Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. built a following with his anti-vaccine nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, and became one of the world’s most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines.
Now President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates vaccines.
Kennedy has long pushed the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism. He has also advanced other conspiracy theories, such as that COVID-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese, with comments he later said taken out of context. He has repeatedly brought up the Holocaust when discussing vaccines and public health mandates.
No medical procedure is without risk. But doctors and researchers have proven that the risks of disease are generally much greater than the risks of vaccines.
Vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective over the decades in laboratory testing and in real-world use in hundreds of millions of people – considered one of the most effective public health measures in history.
Kennedy has emphasized that he is not against vaccines, saying he only wants vaccines to be rigorously tested, but he has also opposed a wide range of immunizations. Kennedy said in a 2023 podcast interview: “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told Fox News that he still believes in the long-debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism. In a 2021 podcast, he urged people to “oppose” the CDC guidelines on when children should get vaccines.
“I see someone on a hiking trail with a little baby in their arms and I tell them, don’t get him or her vaccinated,” Kennedy said.
That same year, Kennedy appeared in a video promoting his nonprofit’s anti-vaccine sticker campaign, appearing on screen next to a sticker that read, “IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER, YOU’RE NOT PAYING.”
The World Health Organization estimates that global vaccination efforts have saved at least 154 million lives over the past fifty years.
In a 2021 study of verified Twitter accounts, researchers found that Kennedy’s personal Twitter account was the largest “super spreader” of vaccine misinformation on Twitter, responsible for 13% of all repeat misinformation spread, more than three times the second most retweeted account.
He has traveled to states such as Connecticut, California and New York to lobby or sue against vaccine policies and traveled the world to meet with anti-vaccine activists.
Kennedy has also aligned himself with corporations and advocacy groups such as anti-vaccine chiropractors, who saw profit in cutting off a small slice of the larger health care market while spreading false or dubious health information.
An Associated Press investigation found that a chiropractic group in California had donated $500,000 to Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense, about one-sixth of the group’s fundraising that year. Another AP investigation found that he was listed as a partner for an anti-vaccine video series, where he ranked in the Top 10 for the series’ “Overall Sales Leaderboard.”
His group has co-published a number of anti-vaccine books that have been debunked. One, called “Cause Unknown,” is based on the false assumption that sudden deaths among young, healthy people are increasing due to the mass administration of COVID-19 vaccines. Experts say these rare medical emergencies are not new and are not happening more often.
An AP review of the book found that dozens of individuals in the book died from known causes unrelated to vaccines, including suicide, intoxicated asphyxiation, overdose and allergic reaction. One person died in 2019.
Children’s Health Defense currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy parted ways with the group when he announced his run for president, but is listed as one of the lawyers in the lawsuit.
