Trump’s executive order made two false assumptions:

• First, it’s not the number of vaccines that matter, it’s the number of immunological components in the vaccines; specifically, bacterial proteins, bacterial polysaccharides, and viral proteins. One hundred years ago, children in the United States received only one vaccine—the smallpox vaccine. The largest of the mammalian viruses, the smallpox vaccine contained about 200 immunologic components. With advances in protein chemistry, protein purification, and recombinant DNA technology, the vaccines given today to prevent 17 different diseases combined contain about 170 immunological components. In other words, we had a larger challenge to our immune system from the one vaccine given 100 years ago than from the 17 different vaccines given today.

• Second, more vaccines save more lives. I was a pediatric resident at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh between 1977 and 1980, when, according to Trump’s executive order, children were subjected to vaccines against “only” seven different diseases. During my 12-hours-on-12-hours-off Emergency Department rotation, I would do 2-3 spinal taps a night. Bacterial meningitis was common. We didn’t have vaccines to prevent Haemophilus influenzae type b or meningococcus or pneumococcus. Every year, tens of thousands of children suffered or were permanently disabled or killed by meningitis. Today, because we have vaccines to prevent all three of these diseases, most pediatric residents don’t learn how to do spinal taps. Interventional radiologists do them on those rare occasions when meningitis is suspected.

To put this in perspective, between 1994 and 2023, well after the 1980s vaccine schedule that Trump’s executive order touts as the “good old days”, vaccines have prevented about 500 million illnesses, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1 million deaths. More vaccines. More shots. Fewer children suffering. Fewer children dying.

Trump wasn’t finished. On May 29, 2026, Trump issued a second executive order about childhood vaccines, again emphasizing that children were simply receiving too many. “The scientific assessment found that the United States currently recommends more childhood vaccines than any peer nation, including more than twice as many vaccine doses as some European nations.” Further, “the scientific assessment also found that, instead of implementing vaccination mandates, most peer nations maintain high childhood vaccination rates through public trust and education.”

Again, Trump’s logic was flawed.

• First, recommendations made by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) are not mandatory. Clinical guidance supports decisions made between clinicians and parents.

• Second, Trump’s use of the phrase “peer nations” was non-sensical. Different developed world countries make different decisions based on demographics, health system capacity, vaccine access, and vaccine cost. For example, Denmark, which has a national health system, chooses not to pay for the rotavirus vaccine, which prevents a virus that causes vomiting, diarrhea, and severe dehydration. Children in the United States have received the rotavirus vaccine since 2006, virtually eliminating the 55,000-70,000 hospitalizations every year. Accounting for the fact that Denmark has roughly the same population as Maryland, the percentage of children hospitalized with rotavirus-induced dehydration in Denmark is the same as U.S. rates before the vaccine. Denmark should mimic the U.S., not the other way around.

It’s hard to know Trump’s end game here. On its surface, the executive orders appear to encourage the same changes that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried unsuccessfully to implement on January 5, 2026, when he unilaterally reduced the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11. On March 16, 2026, RFK Jr.’s revised schedule was ruled unlawful by a federal court. Trump’s two executive orders might be an attempt to do an end run around the federal court’s decision. Or maybe these executive orders were just a bluff—a theatrical move to appease those who are anti-vaccine knowing that their position is unpopular across the political spectrum.

The Trump Arch, the Trump Ballroom, the Trump-Kennedy Center, and now—from the man who brought us bleach and UV light to treat COVID—The Trump Childhood Vaccine Schedule.

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The rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, was tested in about 72,000 infants in a prospective, placebo-controlled trial. Rotaviruses are a common cause of fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and dehydration in infants and young children. Before the vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 2006, every year about 55,000 to 70,000 children would be hospitalized with severe dehydration caused by rotavirus. The rotavirus vaccine was shown to be about 95% effective at preventing hospitalization. Seizures occurred in 27 of 36,150 (0.07%) vaccine recipients and 18 of 35,536 (0.05%) placebo recipients. These differences were not statistically significant. Nonetheless, seizures are listed in the rotavirus vaccine package insert. Ironically, after the rotavirus vaccine was licensed, large post-licensure studies showed that the vaccine actually decreased the risk of seizures. Because natural rotavirus infection can cause seizures with or without fever, and the rotavirus vaccine prevented natural infection, this wasn’t surprising.

Similarly, some children in the large clinical trial of RotaTeq suffered from Kawasaki disease, which causes inflammation of the blood vessels primarily in children less than 5 years old. Symptoms of Kawasaki disease include high fever, rash, conjunctivitis, a reddening of the tongue, swollen hands and feet, and occasionally severe damage to the arteries that supply the heart. During the rotavirus clinical trial, Kawasaki disease occurred in 5 of 36,160 (0.01%) vaccine recipients and 1 of 35,536 (0.003%) placebo recipients. This difference was not statistically significant but appears in the package insert. Subsequent studies of larger numbers of children did not show an increased risk of Kawasaki disease in children receiving the rotavirus vaccine.

Of interest, during the clinical trial of the rotavirus vaccine, 5 cases of arm and leg fractures occurred in the placebo group and none in the vaccine group. This was a statistically significant difference. In other words, the rotavirus vaccine prevented arm and leg fractures. Not surprisingly, this finding doesn’t appear in the package insert because it doesn’t make biological sense. If you are worried that the rotavirus vaccine might cause seizures or Kawasaki disease, then you should be reassured that it might also prevent arm and leg fractures. Such is the problem with small numbers in large databases.

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“I just got out of clinic and I’m tired. I need to vent. I don’t want to come across like I am whining because I realize that I am lucky to be a pediatrician. But being a pediatrician has changed. My job feels different.”

Dr. Prior recalled a time when it wasn’t so hard to explain the value of vaccines.

“I spend so much more time counseling people on vaccines than I have done in the past. Ten years ago, I would tell people you’re getting standard vaccines today. Then I would give them handouts with the names of the vaccines, what diseases they cover, and side effects. Parents would review the handouts and that was that. Occasionally people would ask me an extra question or two or they’d google something, but it went well. It was easy.”

Now, with the onslaught of confusing, misleading, and often frightening information about vaccines on social media, appointments have gotten longer and harder. The handouts she had given in the past are no longer adequate.

“Now it feels like I must go into this long-winded discussion almost every visit. Parents want to know what exactly they are getting vaccinated for, what do those diseases do, what are the side effects of each vaccine, what types of vaccines are being given, and what are the additives. I can answer those questions, [but it takes much longer].”

She offers a specific example.

“There’s a vaccine we give at 2, 4, and 6 months called Vaxelis. When a parent asks me what is contained within Vaxelis, I say it vaccinates against the Haemophilus influenzae bacteria; it also vaccinates against hepatitis B, also DTaP which is diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, and against polio. That sentence alone, and explaining what all those different diseases do, takes me a really long time. I explain that the pneumonia vaccine is made from a piece of sugar coating of the bacteria that gets hooked onto a protein that stimulates your immune system. I don’t even know if parents get what I’m talking about. It is so incredibly challenging to condense this really complicated topic into short visits.”

Dr. Prior wonders whether her explanations about vaccines make a difference.

“I’m not mad at these families for asking questions. I’m mad at the people whispering in their ears, ‘Don’t trust vaccines,’ ‘Ask about the ingredients,’ ‘Do your own research.’ Imagine if you were boarding a plane and some passenger went into the cockpit and said ‘Hey, before we take off, I’m going to need you to explain to me what every single button on this plane does.’ And the pilot could do that, but it will make everybody else late to takeoff. And I’m not really sure that it changes what’s going to happen.”

