This editorial was originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and was distributed by The Associated Press.Â
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The single most important achievement of President Donald Trump’s first term was the lightning-fast development of COVID vaccines by the end of 2020. By some estimates, those vaccines developed under Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed†saved between 14 million and 19 million lives worldwide in their first year of use alone. While it’s true that the irresponsible mixed messaging Trump himself sent to his supporters (then and now) regarding the efficacy of the vaccines and of mainstream medicine generally has likely cost lives, the mortality score undoubtedly still lands in his favor.
Why, then, does Trump risk reversing that historic achievement by refusing to rein in a Health and Human Services secretary whose policies and rhetoric couldn’t be more dangerous if he was trying to kill Americans?
We’re not suggesting that’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s goal — only that it’s the eventual, inevitable outcome of allowing this anti-vaccination zealot to continue basing federal health policy on radical fringe beliefs that are anathema to mainstream medicine.
The latest and most ironic example of Kennedy’s single-minded determination to undo generations of vaccine advancement is his decision to cancel almost $500 million in federal funding for the development of vaccines using mRNA technology.
That process — which uses the body’s own cells to spur the production of antibodies instead of using dead or weakened specimens of the virus in question — was instrumental in the development of the COVID vaccines during Trump’s first term. Those with the kind of medical and scientific expertise Kennedy lacks say it’s among the most promising methods to address potential future pandemics.
Yet Kennedy, leaning as usual on conspiracists and quacks instead of qualified experts, has effectively declared the entire mRNA field of study to be inefficient, ineffective and even potentially dangerous. Mainstream medical entities across the board say there is no evidence of this outside the cherry-picked anecdotal data of isolated problems that any medical advancement will necessarily include.
This is consistent with Kennedy’s worldview, which includes his bizarre assertion, in 2021, that the original COVID vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.†In Kennedy’s upside-down medical universe, those with medical expertise who adhere to the tried-and-true scientific method to advance medicine are bad actors in cahoots with the pharmaceuticals, while conspiracy-mongers and anti-science cranks are the heroes of the story.
This is why Kennedy continues to disparage the importance of measles vaccination even as the once-eradicated disease is making a comeback in parts of the U.S. due to deeply misguided anti-vaccination beliefs.
It’s why Kennedy summarily removed all 17 expert members of The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices and replaced them with new members that include known anti-vaccination activists or skeptics.
It’s why Kennedy unilaterally revoked COVID vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women, prompting legal action from mainstream medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine — organizations that, unlike Kennedy and his anti-vax groupies, actually know what they’re talking about on these issues.
It’s why, in May, in a precursor to his most recent cuts, Kennedy canceled an almost $600 million contract with Moderna to develop a bird flu vaccine.
It cannot be stated strongly enough that Kennedy’s slash-and-burn tactics against the future of vaccination don’t represent one side of a valid medical debate; they represent unproven, anti-science fringe assertions that have been denounced as dangerous by the American Medical Association and virtually every other mainstream medical entity.
Kennedy’s policies threaten to leave America wide open and powerless against the next deadly pandemic.
And he’s doing so in direct defiance of the promises he made during his Senate confirmation hearings not to weaponize the federal government on behalf of his anti-vax quackery. Do the senators who confirmed Kennedy have any thoughts at all on being lied to in a way that potentially threatens the very lives of their own constituents?
And does Trump care so little about his own legacy as to let this go on until Americans start literally dying for RFK’s warped beliefs?
