R.F.K. Jr. has frequently denied that he is anti-vax despite the ample evidence to the contrary. Dr. Paul A. Offit is another well-respected American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases, vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is not a fan of R.F.K. Jr. In an interesting article in the New York Times he explained his view of Kennedy this way,
The news media labels Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a vaccine skeptic. He’s not. I’m an actual vaccine skeptic. In fact, everyone who serves with me on the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee is a vaccine skeptic. Pharmaceutical companies must prove to us that a vaccine is safe, that it’s effective. Then and only then will we recommend that it be authorized or licensed for use by Americans.
Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, is a vaccine cynic, failing to accept studies that refute his beliefs. He claims that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism, despite more than a dozen studies performed in seven countries on three continents involving thousands of children showing that it doesn’t.
Even though childhood vaccines have prevented more than 1 million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations in the past 30 years Kennedy says no vaccine is safe and effective. That sounds pretty good to me.
Kennedy also claims vaccines were not properly studied before use. This also sounds good, but as Dr. Offit said, “When Mr”. Kennedy says he wants vaccines to be better studied, what he really seems to be saying is he wants studies that confirm his fixed, immutable, science-resistant beliefs. That’s not skepticism.”
As I have said before skepticism is good and important. We need skeptics to constantly keep scientists on their toes and alert to potential problems. Complacency is dangerous. But we need skepticism based on good science and careful analysis. Not blather like that of so many vaccine skeptics. We must always remain skeptical of the skeptics too. Otherwise, they can do serious harm.
Dr. Offit says he is a skeptic. He needs proof that vaccines are safe and effective. He pointed out that he was on the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee which voted in favor of the authorisation of the bivalent Covid vaccine which targeted both the original strain of the virus and Omicron variant, but he voted against its authorization because he was not convinced that the updated vaccine was better than the original. He said he and his colleagues debated the pros and cons vigorously. Rigorous debate is essential for good science.
As a result he and his colleagues constantly ask question and examine new data and when warranted make changes. Sometimes the public is annoyed at the changes, but that is how science works. Nothing is baked in. Nothing is sacred. Even after the clinical trials are done they continue their surveillance systems because not all problems are picked up in the clinical trials. That was how they discovered the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines caused the heart condition myocarditis in about 1 in 50,000 people. They also discovered that the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine caused dangerous blood clotting in about 1 in 250,000. With that data they evaluated these rare harms against the enormous benefits and decided the vaccines should be continued. The benefits out weighed the harms.
Despite all this hard and effective scientific work he was annoyed when “Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, has claimed that the Covid-19 vaccines, which have saved the lives of at least three million Americans, are “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
He knows that all vaccines have side-effects. It is impossible to avoid them. But he responded this way: “Yes, vaccines can cause side effects, but forgoing vaccination is also a risk… there are no risk-free choices.”
In other words, if you choose not to take the vaccine you are probably taking a much bigger risk. Skeptics like R.F.K. Jr. make things harder for parents to make the right decision for their children because according to Dr. Offit, he “he has cited and ignored data that doesn’t support his conclusions.” And that creates mistrust of vaccines and the authorities in charge of them and that can be very dangerous for society.
Dr. Offit in his article ended with the expression of an ominous concern: “Given the lack of appropriate guardrails that would normally prevent an anti-vaccine activist, science denialist and conspiracy theorist from heading the country’s most important public health agency, it’s a dangerous time to be a child in the United States.”
I would add, that is also true of Canada.
And that’s not where we want to be.