In the end, Dr. Prior worries that she is not serving her patients or families as well as she did in the past.

“The visits take longer. Then I’m running late and the families are mad that I’m late. I get out of clinic late and I spend less time with my family.”

Because much of the routine visit is now devoted to talking about vaccines, the pediatrician doesn’t have as much time to offer the anticipatory guidance that, depending on the age of the child, includes advice on feeding, development, mental health, exercise, oral health, gun safety, and injury prevention, among others. All in the name of trying to quell fears raised by vaccine misinformation that has made parents more fearful and, given the increase in vaccine refusals, children less healthy.

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It doesn’t end there. On January 5, 2026, RFK Jr. reduced the number of routinely recommended vaccines from 18 to 10. For vaccines that protected against influenza, COVID, and rotavirus, parents were urged to speak with their doctors—to make an individual choice. (On March 16, 2026, in a ruling by a federal court in Boston, RFK Jr.’s revised schedule was invalidated.)

What’s happening? Why are public health officials moving away from making recommendations for the public? The origin of this change might be rooted in the first two years of the COVID pandemic. In 2020, during the first year on the pandemic, we didn’t have anything to stop a virus that was killing hundreds of people a day and could be spread asymptomatically. We didn’t have antivirals until October, monoclonal antibodies until November, and vaccines until December. All we could do was restrict travel, close businesses, shutter schools, and mask, isolate, quarantine, test, and social distance. During the second year of the pandemic, when we had vaccines to prevent COVID, people couldn’t go anywhere without their vaccine cards. They couldn’t go to their favorite bar or restaurant or sporting event or place of worship without proof of vaccination. Some people were fired from their jobs for refusing to get vaccinated. For many, this was seen as massive government overreach and energized what has been called the “medical freedom movement.” Indeed, a headline in the New York Times declared, “How Health Freedom Became a Winning Rally Cry.”

As expressed in the comments of RFK Jr., Casey Means, and Marty Makary, the medical freedom movement focuses on the individual not the community—the opposite of public health. In an article titled “Ethics and Social Value Judgments in Public Health,” ethicists from Yale University distinguished public health from medical freedom. “Public health policies,” they wrote, “are population oriented. Because individual health affects the health of others, public health measures regulate individual behavior to achieve population health goals. All raise questions about how individual autonomy and freedom should be balanced against public health interests…which respects individuals’ sovereignty over their bodies and actions as long as their actions do not harm others.”

The medical freedom movement fails to recognize that it often limits the freedom of others. For example, a parent who is afraid to send a child to school where many of the students are unvaccinated. Or immune compromised children who depend on those around them to for protection. The question then becomes “Freedom for whom?” Is it your right, in the name of medical freedom, to catch and transmit a potentially fatal infection—and in so doing, take away the freedom of others?

In Four Essays on Liberty, Isaiah Berlin sums it up best. “Liberty for the wolves,” he wrote, “is death to the lambs.”

Rule #1: Lie about vaccine safety

RFK Jr. has falsely claimed that the measles vaccine, in addition to causing blindness and deafness, kills people every year, that the polio vaccine killed “many, many, many more people than it saved,” that the COVID vaccine was the deadliest vaccine ever made, and that the hepatitis B vaccine causes autism.

Rule #2: Lie about vaccine efficacy

On September 29, 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted a seven-minute video on X claiming that measles and pertussis deaths were eliminated by advances in sanitation and hygiene, not vaccines. Unfortunately, RFK Jr. failed to note that the pertussis vaccine, which was introduced in the 1940s, reduced the number of pertussis deaths from 9,000 per year to fewer than 10, and that the measles vaccine, which was introduced in the early 1960s, reduced the number of measles deaths from 500 to virtually 0.

Rule #3: Actively suppress studies showing that vaccines are safe and effective

In May 2025, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a study in its journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, showing that the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine during pregnancy and an RSV monoclonal antibody for babies reduced the incidence of hospitalization in children 0-2 months of age by more than 50%. RSV is a leading cause of hospitalization and deaths in children, accounting for about 50,000-80,000 hospitalizations and 100-300 deaths ever year.

Normally, the CDC embargoes copies of these high-impact studies the day before publication along with a press kit that includes talking points and other details. Press outlets may then request interviews from the authors or submit questions that are answered by the CDC. Never happened. RFK Jr. muzzled the CDC media outreach. Why didn’t RFK Jr. want the press and the public to know about the impact of the RSV vaccine? Probably for the same reason he doesn’t want the public to know about the value of any vaccine.

Recently, RFK Jr. took his suppression of studies one step further. The CDC wanted to publish a study about the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine this past year. Researchers found that between September and December 2025, healthy adults who received the COVID vaccine reduced their likelihood of urgent care visits by 50 percent and hospitalizations by 55 percent. RFK Jr.’s hand-picked interim director of the CDC, Jay Bhattacharya, delayed publication claiming that the methodology was flawed, even though the same methodology had been used to determine the efficacy of influenza vaccines in a study the CDC had published one week earlier. Indeed, the same methodology was used to determine COVID vaccine effectiveness in a study published in 2021 in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine and in other journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet. “This is definitely an escalation of this administration’s undermining of CDC science,” said Dr Fiona Havers, a 13-year veteran of the CDC and former senior adviser on vaccine policy. “The fact that they are now blocking this is extremely concerning.”

RFK Jr. was able to successfully implement Rule #3 because he could. This would never have happened if he was still shouting his anti-vaccine rhetoric and science denialism from the sidelines, as he had been doing for the past 20 years. Now, as Secretary of Health and Human Services—in the name of “radical transparency”—he can take his science denialism to the next level. And continue to put children in harm’s way.

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During the past 20 years, RFK Jr. has proposed many different causes for autism. When each claim is proven wrong, he simply suggests another one and moves on. RFK Jr. has variously claimed that the hepatitis B vaccine causes autism, that a preservative in vaccines causes autism, that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines cause autism, and that Tylenol taken during pregnancy or after circumcision causes autism. Those who listen to RFK Jr, who trust him, who believe that he has their best interests at heart, haven’t lessened their children’s risk of autism, they’ve only increased the risk of suffering or dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.

RFK Jr.’s latest attempt to mislead parents was to promote a new, can’t-miss autism treatment. On September 22, 2025, during a press conference attended by President Donald Trump, RFK Jr. said, “We have also identified an exciting therapy that may benefit large numbers of children who suffer from autism.” The magic medicine RFK Jr. was talking about was leucovorin, a derivative of vitamin B9 or folate. Dr. Marty Makary, Commissioner of the FDA, backed RFK Jr.’s claim, stating that “20, 40, or 50 percent of kids with autism” would likely benefit from the drug. “Given the extent of the current autism epidemic,” said Makary, “physicians should immediately have this treatment option available.” Sales of leucovorin skyrocketed, increasing by more than 70 percent.

On its face, the claim that many children with autism would benefit from folate didn’t add up. Folate helps cells function and keeps the brain healthy. Folate enters the brain with the help of a folate transporter called the cerebral folate receptor, which is a protein made by the gene FOLR1. Fewer than 50 children have been documented to have a defect in the FOLR1 gene. In other words, the cerebral folate receptor disorder is as rare as 1 in a million children. If 1 in 32 children are diagnosed with autism, it is reasonable to conclude that almost all will not have a defect in that gene.

