Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism is brought full circle by the Flu Shot Vote.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. began to question the safety of vaccines when he started using the preservative thimerosal. The annual influenza vaccination that contains it will no longer be recommended by a panel of specialists that he named.
Robert F Kennedy Jr., the environmental attorney who later became President Trump’s health secretary, promoted his most recent book, “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak,” on a talk program hosted by Dr. Mehmet Oz ten years prior.
The book, which was released in 2014, examined thimerosal, a little-known mercury-based preservative that was taken from the majority of vaccinations more than twenty years ago but not from the flu vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to Dr. Oz, has determined that the vaccines that still include thimerosal are “safe and effective” and “do not pose a public health risk.”
It wasn’t purchased by Mr. Kennedy. “We discovered 500 peer-reviewed articles,” he argued. “Almost all of them stated that thimerosal is a potent neurotoxin that shouldn’t be in vaccines.”
The new members of the C.D.C.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which Mr. Kennedy hand-picked after firing all 17 members of the previous panel, decided on Thursday that it would no longer advise annual flu vaccinations that include it. The fact that the committee included thimerosal on its agenda at all astounded public health leaders, who have long held the issue to be resolved.
However, those who have closely followed Mr. Kennedy were not surprised by this. Mr. Kennedy began to question vaccine safety after using thimerosal, and the vote on Thursday was the result of a lengthy personal journey. It provides insight into how he is promoting his own interests and placing former allies in positions of power while serving as secretary.
Eric Gladen, who included Mr. Kennedy in his 2014 movie, “Trace Amounts,” which supported a connection between thimerosal and autism, stated that “He has a great passion for this subject, and he probably knows this better than anybody.”
According to reviewers, Mr. Kennedy may have stoked mistrust rather than allayed it by bringing back an old debate. The link between the preservative and autism has been disproved by several studies, including a 2004 report from the Institute of Medicine and a 2010 assessment of the medical literature. On his 2014 program, Dr. Oz, who currently heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, observed that any connection had been “ultimately disproved.”
for Trace Amounts, Credit Cindy Ord/Getty Images
Mr. Kennedy, however, accepted the theory and toured the nation with Mr. Gladen to promote the movie. Mr. Gladen was the head of the World Mercury Project at the time. He collaborated with Kennedy, who later assumed control of the World Mercury Project and transformed it into Children’s Health Defense, the advocacy organization that Mr. Kennedy headed until he ran for president.
“It’s incredible, when I sit down and think about it,” Mr. Gladen stated. “There could nothing be better that could possibly happened for his book, the film, also the organization, to get him ito a position where he now oversees the CDC and the FDA, and oversees what I consider to be a massive disaster and to try to make it right.”
Mr. Kennedy appointed David Geier, who advocated the idea that mercury in vaccinations causes autism, to the Department of Health and Human Services as a special government employee when he took over as health secretary to conduct a study on the safety of vaccines.
Maryland regulators fined Mr. Geier in 2012 after discovering that he had been practicing medicine without a license. Mr. Kennedy defended Mr. Geier, claiming that a court overturned the ruling.
Lyn Redwood, the president emeritus of Children’s Health Defense, has now joined Mr. Kennedy in the fight against thimerosal as a special government employee. Redwood is a nurse and the mother of a child with autism. She is also the founder of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization that worked in the early 2000s to protect children from all mercury sources.
Ms. Redwood’s 2004 paper claimed that the notion that thimerosal caused autism was a “plausible hypothesis that should not be dismissed.” As an expert, she was invited to Thursday’s advisory committee meeting, where she gave a presentation to the panel making the case for the removal of thimerosal from flu vaccines.
Remarkably, on Thursday, Ms. Redwood did not present a compelling case for the preservative’s relationship to or causation of autism. She concentrated instead on its function as a “neurotoxin,” which she claimed was especially hazardous to expecting mothers and unborn children.
She at one point cited research that demonstrated that early exposure to mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines did not cause neuropsychological impairments in children between the ages of 7 and 10. However, she told the panel that the research did reveal a link with tics, which “can be very debilitating.”
