Kennedy renews attacks on vaccines at Children’s Health Defense conference

5:09 PM ETDeveloping

Health Desk

In Short: At a Children's Health Defense conference, Kennedy renewed attacks on vaccines, citing safety concerns and adverse events.

During a keynote address at the Children's Health Defense conference, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. renewed his attacks on vaccines, focusing on alleged safety concerns and adverse events.

Kennedy highlighted a hepatitis B vaccine package insert, emphasizing that the vaccine was monitored for only five days without a placebo. He listed 454 adverse events reported after vaccination, including diabetes, death, and autoimmune diseases.

Kennedy also mentioned ongoing research by the Department of Health and Human Services into more than 150 serious adverse events reported after vaccination. He noted that vaccine makers are required to disclose conditions reported after vaccination, though not necessarily correlated with the vaccine.

As Kennedy concluded his speech to applause, the next speaker was announced as Andrew Wakefield, the discredited physician whose work sparked the modern anti-vaccine movement.

Kennedy's remarks came at a critical time, with midterm elections approaching that could impact the future of his health agenda and the GOP's approach to healthcare reform.

Despite previous efforts to downplay his work on vaccine safety, Kennedy has now made it central to his legacy as health secretary, focusing on perceived risks and adverse reactions to vaccines.

What's still developing

“There are 454 adverse events listed in total, and they include almost all of the injuries, like diabetes, death, sudden infant death syndrome, anorexia, allergic reactions, allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases,” he said. (The Trump administration’s changes to the childhood immunization schedule are the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.) The Department of Health and Human Services is now conducting research on more than 150 of the most serious adverse events that have been reported after vaccination to determine whether they could be linked to certain vaccines, he said.
Kennedy also noted a litany of other vaccine-related initiatives happening across agencies, including a task force review of the safety, timing, and sequence of childhood vaccinations, and an expansive project involving health data from Medicare and Medicaid, states and private health insurers.
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His remarks appeared at first to be a recap of Kennedy’s agenda over the past year — flipping the food pyramid, scrutinizing chemical additives, and changing hospital meals.
“ADVERSE REACTIONS,” the insert read, above text describing how researchers collected adverse reaction information from 147 healthy infants and children enrolled in three clinical trials.
Trials including thousands of children that were conducted after the hep B vaccine entered the market have 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.

Sources

STATlink