RFK Jr.'s Revived Vaccine Panel Poised to Endorse His Skepticism

US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s convening of a panel to report on vaccine safety for children could further an agenda increasingly hostile to immunization efforts and the arms of government that lead them.

Since taking the reins of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy fired over a dozen vaccine advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and began rebuilding it with vaccine critics, scaled back mRNA vaccine funding, and recommended healthy kids and pregnant women forgo Covid-19 shots.

Now, the vaccine-skeptic health secretary is resurrecting the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, a long-defunct panel that public health and law observers warn could add a perception of legitimacy to controversial views on immunization.

“The concern is that, based on his past behavior, is that he will engineer the outcome, that he will define the outcome that he wants, and then he will engineer the process to get him there,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director at the American Public Health Association.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in a statement the task force was reinstated “to reaffirm the Department’s commitment to continuous improvement in childhood vaccine safety oversight,” and it will be staffed with “career scientists and public health experts who will follow the science, not political agendas.”

“Their recommendations will be driven by data, evidence, and rigorous research with the goal of further reducing the frequency and severity of adverse reactions to vaccines and supporting innovation that makes vaccines even safer,” Hilliard said.

‘Trickle Down’

The HHS has said the group will file reports to Congress every two years and work with the department’s Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines on “regular recommendations.”

That includes developing and refining childhood vaccines with “fewer and less serious adverse reactions” than those currently available, and “improvements in vaccine development, production, distribution, and adverse reaction reporting.”

While the panel lacks regulatory power, its decisions could have “trickle-down effects,” said Ana Santos Rutschman, faculty director of the Health Innovation Lab at Villanova University.

For example, should the task force frame vaccines in ways aligned with Kennedy’s views, it would be more difficult for litigants to successfully argue that Food and Drug Administration drug decisions or broader HHS insurance reimbursements are arbitrary and capricious, she said.

The task force could influence the HHS’ National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Kennedy has pledged to revamp the program, arguing it wrongfully shields drugmakers from litigation and that its actions come at the expense of the injured—positions challenged by attorneys who practice vaccine law.

With the task force’s support, Kennedy could try to expand what counts as an injury under the program or push to “change the process by which they do the evaluations,” said Benjamin, who is a physician.

“The public will perceive that they’ve been injured by a vaccine when there may be another cause of their injury,” he said. “The patient isn’t served by that, by getting a bad diagnosis.”

Task Force Makeup

Congress created the vaccine task force in the 1980s. Back then, the panel’s creation made more institutional sense, given that much with vaccinology science was new, Rutschman said.

In the 1990s, the group produced a vaccine safety recommendations report and later disbanded. In April of this year, a Nevada resident sued Kennedy to get the HHS secretary to reconvene the force, but dropped the lawsuit after the HHS announced the group’s revival.

The HHS says departmental leadership will make up the task force, including senior officials from the CDC and Food and Drug Administration, with the National Institutes of Health director serving as chair. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, a manifesto pushing for protecting high-risk people over broad Covid-19 lockdowns.

In convening the task force, the implication is HHS officials “haven’t been overseeing vaccine safety, which isn’t true,” said Dorit Reiss, a University of California Law San Francisco professor focusing on vaccine policy.

The task force’s duties appear to overlap with those of other groups under the HHS umbrella, Reiss said.

Reiss points to the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations on vaccine efficacy and safety; the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines, which considers issues involving a federal program for paying people injured by routine immunizations; and Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the CDC advisory group whose members Kennedy replaced earlier this year.

Pattern of Actions

Kennedy’s task force fits into a suite of actions criticized for complicating access to vaccines and eroding confidence in the scientific expertise that has made immunization a critical component in fending off health emergencies.

In recent weeks, the White House fired the CDC director after clashing over vaccines with Kennedy, who publicly criticized the agency for not being sufficiently aligned with President Donald Trump’s agenda. Other top CDC officials resigned after the director’s firing, spurring public outcry and concerns about the future of vaccine policy in the US.

The task force adds to these concerns, critics say.

It contributes to “the chorus he creates to cast doubt on our vaccination infrastructure” and allows the secretary to “repeat misinformation points in a more legitimate way that isn’t directly coming from him,” Reiss said.

“This is going to look very good if you want to say, ‘This vaccine is problematic,’” Rutschman said. ‘“Now, it’s an independent task force saying it. It’s not RFK, per se.”