When he decided to revise the children's vaccination schedule, the health secretary did not inform a critical group of people: his staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Vaccine experts at agency were 'stunned' Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A vigorous effort Monday is aimed at radically narrowing the parameters for which vaccines the government would recommend for children, current and former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. Washington Post.
This modernization included eliminating recommendations for vaccinations against influenza, rotavirus, hepatitis A, and meningococcal disease, which leads to meningitis. Instead, these vaccines will only be recommended for children who are considered to be at “high risk” of contracting the disease, or if a doctor recommends it.
The decision was not based on new scientific evidence and was not subject to the typical review process, but nevertheless took effect immediately.
“The abrupt replacement of the vaccination schedule with a schedule designed for a different context and health system was made without any scientific justification,” said Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the agency’s Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Mail.
Private and federal health insurance plans have gave the signal that they will continue to cover the cost of childhood vaccines until 2026although several major insurers have not specified how they will manage the evolving Department of Health guidelines in the coming years.
Before Kennedy's intervention, the schedule included 17 vaccinations, which were universally recommended for all children. The new schedule reduces that pool to 11 vaccines.
Senior officials from the Department of Health and Human Services released a statement. memo regarding the changes on Monday, saying the shift was driven in no small part by public mistrust of vaccines and national public health initiatives in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kennedy, an outspoken vaccine skeptic, told the American public even before he was confirmed that he would not allow his personal feelings about immunization to influence national public health policy. In an April interview with the magazine CBS NewsKennedy reiterated that he is “not going to take vaccines away from people.”
But that's exactly what he did.
Since Kennedy took the reins at HHS, he has replaced independent medical experts on the CDC's vaccine advisory panel with a hodgepodge of vaccine skeptics. He warned against using MMR vaccine during the historic measles outbreak in Texas, recommending that suffering patients take vitamins instead. And he based his new policy guideline for America's health care, the Making America Healthy Again report, on research created by AI which never existed in the real world.
The 71-year-old has a lot to gain from spreading misinformation about the strike: The more doubt and controversy Kennedy sows, the more money he will make. On the eve of his appointment, Kennedy revealed that he earned approximately $10 million in 2024 from speaking fees and dividends from vaccine lawsuits. He also made money by trading products run by his nonprofit Children's Health Defense, which responded so poorly to a measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019 that it killed at least 83 people. majority of which children are under 5 years of age.
To recap: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine. Medical vaccinations are so effective in preventing disease that they have effectively eradicated some of the worst diseases of our collective culture, from rabies to polio to smallpox—a fact that may have fooled some into believing that viruses and their complications pose no serious threat to the average health-conscious person.
Meanwhile, Kennedy runs DHS with virtually no relevant experience. He has not worked in medicine, public health or government – instead he is driven by only a handful of conspiracies that leading American health experts have already completely debunked.