It gets worse. Supporters of leucovorin point to a study that showed that the drug was effective and safe. On January 28, 2026, the journal that published that study retracted it because of “errors in results and concerns with the statistical analyses.” On March 10, 2026, the FDA backed away from its broad claims of efficacy of leucovorin stating that it would only work in that rare child who had a defect in the FOLR1 gene. For that reason, groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Psychiatric Association, the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, the Autism Science Foundation, and several major pediatric healthcare centers don’t recommend leucovorin as a treatment for autism. “The reason the AAP is not broadly recommending leucovorin is because we know that autistic children deserve the same level of evidence to support interventions as anyone else,” said Dr. Kristin Sohl. Once again, RFK Jr. was wrong. And, once again, he failed to apologize for misleading parents.

For many parents, autism can be financially burdensome and emotionally draining. Nonetheless, physicians who are still willing to prescribe leucovorin charge as much as $1,500 for an initial visit. There is nothing more sinister than people who offer false hope to those desperate to do something, anything to help their children. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to use children with autism as a prop to further his anti-vaccine agenda. For that, this opportunist and interloper should be roundly condemned.

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Meningococcus often occurs on college campuses. Activities that increase the risk of meningococcal infections include kissing, sharing beverages, sharing vapes, or living in shared housing; in other words, virtually all college students are at risk.

Meningococcus is similar to other bacterial infections like pneumococcus and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) in that all cause sepsis and meningitis, with one important difference. Meningococcus has a greater capacity to make endotoxin rapidly; children can be fine one minute and dead four hours later. For this reason, no bacterium causes greater panic in the community than meningococcus. CDC officials have noted that they can determine the incidence of meningococcal infections by simply reading local newspapers. About 1 in 10 people infected with meningococcus will die from the infection and 20 percent will be left with permanent disabilities such as deafness, seizures, limb amputations, and severe mental defects.

The Kent outbreak harkens back to a MenB outbreak at Princeton University that occurred between March 2013 and March 2014 when 8 students developed meningitis or sepsis. The difference between the Kent and Princeton outbreaks was the availability of a MenB vaccine. In 2013, although the MenB vaccine, Bexero, had been licensed in Canada, Australia, and Europe, it hadn’t yet been licensed in the United States. Nonetheless, the FDA allowed this unlicensed vaccine to be given to Princeton students under a “compassionate use” protocol. Between December 2013 and November 2014, in clinics run mostly by student volunteers, more than 98% of all undergraduate students safely received at least one dose of the two-dose vaccine, and 96% received both doses. A remarkable achievement. By the spring of 2015, the risk of meningococcal disease at Princeton was no greater than on other campuses. One student, in a parody of grade inflation at a rival institution, wore a T-shirt that read, “Would have been MenA at Harvard.”

On March 18, 2014, in the midst of the Princeton outbreak, Stephanie Ross, a 19-year-old student at Drexel University in Philadelphia, died of Men B from the same strain that had caused the outbreak in Princeton. Ross had been in contact with students at Princeton, which was only an hour away. The difference between the Princeton and Drexel cases was that Stephanie Ross was the only case of MenB at Drexel. Because no other students had apparently been infected, the CDC didn’t consider the Drexel case to be an outbreak. Therefore, the FDA didn’t offer the MenB vaccine to Drexel students under a “compassionate use” protocol. Parents, however, were scared that their children were still at risk. Many drove up to Canada—where the MenB vaccine was licensed—purchased the vaccine, and brought it back to Philadelphia.

Members of parent advocacy groups like Families Fighting Flu and Meningitis Angels represent children who have died of vaccine-preventable diseases. These parents all tell the same story. “I can’t believe this happened to me.” Until it happened to them. Then they bravely make it their life’s mission to warn other parents about the dangers of the disease and the value of vaccines.

Every year in the United States between 300 and 500 people are infected with meningococcus, half of those cases are caused by MenB. We shouldn’t wait until a disease is at our doorstep to vaccinate our teenagers before they enter college. Like the students at Kent, Princeton, and Drexel, we all suffer from this myth of invulnerability. That a disease will never happen to us. Until it does.

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On May 27, 2025, without input from any medical or scientific advisory group, RFK Jr. unilaterally declared that HHS would no longer recommend the COVID vaccine for healthy young children or pregnant women. This decision was made despite studies showing that about 2,000 children had been admitted to the hospital the previous year, that half were previously healthy, that 20% were admitted to the intensive care unit, and that most were unvaccinated. In addition, pregnant women are more likely to suffer severe COVID compared with women of the same age who aren’t pregnant. Under the leadership of RFK Jr., the United States became the first country to exclude pregnancy as a risk factor for severe COVID.

On June 9, 2025, RFK Jr. fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with people who, like him, had an anti-vaccine, anti-science bias.

On June 25, 2025, RFK Jr.’s ACIP voted against the use of thimerosal-containing influenza vaccine, even though scientific studies had shown that thimerosal at the level contained in vaccines was safe. This was the first of what were to be several anti-science votes by this ACIP.

On September 18, 2025, RFK Jr.’s ACIP recommended delaying the the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine until two months of age for children born to mothers who weren’t infected. This recommendation implied that the birth dose was less safe than the delayed dose, which wasn’t true, and will likely cause an increase in the number of children who later suffer cirrhosis and liver cancer.

On November 19, 2025, RFK Jr. changed the CDC website to imply that vaccines might cause autism, ignoring decades of evidence to the contrary.

On January 5, 2026, again behind closed doors and without input from scientific or medical experts, RFK Jr. unilaterally changed the childhood immunization schedule. The revised schedule removed three vaccines (influenza, rotavirus, and COVID) from the recommended list even though all three viruses continue to circulate and do harm. The new schedule also removed five other vaccines (RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and two meningococcal vaccines) from the recommended list stating that they should be reserved only for high-risk groups when in fact everyone was at some risk of severe disease.

As an anti-vaccine activist turned policy maker, RFK Jr.’s goal during the past year has been to make vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. In that, he has been enormously successful. During 2025 into early 2026, children in the United States have been hospitalized or died from measles, whooping cough, and influenza at rates that haven’t been seen for decades.

In response to this war against children, on July 7, 2025, six leading medical organizations brought a lawsuit against RFK Jr. and HHS charging that “decisions limiting access to vaccines were unscientific and harmful to the public”. Eight months later, on March 16, 2026, in a federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, judge Brian Murphy rendered his verdict:

“For now, the revised childhood vaccine schedule issued in January 2026 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which reduced the number of routine childhood immunizations without evidence, may not be implemented.”

“Secretary Kennedy’s hand-picked appointments to CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) were likely improper. Therefore, the committee may not meet or take new votes on vaccine policy changes.”

“All votes taken by the reconstituted ACIP are invalidated, which includes votes from last year that altered recommendations for COVID-19, flu, MMRV and hepatitis B vaccines.”

In other words, the ACIP, as reconstructed by RFK Jr., no longer exists and every decision made by this fake ACIP is now invalidated. We can now return to the recommended childhood vaccine schedule before RFK Jr. became Secretary of HHS. Although this has been a rough year for vaccines in this country, this was a great day for children. Maybe the worm has finally turned. Or, in the words of Jonathan Cohn at The Bulwark, “the brain worm has finally turned.”

Not surprisingly, appalled that the courts have restricted his anti-vaccine agenda, RFK Jr. has vowed to appeal. We will now hold our breath to see what happens next.

The Hib vaccine caused a 99% decrease in the incidence of Hib. Today, the CDC reports fewer than 50 cases of Hib per year in the United States, which makes a recent meeting in Florida hard to understand.