Ms. Redwood was protesting the C.D.C. at that time, according to Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who served on the advisory committee from 1998 to 2003, when health experts were initially debating the hazards of thimerosal. He opposed an attorney giving a scientific lecture to the advisory group.
“It’s like Whac-a-Mole,” he said of her Thursday presentation, noting that “it wasn’t clear to me that she was saying autism anymore, like she did 25 years ago.” They simply go on to the next item.
Usually, a presentation like this would be preceded by an analysis by experts from the C.D.C. However, the panel did not hear from the C.D.C. on Thursday. The agency released a paper on Tuesday on the advisory committee’s website that stated “the evidence does not support an association” between the preservative and autism or other neurodevelopmental illnesses.
However, the article was taken down the following day. Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for Mr. Kennedy, stated that committee members had been given copies of the paper even though it hadn’t been properly vetted.
On Thursday, the panel decided by a vote of 5 to 1 to discontinue recommending flu vaccines that include the preservative. It was unknown how producers would react, and how the recommendation might impact the availability of flu vaccines. Without thimerosal, several flu vaccines are already available.
The Food and Drug Administration was requested by Congress in 1997 to investigate mercury in foods and medicines because it was worried about all forms of mercury exposure in children, which is when thimerosal became an issue. A British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, released a study the following year that sparked concern by implying a connection between vaccination and autism. The measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, which does not include thimerosal, was the subject of the ultimately refuted Wakefield research.
However, the notion that thimerosal in vaccinations was associated to autism gained traction.
Out of an excess of prudence, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the C.D.C. issued a joint statement in mid-1999 asking that thimerosal be removed from vaccines, and the majority of producers followed their advice.
Prior to the conclusion of the F.D.A. research, experts opted to advise the deletion of thimerosal, according to Dr. Walter Orenstein, who at the time was in charge of the C.D.C.’s vaccination programs.
In an interview, Dr. Orenstein stated, “Since mercury had never been associated to autism, none of us had ever considered that autism would be the allegation.” However, the main concern was that we may have hurt individuals if we waited for science to tell us whether or not there was any harm.
Mr. Kennedy, who was employed at the time as an environmental attorney, had concentrated on eliminating mercury in waterways. During public appearances, he has frequently shared the tale of how mothers of autistic children approached him and begged him to investigate mercury in vaccinations.
Mr. Kennedy later told a Hillsdale College audience, “They told me in a very respectful but also kind of scolding way, ‘If you’re interested in mercury exposures to children, you got to look at vaccines.'”
The pharmaceutical industry had previously removed thimerosal from every vaccine with the exception of the flu vaccine before he entered the discussion. The manufacturers might be able to eliminate the preservative for vaccines in the United States, a wealthy nation that can afford more expensive single-dose vials, according to experts. The exception was influenza vaccines, which are manufactured in large quantities for mass immunization programs.
Mr. Kennedy’s article, titled “Deadly Immunity,” which blamed thimerosal in vaccines for contributing to the increase in autism, was published in 2005 by Salon and Rolling Stone magazine. The piece was retracted by Salon many years later. Mr. Kennedy maintained that Salon had given in to pressure from the pharmaceutical sector and government regulators.
Dr. Mark Hyman, a well-known wellness specialist, and co-author of Mr. Kennedy’s book, argued in 2014 for the elimination of thimerosal from influenza vaccines on the grounds that it would boost public confidence. In the interview with Doctor Oz alongside Mr. Kennedy, he stated, “All the evidence isn’t in, but there’s enough evidence.” “There’s a smoking gun here. Let’s take the precautionary principle.”
The CDC presented the same argument in 1999. During the time, Doctor Offit disagreed with the agency’s recommendation, arguing that it increased parents’ anxieties about vaccines by bringing up the possibility that regulators would remove a vaccine component even if it was safe.
According to him, “we undermined the trust of the American public.” Furthermore, he said, “That was an anti-science vote,” referring to Mr. Kennedy’s latest actions, which will once again undermine confidence.
