Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer and critic of pediatric immunization programs, announced on January 10, 2017, that he had been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to head a new commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity. A Trump spokesperson later stated that no decisions had been made regarding leadership of the commission, but the potential of this appointment raised alarms in the public health community.
Kennedy has been a proponent of a widely discredited theory linking childhood vaccines to autism, and has favored nonmedical exemptions for parents from mandatory vaccination programs.
Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told MedPage Today. “Appointing someone like Kennedy who counters established facts with his own unsupported ‘hunches’ to head this commission not only puts children’s lives and health at risk, but also shows an alarming disrespect for science, which echoes the incoming Administration’s deliberate obfuscation of facts on climate change, the environment, and health in many other areas.”
Read MedPage Today article: Trump Denies Naming Vax Skeptic to Safety Panel
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