Robert F. Kennedy is set to have significant influence and oversight over public health and science if given a place in Donald Trump's administration, as the president-elect has promised.
An outspoken opponent of Big Pharma and Big Food, Kennedy has threatened to clear out entire departments of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration if appointed, saying he "can get the corruption out of the agencies."
Kennedy has also publicly shared misleading and false claims about vaccine safety. However, in a post-election interview on MSNBC, Kennedy denied ever being "anti-vaccine."
During the interview on November 6, Vaughn Hillyard asked Kennedy "Are there any specific vaccines that you would seek to take off the market?
Kennedy replied: "I'm not going to take away anybody's vaccines. I've never been anti-vaccine."
"If vaccines are working for somebody, I'm not going to take them away."
Kennedy went on to say that "people ought to have choice and ought to be informed by the best information, so I'm going to make sure that scientific safety studies and efficacies are out there and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them."
This comment hinted that accurate information about the safety of medications, such as vaccines, may be unavailable. Kennedy later said, "I want the best science for every vaccine."
Newsweek reached out to a media representative for Kennedy via email for comment.
It is not the first time Kennedy has said he's not "anti-vaccine." His claim in the MSNBC interview asserts that it's a position he has never held; however, multiple statements from his political career show otherwise.
In July 2023, speaking to podcast host Lex Fridman, Kennedy was asked if any vaccines were "good." He replied, "I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they're causing," but then said, "There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective."
Kennedy then shared comments debunked by FactCheck.org and others about the contaminated presence of the SV40 DNA sequences in some polio vaccines causing cancer.
In an interview that same month with Fox News host Jesse Watters, Kennedy said, "I do believe that autism comes from vaccines," another false claim.
"Most of the things people believe about my opinions about vaccines are wrong, Kennedy said.
"You know, all I have said about vaccines [is] we should have good science. We should have the same kind of testing, placebo-controlled trials.
"Vaccines are exempt from placebo-controlled trials. There's no way that anybody can tell the risk by all those products or the relative benefits of all those products before they are mandated, and we should have that kind of testing."
Kennedy's claim that vaccines are exempt from placebo-controlled trials is also misleading.
As reported in a 2023 debunk of Kennedy's Watters interview by The Dispatch, placebo trials are a standard feature of the third phase of clinical trials for new vaccines. While some previously authorized vaccines do not undergo placebo trials, this does not mean vaccines are exempt, as Kennedy claimed.
English (US) ·