Trump administration sows more doubt over vaccines

A highly anticipated White House report outlining Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Junior’s agenda devotes significant space to raising alarm over vaccines.

A nurse administers a measles, mumps and rubella virus vaccine in the US. Robert Kennedy has falsely tied the vaccine to autism cases. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

A highly anticipated White House report outlining Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Junior’s agenda devotes significant space to raising alarm over vaccines, while touching on environmental and nutrition concerns that remain at odds with broader administration actions.

Mr Kennedy has long warned of soaring childhood chronic illness, blaming ultra-processed foods, environmental toxins, and sedentary lifestyles.

Critics, however, say he downplays the danger of infectious disease, while the Trump administration generally undercuts Mr Kennedy’s green goals by deferring to industry.

In a document released on Thursday (local time) by the Make America Healthy Again Commission, the administration expands on those concerns yet also assails the US childhood vaccine regime, even reviving a debunked link to chronic disease.

“Despite the growth of the childhood vaccine schedule there has been limited scientific inquiry into the links between vaccines and chronic disease, the impacts of vaccine injury, and conflicts of interest in the development of the vaccine schedule,” the report states.

Since taking office, Mr Kennedy had ordered the National Institutes of Health to probe the causes of autism – which he had falsely tied to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

The report’s chronic disease references appear to nod to that same theory, discredited by numerous studies since the idea first aired in a 1990s paper based on falsified data.

It also rails against the “over-medicalisation” of children, citing surging prescriptions of psychiatric drugs and antibiotics, and blaming “corporate capture” for skewing scientific research.

AFP