On December 12, 2025, Florida health officials hosted a workshop about the State Surgeon General’s plan to end school vaccine mandates for four vaccines, including the Hib vaccine. Doctors at the meeting were angry. “I want everyone to know how serious matters are,” said Dr. Eehab Kenawy, a Panama City pediatrician. “Just in the past six months, we had two patients in the ICU with Hib. One child unfortunately succumbed at 4 months of age. No vaccines. One month ago, I was on call, and another patient came into the ICU, a 2½-year-old, never vaccinated. Hib again. Abscesses in the brain, seizures, coma, intubated.”

Think about this for a moment. Two serious cases of Hib in one state over a six-month period? Something doesn’t add up. The annual incidence of Hib is estimated by the CDC to be fewer than 50 cases per year. The CDC also estimates that about 5 percent of Hib cases are fatal. Therefore, we would expect that every year in the entire United States about two children would die from Hib. Yet in one state over 6-month period one child died from Hib, and another was facing death. Here are three ways to explain these cases:

1) The children weren’t infected with Hib. Rather, they were infected with non-typable Haemophilus influenzae, which would not have been covered by the Hib vaccine and has been increasing since the Hib vaccine was first introduced. (I spoke with one of the physicians who attended the meeting, knew about these cases, and assured me that both children suffered from Hib.)

2) The children were born in a country that didn’t give the Hib vaccine and were exposed to the bacterium at an early age. (Both children were born in the United States.)

3) This was a statistical aberration and can be ignored.

4) The CDC has underestimated the current incidence of Hib disease in the United States in large part because Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has cut CDC surveillance and reporting of vaccine-preventable diseases.

The last explanation is the most plausible and most frightening. Immunization rates among U.S. children are clearly declining. As a consequence, the U.S. is experiencing greater number of cases and deaths from measles, influenza and whooping cough than has been seen in decades. Isn’t it possible that Hib infections and deaths are also increasing? We need to know exactly what’s going on. Otherwise, we can’t effectively counsel our patients and respond to outbreaks of preventable diseases.

The virus then spread to several other states; hundreds of children were infected. Still, RFK Jr. refused to recommend the measles vaccine saying that it was a “personal decision,” and that parents should do their own research to make an informed choice. Ironic, given that during his 20 years as an anti-vaccine activist, RFK Jr. had done much to misinform them.

Two weeks later, on April 3^rd, 2025, another child died from measles—this time an unvaccinated 8-year-old girl. Again, the nation’s #1 public health official refused to say the “V” word. By the end of 2025, more than 2,200 children had suffered from measles. In the first two months of 2026, 1,100 more children suffered. RFK Jr. still refused to talk about the critical importance of vaccination.

RFK Jr. wasn’t alone. Marty Makary, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), also said nothing. The difference between RFK Jr. and these other two public health officials is that RFK Jr. was a personal-injury lawyer; both Makary and Bhattacharya were doctors. Still neither were willing to clearly and definitively recommend the measles vaccine.

On February 26, 2026, one year after the first child had died from measles, Casey Means, RFK Jr.’s pick to be the United States Surgeon General, testified before a Senate confirmation hearing. Senator William Cassidy (R, LA) asked Means if she would encourage mothers to vaccinate their children with the measles vaccine, noting the large number of cases in the South. “I’m supportive of vaccination,” said Means. “I do believe that each patient, mother, parent needs to have a conversation about any medication they’re putting in their body or their children’s body.” Means was lobbying for the job of “America’s Top Doctor”; still, she just couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say that the measles vaccine was the only way to prevent this potentially deadly infection. She couldn’t say the “V” word.

Senator Cassidy, surprised by her answer, gave Means a second chance. “You’re the nation’s doctor,” said Cassidy. “Would you encourage [a mother] to have her child vaccinated!” “I’m not an individual’s doctor,” Means demurred. “And every individual needs to talk to their doctor before putting a medication in their body.” Means was playing to her audience of one. In RFK Jr.’s America, vaccines were a dirty word.

On March 5, 2026, about 13 months after the first child had died from measles, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya made the first public service announcement about the measles outbreaks. Bhattacharya, in addition to heading NIH, was now the interim director of the CDC. Would he say the “V” word?

“I want to describe how the CDC is responding to rising measles cases in the United States,” he began. “Our mission is straightforward, to protect the American people from infectious diseases and chronic diseases. To ground our scientific guidance in rigorous transparency and to serve as a credible source of information.” Still nothing about vaccines.

“Trust is the foundation of public health earned by openness, honesty and guidance to the best available evidence. As we work with partners across the country to contain measles, I can assure you we’re listening and we’re here to offer a wide range of tools to state and local health departments.” Still waiting.

“The CDC continues to surge resources to support your prevention and response efforts. We’re working closely with health officials throughout the country with regular coordination meetings and we stand ready to provide CDC technical staff, laboratory support, vaccines, and therapeutics upon request.” (Therapeutics for measles?) Still, no clear statement about the critical importance of vaccines.

“State partners are also engaging faith-based leaders to support education and vaccination outreach within their communities. There is no cure for measles, which is why prevention is so critical. The MMR vaccine remains the most reliable and effective way to prevent it.” And there it was. One minute and 13 seconds into the first public service announcement about the ongoing measles outbreaks in the United States, a leading public health official made a clear recommendation supporting measles vaccines. Bhattacharya didn’t stop there.

“Two doses are 97 percent effective at providing lifelong protection against measles and its complications. Vaccination protects not only individuals but entire communities.” Finally, a public health recommendation by a public health leader. A headline in the New York Times read, “CDC’s New Acting Director Draws Unexpected Praise From Agency Staff.”

We are now joyous that a public health official actually recommended the measles vaccine during a measles outbreak greater than anything we’ve seen in more than 30 years—ecstatic that a public health official finally stated the obvious. It’s hard to know whether we should praise Bhattacharya’s public service announcement or lament how low our expectations have fallen for public health officials.

We’ll start with the toilet seat, by which I assume he means the toilet seat cover, which is where the snorting normally takes place. Toilet seats are wrongly considered to be a place where people can be infected with sexually transmitted germs such as HIV, gonorrhea, syphilis or chlamydia. These pathogens require warm, moist surfaces; all will die almost instantly when exposed to the cold, hard surface of a toilet seat. RFK Jr. was right not to be concerned about them. Surprisingly, other items in the bathroom are more dangerous than toilet seats or toilet seat covers. For example:

• Faucets: More than 300 different types of bacteria can be found on faucet handles, far more than would be found on a toilet seat cover.

• Soap and Paper Towel dispensers: Refillable dispensers are often heavily contaminated with bacteria when replaced.

• Hand Blowers: Hand blowers take in air from the restroom and blow bacteria directly onto your hands. Levels of bacteria on hand blowers are 27 times greater than those found on paper towel dispensers.

• Money: I’m going to assume that RFK Jr. snorted his cocaine through a rolled-up dollar bill (or $100 bill). Money is highly absorbent and contains bacteria from tens of thousands of people who previously touched it. Of interest, one study found that 79% of paper currency in America contains traces of cocaine, more than any other country in the world.

In summary, RFK Jr. shouldn’t have been terribly scared of the toilet seat. But what about other germs? RFK Jr. and I were both born in the early 1950s. If his parents cared about him as mine did about me, he would have received the smallpox, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, and polio vaccines as a child. Neither RFK Jr. nor I need to worry about polio. Like most children born in the early 1950s, RFK Jr. probably suffered measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), and varicella (chickenpox). Surviving those infections provides lifelong protection. So, RFK Jr. and I don’t need to worry about them, either.

