Vaccine expert Paul Offit is 'shocked' by RFK Jr.'s nomination to oversee US health

PHILADELPHIA — Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said he was “shocked” by President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of anti-vaccine activist and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

Calling Kennedy an “agent of chaos in the vaccination world,” Offit asserted that under Kennedy, a vaccine denier, “children could suffer that chaos.”

Trump announced Kennedy’s selection last week. The move follows Kennedy’s decision in August to endorse Trump and withdraw his own independent candidacy in key states, including Pennsylvania.

“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump said of Kennedy at an October rally in New York. “I’m going to let him go wild on food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines.”

For years, Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist, has said that vaccines cause autism, a falsehood that has been disproven multiple times by dozens of scientists around the world.

“RFK Jr. is a dangerous man,” Offit said. “This decision is completely and utterly depressing.”

Offit and Kennedy connected 20 years ago when Kennedy called to ask whether thimerosal, a compound safely used as a preservative in vaccines, caused cancer.

“I assured him it was untrue — that it had been removed from all vaccines by 2001,” said Offit, coinventor of the rotavirus vaccine, which attacks the virus that can lead to fatal diarrhea in children.

But Kennedy disregarded Offit’s expertise, and has been blaming vaccines for autism ever since.

“RFK Jr. has become a science denialist,” Offit said. “If you present him with science, he’ll ignore it if it goes against a bias he has.”

Kennedy’s team did not comment after receiving a list of questions, as well as Offit’s statements.

As head of HHS, Kennedy wouldn’t have direct authority to ban vaccines, according to reporting by The Hill.

But Offit and others say he’ll stay have powerful influence over the agencies that regulate vaccines, with the authority to reduce funding, or remove protections vaccine makers usually have.

Kennedy has promised to “Make America Healthy Again,” imitating Trump’s slogan.

Aside from his pledge to “expose the flaws in vaccine science,” Kennedy said he’d battle chronic disease in America by “breaking the stranglehold of the processed food lobby,” and working to “clear out corruption” at America’s health agencies, which could involve eliminating entire departments.

Kennedy has also proposed combating the chronic disease epidemic by addressing the root causes such as poor diet, environmental toxins, and inadequate healthcare. He’s also called to reduce harmful chemicals and toxins from America’s food, water, and air.

In October, Kennedy said in a post on the social platform X the he won’t “take anyone’s vaccines away from them. I just want to be sure every American knows the safety profile, the risk profile, and the efficacy of each vaccine. That’s it.”

Offit doesn’t find reassurance in this promise, arguing that Kennedy’s selection will help amplify anti-vaccine rhetoric.

“Just the mere fact he’s being considered for this job will validate some parents’ fears about vaccinations. Even now in kindergarten, measles and whooping cough vaccines are being refused by parents in some cases.”

Kennedy has spread other health misinformation, saying: the use of vaccinations is akin to the Holocaust; the coronavirus vaccine is the “deadliest” created by man; drinking water can change children’s gender identity; fluoride in water can lower IQ; the coronavirus was “ethnically targeted” to prevent Jews and Chinese people from succumbing to COVID-19; WiFi causes cancer; drinking raw milk, which can contain E. coli and listeria, should be encouraged; and antidepressants are to blame for school shootings.

Kennedy will sometimes further confuse people by denying saying things he has. For example, he recently said he’s “never been anti-vaccine,” and that “no vaccine” is safe and effective.

But last November, FactCheck.org, part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said that’s incorrect. The nonprofit discovered a Lex Fridman podcast Kennedy had done in July 2023 in which he said, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.”

Offit said he can’t understand Kennedy’s nomination.

“Why would you put this person in charge of agencies based on science? He makes things up. He’s just a liar.”