Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s selection to guide the nation’s well being businesses, formally requested the Meals and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of all Covid vaccines throughout a lethal section of the pandemic when 1000’s of Individuals had been nonetheless dying each week.
Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the F.D.A. in Might 2021 demanding that officers rescind authorization for the pictures and chorus from approving any Covid vaccine sooner or later.
Simply six months earlier, Mr. Trump had declared the Covid vaccines a miracle. On the time Mr. Kennedy filed the petition, half of American adults had been receiving their pictures. Colleges had been reopening and church buildings had been filling.
Estimates had begun to indicate that the fast rollout of Covid vaccines had already saved about 140,000 lives in the USA.
The petition was filed on behalf of the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy based and led, Youngsters’s Well being Protection. It claimed that the dangers of the vaccines outweighed the advantages and that the vaccines weren’t needed as a result of good therapies had been accessible, together with ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which had already been deemed ineffective in opposition to the virus.
The petition acquired little discover when it was filed. Mr. Kennedy was then on the fringes of the general public well being institution, and the company denied it inside months. Public well being consultants instructed concerning the submitting mentioned it was stunning.
John Moore, a professor of immunology at Weill Cornell Medical School, referred to as Mr. Kennedy’s request to the F.D.A. “an appalling error of judgment.” Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist on the Yale College of Public Well being, likened having Mr. Kennedy lead the federal well being businesses to “placing a flat earther answerable for NASA.”
Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Meals and Drug Administration, described Mr. Kennedy’s effort to halt the usage of Covid vaccines as a “huge error.”
Mr. Kennedy’s transition spokeswoman didn’t reply to requests for remark, however has mentioned lately that he doesn’t need to take vaccines away.
Requested in November by an NBC reporter about his common opposition to Covid vaccines — and whether or not he would have stopped authorization — Mr. Kennedy mentioned he was involved that the vaccines didn’t forestall transmission of the virus.
“I wouldn’t have instantly blocked it,” he mentioned. “I might have made certain that we had the perfect science, and there was no effort to try this at the moment.”
Mr. Kennedy’s early opposition to Covid vaccines has alarmed public well being consultants, a lot of whom contend that it ought to disqualify him from overseeing well being businesses with the ability to authorize, monitor and allocate funding for tens of millions of vaccines every year.
They’re additionally involved about how he would possibly deal with a potential hen flu pandemic, which may necessitate a fast deployment of vaccines.
As Mr. Kennedy prepares for his affirmation hearings earlier than two Senate committees, he and his allies have insisted that he’s not anti-vaccine.
In actual fact, in mid-2023, he instructed a Home panel that he had taken all beneficial vaccines — apart from the Covid immunization.
At his affirmation hearings, he’ll almost certainly face scrutiny of his broader statements on vaccines, together with that the polio vaccine price extra lives than it saved.
Mr. Trump has stepped ahead in latest weeks to defend Mr. Kennedy after The New York Instances reported that certainly one of Mr. Kennedy’s legal professionals had beforehand petitioned the F.D.A. to revoke approval or pause distribution of a number of polio vaccines over security issues.
“I feel he’s going to be a lot much less radical than you’d suppose,” Mr. Trump mentioned final month.
After the Instances report, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy expressed their help for the polio vaccine.
If confirmed by the Senate as secretary of the Well being and Human Companies Division, Mr. Kennedy would assume oversight of $8 billion in funding for the Vaccines for Youngsters program and would have the authority to nominate new members to a panel that makes influential vaccine suggestions to states.
On the time Mr. Kennedy challenged the Covid vaccines, a few of his objections touched on wider issues about their fast growth. Emergency-use authorization — a preliminary type of approval — for immunizations was uncommon. Others argued {that a} public well being emergency dictated a speedier rollout.
Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Heart at Brown College College of Public Well being, mentioned it might be cheap to debate whether or not Covid vaccines ought to have been topic to extra research.
However she profoundly disagreed with Mr. Kennedy’s views, saying that “the concept that in early 2021 that you would be saying that individuals over the age of 65 don’t want Covid vaccines — that’s simply nuts.”
Vaccines have uncommon negative effects, and there have been circumstances of harm from the Covid pictures. Authorities officers weigh the harms in opposition to the potential to save lots of lives. An estimate launched in early 2024 discovered that the Covid vaccines and mitigation measures saved about 800,000 lives in the USA.