However, RFK Jr. and I should worry about vaccine-preventable diseases for which men in their 70s are at highest risk. For example, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes as many as 160,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 deaths every year in the United States, primarily in those over 65. Pneumonia caused by the bacterium pneumococcus causes 150,000 hospitalizations in the elderly with as many as 1 in 4 dying within a year of hospitalization. Influenza causes at least 470,000 hospitalizations and 28,000 deaths every year; those over 65 are disproportionally infected. Lastly, COVID caused about 270,000 hospitalizations and 32,000 deaths last year; again, the elderly suffered the most.

RFK Jr.’s successful snorting of cocaine off toilet seats doesn’t protect him against any of these vaccine-preventable diseases. Were he a responsible Secretary of Health and Human Services—and not a comic actor in a bad Saturday Night Live skit—RFK Jr. would use his considerable platform to urge all elderly Americans to vaccinate against RSV, pneumococcus, influenza, and COVID instead of reassuring us that if we can survive snorting cocaine off toilet seats, we have nothing to worry about.

RFK Jr. has done everything he can to discourage the use of influenza vaccine. In February 2025, within days of his confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), RFK Jr. canceled the CDC’s campaign to encourage influenza vaccination. Then, on January 7, 2026, he told a CBS News reporter that children might be “better off” if they didn’t get an influenza vaccine. His war against the influenza vaccine for children has been successful—289 children died last year from influenza and another 60 have died in January 2026. Virtually all were unvaccinated.

Similarly, RFK Jr. has waged a war on COVID vaccines. In 2021, when COVID vaccines were first available for children, RFK Jr. claimed that they were “the deadliest vaccines ever made.” In May 2025, three months after being sworn in as Secretary of HHS, RFK Jr. said that he was no longer recommending COVID vaccines for healthy children. RFK Jr.’s plan to discourage COVID vaccinations in children has also been successful. During this past year, roughly 7,000 children were hospitalized with COVID. About 20 percent of those hospitalized were admitted to the intensive care unit, half were previously healthy, virtually all were unvaccinated, and 152 died, most less than four years of age.

Because RFK Jr.’s campaigns against vaccines have been successful, children have suffered and died unnecessarily. This isn’t a good look for the Trump administration. RFK Jr. knows that he must do something to hide these heartbreaking outcomes. His solution can be found in the study that was just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Investigators examined 82 CDC databases that had been updated monthly before RFK Jr. became head of HHS. They found that 44 of the 82 databases continued to be updated monthly whereas 38 had unexplained pauses. None of the 44 databases that were updated concerned vaccines. Among the 38 databases that had unexplained pauses, 33 (87%) reported information about respiratory diseases like influenza and COVID that included statistics on hospitalizations and emergency department visits.

RFK Jr.’s plan is simple. If the public doesn’t know the actual number of hospitalizations and deaths caused by influenza and COVID, they can continue to withhold vaccines with impunity. And if state and local health departments don’t know about the areas of greatest risk for outbreaks, they won’t launch immunization clinics in regions with low vaccination rates. RFK Jr.’s “see no evil” approach is working. An increasing number of parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children.

Until Congress stands up to the anti-vaccine activist who currently heads our nation’s number one public health agency, outbreaks will continue and children will suffer and die needlessly. Worse, because of recent changes at the CDC, we might have no idea just how bad things really are.

In September 2024, Moderna launched its vaccine trial with 40,700 subjects, half of whom received the mRNA flu vaccine and the other half standard-dose vaccine. The mRNA vaccine was 27% more effective at preventing symptomatic cases of flu and 49% more effective against hospitalization than the standard-dose flu vaccine. In August 2025, the FDA agreed with the trial design and encouraged the company to apply for licensure based on the results, especially since Moderna had now performed an additional study in 2,200 people over 65 showing that the mRNA flu vaccine induced higher levels of protective antibodies than the high-dose flu vaccine.

On February 3, 2026, despite a previous written understanding, the FDA refused to review Moderna’s application for licensure of its mRNA influenza vaccine. The decision was made by Vinay Prasad, who now heads the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Moderna wrote that the failure to review the application was “inconsistent with previous written communications from CBER to Moderna.” Agency officials later revealed that Prasad had overruled his FDA staff. Indeed, David Kaslow, the head of the vaccine office, wrote a detailed memo explaining why the FDA should review Moderna’s application.

Moderna’s mRNA influenza vaccine appears to be an improvement on both the standard-dose vaccine given to people less than 65 and the high-dose flu vaccine given to people over 65. Nonetheless, because of RFK Jr.’s pick to head an important division in the FDA, Americans might be deprived of an influenza vaccine that appears to be better than the ones we have. On February 11, 2026, a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) headline read: “Vinay Prasad’s Vaccine Kill Shot: Does the White House Know the Harm He’s Doing to Public Health?” “This is arbitrary government at its worst.”

Vinay Prasad’s failure to honor a previous agreement with Moderna appears to be an extension of RFK Jr.’s war against mRNA vaccines. In 2021, RFK Jr. said that the mRNA COVID vaccines were the “deadliest vaccines in history.” In August 2025, RFK Jr. withdrew $500 million to fund research that included an mRNA bird flu vaccine. More recently, Robert Malone, RFK Jr.’s hand-picked Vice Chairman of the CDC vaccine advisory committee, has called for the removal of mRNA COVID vaccines from the market.

Weaponizing the FDA to make arbitrary, unsupportable decisions will only discourage companies from pursuing newer, better vaccines. Which, sadly, appears to be the goal.

Addendum: This substack was posted on February 17, 2026. The next day, Vinay Prasad changed course and agreed to review Moderna’s application for licensure of its mRNA influenza vaccine.

On June 25, 2025, RFK Jr. cut off U.S. funding to the Global Alliance Vaccine Initiative (GAVI). In a pre-recorded interview sent to GAVI officials, RFK Jr. said, “In its zeal to promote universal vaccination, it has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety.” To prove it, RFK Jr. held up a methodologically flawed study done in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, that showed an increase in female mortality following receipt of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine. Other studies, including a study done by these same investigators, failed to reproduce this finding. In other words, based on a flawed, irreproducible study, RFK Jr. put thousands of children at risk. “Of all the global health programs that have been cut,” said Dr. Atul Gawande, who has overseen global health for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), “this will likely mean more deaths than any other.”

Apparently, RFK Jr.’s war against the world’s children isn’t over.

On January 28, 2026, RFK Jr. said that he would cancel all future support for GAVI until they phased out the use of vaccines containing the ethyl-mercury preservative, thimerosal. Preservatives, which have been used in vaccines since the 1930s, are contained in multi-dose vials to prevent bacterial contamination. Ten studies have shown that children who received thimerosal-containing vaccines were not at greater risk of neurodevelopmental problems, including autism, than those who received thimerosal-free vaccines. Again, RFK Jr. has raised a false flag refuted by scientific studies to deny children vaccines that will save their lives.

RFK Jr.’s request to GAVI to remove thimerosal from all childhood vaccines—which would mean eliminating multi-dose vials—isn’t trivial. Multi-dose vials are particularly important for resource-poor countries because they cost less and require simpler cold storage when refrigerated space is limited. RFK Jr.’s request would eliminate the $300 million requested by the Biden administration for GAVI and approved by Congress in 2024 as well as any future funding. About 14 percent of GAVI’s portfolio consists of vaccines that contain thimerosal.

RFK Jr.’s withdrawal of support for GAVI, apart from not being science-based, is a callous, cruel move that will likely result in the unnecessary deaths of children. We don’t know the names of those children now, but they have names.

