who previously downplayed his work sowing doubt about vaccine safety, has made vaccine skepticism central to his legacy as health secretary, intensifying a politically charged health-care debate ahead of the midterms.