One other research discovered that in late 2021 and 2022, Covid demise charges amongst unvaccinated folks had been 14 occasions the charges of those that had acquired a Covid booster shot. Researchers additionally estimated that from Might 2021 by means of September 2022, greater than 230,000 deaths may have been prevented amongst individuals who declined preliminary Covid inoculations.
From the beginning of the Covid vaccine marketing campaign, Mr. Kennedy’s view that the Covid vaccines had been harmful put him at odds with Mr. Trump, whose Operation Warp Velocity to develop the vaccines was certainly one of his coverage triumphs. And Mr. Kennedy went on a concerted marketing campaign in opposition to the vaccine.
Mr. Kennedy instructed Louisiana lawmakers in late 2021 that the Covid vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
He has remained a plaintiff in a lawsuit in opposition to President Biden and others, contesting efforts by authorities officers to restrict his potential to counsel on social media that Covid vaccines weren’t protected.
In January 2021, Mr. Kennedy advised on Fb that the demise of the baseball legend Hank Aaron, 86, was associated to a Covid vaccine he had acquired 17 days earlier. It was “a part of a wave of suspicious deaths” following Covid vaccines, he claimed. A physician who was vaccinated alongside Mr. Aaron and the county health worker dismissed the declare.
In Might, when Mr. Kennedy petitioned the F.D.A. to “instantly take away Covid vaccines from the market,” he was joined by Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of the Youngsters’s Well being Protection scientific advisory board and a doctor in Maine.
Her medical license was initially suspended on an emergency foundation in early 2022 for prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to sufferers with extreme circumstances of Covid, together with one who was intubated, Maine medical board data present.
She later sued the board, claiming that it retaliated in opposition to her for exercising her proper to free speech. The case is pending.
In 2022, Mr. Kennedy and others filed a lawsuit in opposition to the F.D.A. on behalf of Youngsters’s Well being Protection and fogeys who mentioned they had been involved that their youngsters could be given Covid vaccines with out their data or consent. The amended lawsuit, filed in July 2022, sought a court docket order requesting that the company rethink granting authorization for Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines for kids.
A Texas appeals court docket dismissed the case in early 2024, concurring with a decrease court docket that the plaintiffs didn’t face a “concrete or imminent” danger of hurt. In June, the Supreme Courtroom declined to listen to an attraction.
Mr. Kennedy additionally despatched letters to the F.D.A. threatening authorized motion if vaccine authorizations for kids had been granted.
Covid vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna for infants and youngsters 6 months to 11 years outdated stay in use underneath emergency authorization, based on the F.D.A. A Pfizer spokesman mentioned the corporate was pursuing full approval; a Moderna spokesman mentioned the corporate couldn’t remark.
Mr. Kennedy claimed within the censorship case that prime Biden administration officers had coerced social media platforms to silence him, largely through the summer time of 2021. On the time, vaccine charges had been stalling. Individuals who weren’t vaccinated started to die at larger charges. Some who died had been younger; their family members mentioned they had been confused by conflicting messages on social media — or regretted that they’d not gotten the vaccine.
Information within the lawsuit define a briefing that summer time with Jen Psaki, the White Home press secretary on the time, and Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon common, each of whom criticized social media firms for permitting the unfold of misinformation that was influencing folks in opposition to vaccination.
“And we are able to’t wait longer for them to take aggressive motion as a result of it’s costing folks their lives,” Dr. Murthy mentioned on July 15, 2021.
Mr. Biden expressed outrage the next day, telling reporters that social media firms that hosted vaccine misinformation had been “killing folks.”
In authorized filings, Mr. Kennedy mentioned that he had been named one of many “Disinformation Dozen” by a outstanding advocacy group — and that he was one of many folks the White Home was concentrating on. Displays within the lawsuit present that White Home officers leaned on social media firms to take down misinformation.
Inside a month, a senior Fb govt reported to Dr. Murthy that it had eliminated a lot of pages or teams, together with Mr. Kennedy’s, court docket data present.
The Supreme Courtroom dismissed an related case final summer time, and an appeals court docket dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s case late final 12 months. Attorneys representing Mr. Kennedy and others are nonetheless engaged on acquiring depositions of about 30 folks, largely Biden administration officers.
Sheryl Homosexual Stolberg and Dylan Freedman contributed reporting.