On March 24, 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate published, “The Disinformation Dozen,” which described the 12 people or groups that had provided the most disinformation about vaccines. Virtually all were funded by the wellness industry, which—with its array of vitamins, supplements, and other promised therapies—has for decades served as a counter to mainstream medicine and science. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that when RFK Jr. became Secretary of Health and Human Services, he would resist any attempts to regulate this industry. “Supplements are a $70 billion industry,” wrote the Wall Street Journal, “and RFK Jr. is good for business.” Jonathan Emord, general counsel for the Alliance for Natural Health, saw the appointment of RFK Jr. to head Health and Human Services as a chance to move the wellness industry to the center of public health. “The greatest opportunity of our lifetimes is before us,” he said.

On June 6, 2025, RFK Jr. said that he will “end the war against alternative medicine at the FDA.” Specifically, he wanted to open the door for unregulated, often bogus, and potentially deadly treatments for a variety of chronic problems, focusing on chelation, stem cells, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). The FDA regulates vaccines, drugs, biologicals, and gene therapies among other treatments and preventives. If these products work and are safe, then companies receive a license to sell them. If they don’t work or are unsafe, then companies don’t receive a license. RFK Jr. now wants to limit the FDA’s ability to restrict therapies that are potentially dangerous. For example:

Stem cells. Stem cells divide to become a variety of different cell types that can support the function of many different organs. Usually, they are harvested from the bone marrow, manipulated in the lab, and implanted back into the patient. Stem cells have been used to successfully treat leukemia, lymphoma, neuroblastoma, and multiple myeloma. Sadly, wellness centers are offering stem cells that are drawn from the patient’s body and injected back without manipulation that are claimed to treat autism and Parkinson’s disease, all without evidence. In 2021, the FDA warned the public about these wellness communities.

Chelation. Chelation is the process by which certain chemicals are administered intravenously to remove heavy metals like mercury or lead from the body after massive exposure. The FDA has approved chelation therapy in these situations but only by prescription and only under the supervision of a doctor. But, again, the wellness community has stepped in with their false claims of chelation as a cure for autism, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, high blood pressure, and Parkinson’s disease, all without proof. The FDA has warned that chelation to treat non-approved indications “can lead to serious and life-threatening outcomes.” Indeed, on August 23, 2005, a 5-year-old boy named Tariq Nadama died from a heart attack following chelation therapy.

Hyperbaric oxygen. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), another favorite of the wellness community, is an FDA approved treatment for burns, radiation injury, certain wounds, and decompression sickness encountered by divers. The wellness industry also offers HBOT for variety of unapproved treatments, including autism, arguing that children just need more oxygen to the brain. Although HBOT has never been shown to treat autism, according to RFK Jr., that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that people believe that it works. In January 2025, a 5-year-old boy was killed in an HBOT chamber in a wellness center in Michigan after static electricity sparked a flash fire inside the chamber. A few months later, in May 2025, RFK Jr. joined a wellness influencer and supplement seller named Gary Brecka for an HBOT treatment as well as some intravenous nutrient drips. When they finished, RFK Jr. joined Brecka for a podcast decrying the undue influence of Big Pharma.

On January 13, 2026, under pressure from RFK Jr., the FDA has now deleted its warnings about the harm of bogus autism therapies. The FDA webpage previously titled “Be Aware of Potentially Dangerous Products and Therapies that Claim to Treat Autism” is now defunct. Kaiser Family Foundation Health News recently reported that Kennedy and his allies have made millions promoting unproven wellness products—a $6.3 trillion worldwide industry. RFK Jr. is not about to let the FDA restrict the industry that supports him and his MAHA movement. He’s not going to bite the hand that feeds him.

Interviewer: “Do you think that vaccines are appropriately studied for safety?”

Milhoan: “No. They haven’t been. They’ve only been studied for efficacy.”

What is Dr. Milhoan talking about?

Prior to licensure, vaccines are tested in prospective placebo-controlled trials involving tens of thousands of subjects to determine safety and efficacy. These studies are designed to find relatively uncommon, but not rare, safety problems. The Covid-19 vaccines are a perfect example of how this works. In February 2021, Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine was submitted to the FDA for authorization. At that point, the vaccine had been tested in a prospective, placebo-controlled trial of 40,000 adults. It appeared to be free of serious safety problems. Once authorized, however, and given to about 19 million people, the vaccine was found to cause clotting, including clotting in the brain. The problem was extremely rare, affecting about 1 in 250,00 people, but it was real and quickly picked up in post-authorization surveillance programs like the Vaccine Safety DataLink, which are designed to find safety problems as rare as 1 in 1 million. Post-marketing surveillance safety systems are in place for all licensed and authorized vaccines.

Milhoan: “I think also, as you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then. Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different.”

The incidence of polio in the United States skyrocketed in the United States in the 1950s when as many as 20,000 children were paralyzed by the virus. Why then? Why in the 1950s? In the 1920s and 1930s, when sanitation in the United States was poor, polio was a common disease, typically infecting babies in the first year of life at the same time they were receiving passively transferred antibodies from their mother through the placenta. Those passively transferred antibodies were often, but not always, protective against paralytic polio. (Hence the term “infantile paralysis”.) When sanitation improved, children were exposed to polio when they were older, after maternal antibodies had worn off. Polio became a more common disease of the 5–9-year-old, not a rarer disease in infancy. In other words, better sanitation increased the incidence of polio, the opposite of what Milhoan had claimed.

Also, if polio immunization rates decline, as happened in 2022 when a 27-year-old man in Rockland County, New York, was paralyzed by polio, the disease will come back. The incidence of paralysis caused by the strain that infected the Rockland County man is 1 in 2000. In other words, he was the tip of a much bigger iceberg of people who were infected, but not paralyzed, by the virus. Indeed, the poliovirus strain that caused this man’s infection was found in the wastewater of Rockland County as well as surrounding counties. And it might also be found in the wastewater in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles. This virus, which is a derivative of the oral polio vaccine, is the most common cause of polio worldwide. Why would you ever take the risk of not vaccinating against a virus that is still around? Polio is not a disease you want to see come back.

Milhoan: “Many of [the] risks of measles without having a vaccine, was in the 1960s. We take care of children much differently now. Our ability to have pediatric hospitals, children’s hospitals, pediatric ICU’s. What we’re going to have [now] is a real-world experience of when unvaccinated people get measles. What is the new incidence of hospitalization? What’s the incidence of death?”

The first measles vaccine was available in 1963. Before that, every year about 48,000 children would be hospitalized with measles and 500 would die. Hospitalization was caused by severe measles pneumonia or severe dehydration. Our ability to take care of pneumonia with oxygen or ventilation, or dehydration with intravenous fluids, has not changed substantially since that time. The death rate from measles in 1963 was 1-3 per 1,000 cases. This past year in the United States, three people have died among the roughly 2,000 reported cases—no different than mortality rates 60 years ago. Again, what is Milhoan talking about?

Interviewer: “So where do you see the line for individual autonomy verses you are infringing on my child’s safety by the choice you are making?”

Milhoan: “What if the child gets a measles vaccine to protect your immunocompromised child and gets a negative consequence from that? Wasn’t that your child causing that child to be harmed?”

Milhoan is arguing that any parent could reasonably decide not to get a measles vaccine because they believe that the risks of the vaccine outweigh the benefits. Measles virus causes pneumonia, dehydration, and encephalitis that can result in blindness and deafness. Measles vaccine doesn’t cause any of those problems. So, why would any parent reasonably choose not to get the vaccine? Then Milhoan takes his argument one step further, saying that if a parent’s choice not to get a vaccine puts another child at risk, even a child who is immune compromised, that’s a reasonable, even laudable, decision.

Milhoan: “It’s been very important to us, the members of the committee, is that what we were doing is returning individual autonomy to the first order, not public health, but individual autonomy to the first order.”

And there it is. Individual freedom trumps public health. That’s why, according to Milhoan, the individual has a right to make poorly informed decisions that put not only their child, but other children, at risk. Public health means caring about your neighbor, individual freedom means not caring. “The likely increases in childhood illness and death appear to be worth the price of freedom to choose whether to vaccinate,” writes bioethicist Art Caplan. It’s not just bad policy, it’s “bad ethics.”

Interviewer: “You’re probably going to be getting a lot of reports and a lot of files and a lot of data that’s been established. Things that we’ve looked at and pursued and investigated.

Milhoan: “That’s not science. That’s not necessarily science. Science is what I observe.”

I have no idea what this means.

Milhoan: “If you allow flexibility on certain vaccines, you actually then enhance uptake in other ones that are really crucial like MMR and polio and things like that.”

Vaccine rates in the United States are eroding. During the past year, we’ve seen an outbreak of measles greater than anything we have seen in more than three decades, child deaths from influenza greater than anything seen since the last influenza pandemic, cases of tetanus greater than anything we have seen in the past 10 years, and children dying from whooping cough in states that hadn’t experience deaths from whooping cough in years. Milhoan is arguing that if we loosen vaccine recommendations, making vaccines more optional, then vaccine rates will increase. On what planet does he imagine this happening. Loosening vaccine recommendations—by making vaccines appear to be less necessary—will only decrease vaccine rates.

Milhoan: “I’ve never seen a case of congenital rubella affecting a child in my career.”

Milhoan is implying that congenital rubella syndrome is rare in the United States. Which is true. If rubella infections are rare in the United States, then, at least according to Milhoan, it is reasonable not to get a rubella vaccine. But the disease is rare in the U.S. because of the rubella vaccine. Before the rubella vaccine, about 20,000 children in the United States whose mothers were infected with rubella virus in the first trimester delivered children who were blind or deaf or had heart defects. The vaccine virtually eliminated rubella virus from the United States by 2005.

But rubella is common in the world. Every year, about 32,000 babies suffer congenital rubella syndrome. And international travel is common. So, it is likely that people who are infected with rubella enter this country all the time. This is also true for measles virus. The measles vaccine eliminated measles from this country in 2000. But people infected with measles still entered the country every year. Fortunately, in 2000, enough people were vaccinated against measles so that the virus didn’t spread. The same is now true for rubella. But lower immunization rates and rubella will be back.

We stopped giving the smallpox vaccine routinely in 1972 because smallpox had been eliminated from the face of the earth. Smallpox was no longer a threat. But measles and rubella and polio viruses are still circulating. If we let our guard down, then they will come roaring back, which is exactly what happened with measles this past year.

At the end of the podcast, the host, Brinda Adhikari, made a final plea.

Adhikari: “I also ask that you hold space for those moms who are really worried about infectious disease and are really worried about them making a comeback should uptake of these vaccines go crashing down. To hold space for all of that because I think that is what I am entrusting in my government [to] not hurt me and look out for me in some way. So, I just ask you hold space for all those types of voices. Will you do that for me?”

More than 90 percent of children in the United States are immunized. Most parents, independent of political affiliation, support vaccines and school entry requirements. Adhikari recognizes that the CDC vaccine advisory committee, now headed by Dr. Milhoan, is heavily weighted toward anti-vaccine advisors. She is asking that the vast majority of people in this country who support vaccines can also have a voice on that committee. The most amazing aspect of Adhikari’s plea is that she felt the need to make it.

Link to companion video

As promised, on September 22, 2025, President Donald Trump stepped to the microphone before a packed press corps. Standing behind him were Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Marty Makary, the Commissioner of the FDA, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Everyone assumed that President Trump would indict yet another vaccine or vaccine component as a cause of autism. But they were wrong.

“Hello everyone,” Trump began. “I’ve been waiting for this meeting for 20 years.” Then, like a game show host, Trump made The Big Reveal. “Tylenol during pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism,” he said. “So, taking Tylenol is not good.” Mothers, according to Trump, needed “to tough it out” if they had fever. Trump then turned the podium over to RFK Jr, who said, “Today, the FDA will issue a physician’s notice about the risk of acetaminophen (the generic name for Tylenol) during pregnancy and begin the process to initiate a safety label change.”

And there it was. Tylenol caused autism. This was not a trivial recommendation. Tylenol is one of the most widely taken drugs during pregnancy, used by roughly half of all pregnant women worldwide. But now, according to RFK Jr. and President Trump, to eliminate autism, all we needed to do was to stop taking Tylenol during pregnancy. All women needed to do was “tough it out.”

Unfortunately, as had been true for all of RFK Jr.’s other bogus claims about the causes of autism, this one didn’t make sense.

First, the timeline didn’t add up. Tylenol entered the United States market in 1955. With increased use, a rise in autism should have occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, not in the 1990s. The rise in the incidence of autism in the 1990s was caused in large part by a broadening of the definition of the disorder and increased awareness, not Tylenol use.

Second, RFK Jr. had ignored two critical studies. One study was performed by a group of Swedish investigators who followed every child born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019—2.5 million children in all. The study evaluated 186,000 children exposed to Tylenol during pregnancy and compared them with their siblings who weren’t exposed. This was the single best and largest study ever performed on the subject. By comparing children exposed to Tylenol during pregnancy with siblings who had not been exposed to the drug, the researchers controlled for maternal health, socioeconomic background, and genetics. Same parents, same households, same genes. The authors concluded, “Acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children’s risk of autism.” Another study of 200,000 children in Japan, which also included sibling controls, found no link between acetaminophen use and autism.

Recently, on January 16, 2026, a study was published in the journal, Lancet, that put the final nail in the Tylenol-causes-autism coffin. Researchers evaluated 17 studies that had used sibling controls finding that Tylenol use during pregnancy did not increase the risk of autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder or intellectual disabilities.

Case closed.

So, where’s the follow-up press conference where President Trump reassures the public that he and Secretary Kennedy were wrong about Tylenol? The one where they say that they were wrong to blame mothers for their children’s autism. RFK Jr. talks endlessly about restoring trust in public health while at the same time promoting one false claim after another. Always without apology, and always putting us at greater risk.

Kennedy claimed that the Cochrane Collaboration, a U.K.-based health research association, had reviewed the subject and found “no evidence that that the flu vaccine prevents serious disease or that it prevents hospitalizations or deaths in children.” Kennedy failed to note the serious flaw in Cochrane’s review. Specifically, that they ignored the many observational studies that are the single best way to determine real-world vaccine effectiveness.

Recent studies of influenza vaccine in children directly contradict Kennedy’s claims. For example, a U.S. study done during the 2023-2024 season found that the influenza vaccine was 52-61 percent effective in preventing hospitalizations in children. Similarly, a U.S. study done during the 2024-2025 influenza season found that the vaccine was 63-78 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations in children. Finally, a U.S. study performed during the 2025-2026 influenza season found that the vaccine was 67 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations in children.

We are currently in the midst of an influenza season that has caused about 11 million illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths, with a few more months of winter left to go. Nonetheless, our Secretary of Health and Human Services has chosen this moment to tell us that children might be “better off” if they didn’t get an influenza vaccine that has been proven to be safe and effective. When will someone in power finally stand up for the health of children in this country? When will they insist that this dangerously irresponsible man should step down as our nation’s leading public health official?

In 2010, a documentary about the inadequacies of public school education in the United States debuted. It was called “Waiting for Superman.” The narrator was Geoffrey Canada, who recounted his journey as an educator and how, as a child living in reduced circumstances, he was waiting for Superman to come save him. Later, he was devastated to learn that Superman was a fictional character and that “there was no one coming with enough power to save us.” That’s how I feel about the U.S. Congress. As a child, I believed that Congress was a powerful force that would protect us. However, like Geoffrey Canada, I, too, have been disheartened to learn that Congress, also, appears to be a fictional character.

In the meantime, while we’re waiting for Superman, the best we can do is ignore RFK Jr. and his science-resistant, anti-vaccine recommendations. It’s too bad that when he said, “I don’t think people should take medical advice from me,” he didn’t mean it. Yet another in his long list of lies.

RFK Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, will soon conduct his own Tuskegee experiment. He has chosen the resource-poor nation of Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, to do it. Guinea-Bissau is currently overwhelmed by hepatitis B virus. About 18 percent of the population is infected. The World Health Organization (WHO) strongly recommends that all children in all countries receive a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine to prevent mother-to-child transmission. The United States implemented the birth dose in 1991, eventually eliminating tens of thousands of cases of hepatitis B virus in children less than 10 years of age. Guinea-Bissau, on the other hand, has struggled to implement the WHO recommendation, deferring the first dose to 6 weeks of age. Consequently, about 11 percent of children less than 18 months of age in Guinea-Bissau are infected with hepatitis B virus. These children have a 90 percent chance of developing cirrhosis (chronic liver disease) or liver cancer later in life. Realizing the problem, Guinea-Bissau has decided to launch a universal birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine for all infants in 2027.

RFK Jr. sees this one-year delay in implementation of the much-needed hepatitis B birth dose as a “window of opportunity” to test his theory that the vaccine causes long-term neurological problems even though more than 30 years of experience in the United States has disproved his claims.

Kennedy recently funded a $1.6 million, 14,000-person study in Guinea-Bissau set to begin in early 2026. Investigators will divide 14,000 newborns into two groups. One group will receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, as recommended by the WHO. The other group won’t receive the vaccine until 6 weeks of age, a continuation of the woefully substandard care that has put so many children in Guinea-Bissau at risk. Because it is unethical and cruel, this study could never be performed in the United States.

In addition to exposing children needlessly to a potentially fatal infection, RFK Jr. has manipulated the study to support his unsupportable, science-resistant beliefs about harms caused by the hepatitis B vaccine:

• The study will not be examining the efficacy of early or late vaccination, as it is clear that there is no value in delaying a hepatitis B vaccine, especially in a child whose mother is infected. RFK Jr. would prefer not to know that he is exposing children to unnecessary risk.

• The study will be conducted over 5 years. Children who are infected with hepatitis B virus at birth don’t develop chronic liver disease for decades. Therefore, RFK Jr. is unlikely to know about how much harm his “study” has done during the 5-year period.

• The study is single-blinded. This means that investigators will know whether children received a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine, but the parents won’t know. This allows for investigator bias, where the investigator might find vague neurodevelopmental problems in the birth-dose group but not the 6-week group.

• RFK Jr. bypassed the standard bidding process so that he could choose his own investigators. He picked Peter Aaby and Christine Benn. Benn has several ties to the anti-vaccine movement in the United States. In 2018, Aaby and Been published a study claiming that the DTP vaccine had caused the premature deaths of young girls in Guinea-Bissau. In a subsequent paper, they recanted their findings.

• It is unlikely that parents will be asked to sign a consent form outlining the real risks of being in the 6-week vaccine group. As this study is funded by the American taxpayer through money provided by the CDC, the U.S. Congress should insist on seeing the details of the study, including the consent form.

In the next few months, as many as 7,000 children born in a country with a high-risk of hepatitis B infection early in life will be denied a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine. Many of these children will have shortened, difficult lives as a result. Who will step forward to protect these children whom RFK Jr. considers expendable? When, pray tell, will someone in power stand up to this man. But we remain silent, much as we did during the Tuskegee experiment when we considered African American sharecroppers in rural Alabama expendable. Now it’s children in a resource-poor country. To quote W. H. Auden’s Shield of Achilles, “They were small and could not hope for help, and no help came.”

First off, what problem are President Trump and RFK Jr. trying to solve by giving fewer vaccines? Since 2015, Donald Trump has argued that children get too many vaccines. Similarly, RFK Jr., believes that too many vaccines are overwhelming, weakening or perturbing our immune systems. Kennedy frequently points out that as a child he only got a couple of vaccines. And he’s fine. But a closer look tells a different story. It’s not the number of vaccines that’s important, it’s the number of immunological components in vaccines that counts.

RFK Jr. and I have one thing in common; we were both born in the early 1950s. At that time, we received the smallpox and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccines. The smallpox vaccine contained about 200 viral proteins, each of which induced an immune response. The diphtheria and tetanus vaccines each contained one bacterial protein (inactivated toxins called toxoids). The pertussis vaccine was a different story. The pertussis vaccine, which was a whole, killed bacterial vaccine, contained about 3,000 different bacterial proteins, each of which induced an immune response. In other words, RFK Jr. and I each received about 3,200 separate challenges to our immune system in the form of viral and bacterial proteins. Due to advances in recombinant DNA technology, protein chemistry, and adjuvants, the 18 vaccines given to children today contain only about 180 separate immunologic challenges. In other words, RFK Jr. and I managed a greater challenge to our immune systems with the two vaccines that we received in the early 1950s than in the 18 vaccines that children receive today.

Some anti-vaccine activists have argued that Denmark has better longevity, lower infant mortality, and better health because they give fewer vaccines. Specifically, Denmark doesn’t give vaccines to prevent rotavirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza, varicella, hepatitis A, meningococcus, and Covid-19. Denmark is indeed healthier than the United States. But this has nothing to do with how many vaccines children receive and everything to do with a better healthcare system and a more homogenous, smaller population. In other words, we aren’t Denmark: 1) Denmark has a population of about 6 million people, roughly three-fourths the population of New York City. 2) The U.S. healthcare system is largely private, market-driven, and expensive, leaving about 10 percent of the population uninsured, which has resulted in limited or delayed care. Denmark, on the other hand, has a universal, tax-funded system emphasizing free access. 3) Denmark heavily subsidizes childcare while the U.S. has no federally subsidized childcare system. 4) The US childhood obesity rate is roughly 3-4 times higher than Denmark. 5) The U.S. has roughly twice the incidence of diabetes compared with Denmark. 6) The child poverty rate in Denmark is 4 percent; in the US it’s 20 percent.

Although Denmark’s healthcare system far exceeds that in the United States, RFK Jr. and Donald Trump have ignored one important fact. Independent of the level of hygiene in the home, sanitation in the country, general health of the population, or access to a healthcare, certain diseases, for instance rotavirus, RSV, influenza, and Covid-19, will infect virtually all children by 10 years of age. Every year, about 1,200 children in Denmark are hospitalized with severe dehydration caused by rotavirus infection. And every year, more than 2,800 children in Denmark, mostly less than 6 months of age, are hospitalized with pneumonia caused by RSV. Accounting for differences in size of the countries, these figures are virtually identical to those found in the U.S. before vaccination. In the United States, a routine rotavirus vaccine recommendation in 2006 has virtually eliminated the 70,000 hospitalizations caused by rotavirus every year. During the past year, routine recommendations for a maternal RSV vaccine and an RSV-specific monoclonal antibody has reduced the 60,000 to 80,000 RSV-associated hospitalizations in infants less than 7 months of age by about 50 percent.

Given the impact of these vaccines, the better question is why doesn’t Denmark emulate our vaccine program, not the other way around.