How RFK Jr is eroding global trust in vaccines
Julie Leask: Yeah, exactly. He doesn't.
Sen. Chris Murphy: Are you actually still recommending people get the vaccine, or are you not?
Robert F. Kennedy Jnr: Senator, if I advise you to swim in a lake that I knew there to be alligators in. Wouldn't you want me to tell you there were alligators in it?
Julie Leask: So he first really got very interested in vaccines in 2005 when he was hearing from parents about their concerns about autism and a belief that vaccines linked to autism. Now, they came to him because he'd been an environmental lawyer litigating governments and companies over environmental pollutions, you know, the lakes, the lands. And so I think he kind of carried that theme of being against pollution. In this case, he started to believe that vaccines pollute the body, if you like. And that's been quite an intense campaign for him in the last 20 years since the publication of this infamous article in Rolling Stones magazine called Deadly Immunity, which was retracted.
Sam Hawley: And just to make clear, there is no scientific evidence that vaccines are linked to autism.
Julie Leask: No, there's not. This has been looked into over decades now, and many large and well-done, rigorous studies repeatedly show no link between vaccines and autism.
Senator Bernie Sanders: The evidence is there. That's it. Vaccines do not cause autism. Do you agree with that?
Robert F. Kennedy Jnr: As I said, I'm not going to go into HHS with any preordained...
Senator Bernie Sanders: I ask you a simple question, Bobby. Studies all over the world say it does not. What do you think?
Robert F. Kennedy Jnr: If you show me those studies, I will absolutely, as I promised to Chairman Cassidy, I will apologize.
Senator Bernie Sanders: That is a very troubling response.
Julie Leask: And what's tragic there is that this idea keeps being resurrected and fed, and that's awful for parents of children with autism who are trying to understand the causes. And it really is redirecting resources away from better understanding and better science around this into what's really just a dead-end cause.
Sam Hawley: Yeah, he often rejects established science. He's also rejected that when it comes to HIV and AIDS, that HIV causes AIDS. He's questioned the safety of polio and measles vaccines. He's falsely linked antidepressants to school shootings, and it goes on and on, right?
Julie Leask: It does. And so it was so deeply concerning when it started to look like he would lead up the US Health and Human Services, which is essentially the role of the health minister for the United States. And that's what has happened. So our worst possible nightmare is coming true.
Sam Hawley: Yeah. All right. Well, he says he's not an anti-vaxxer, but in 2021, he told Louisiana lawmakers that the coronavirus vaccine is the deadliest vaccine ever made.
Robert F. Kennedy Jnr: Now, if you look at their post-licensing record, it confirms that this is the deadliest vaccine ever made.
Sam Hawley: Now, that's just not true, is it? It's not.
Julie Leask: It's completely false. In fact, the coronavirus vaccines are estimated to save many millions of lives. Now, this vaccine does carry some rare serious side effects. So the mRNA COVID vaccines are known to potentially cause myocarditis or pericarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle or the area around the heart. And also, of course, you know, common minor side effects. So it's not like vaccines are risk free and nobody is ever saying that. But what RFK Jr has done is sort of perpetuate junk science, made it look like there are all these studies showing the vaccine to be unsafe, when in fact the benefits of this vaccine far outweigh what are known risks of rare but serious side effects.
Sam Hawley: All right, well, Julie, that's a reminder of RFK Jr's view on medicine and science. Now, as you say, he is leading the health system in America. And in June, he fired all 17 members of a committee that issues official government recommendations on immunisations. Just tell me about that and who replaced all these people.
Julie Leask: So, this committee is very important. I mean, the equivalent in Australia is what people might have heard of as ATAGI, which is the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation. These committees around the world are high level experts who have done a lot of research and published on vaccination and have deep expertise. They're vetted very carefully. They form a committee that looks at the evidence around vaccines, their safety, their benefits, their cost effectiveness. And they then make recommendations to the government. So he fired all 17 members of this committee and he replaced them with eight individuals. And the new committee consisted of some people who had a bit of a track record in vaccination, but themselves usually tended to be COVID lockdown sceptics or very critical of the government's responses, which aligned with how he thought. Also, there are some vaccine sceptics on that committee. There are very, very clever people who are new to vaccination. And there are some people who are just extremely low on any vaccination expertise, but handpicked by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., because of their positions that are more likely to align with his very marginal views. And that has really caused a great deal of concern among the US medical community, public health community and also among policy advisors as well because of the ramifications of this.
Sam Hawley: Hmm. All right. So he puts this new, really controversial committee in place. And then, Julie, last week he cancelled nearly 500 million dollars of grants and contracts for developing mRNA vaccines. Now, this was the technology, of course, used during the pandemic. Just give me your initial reaction when you saw that news.
Julie Leask: I was not surprised, but also very concerned, as I have been, about the sort of, I'd say, public health vandalism that the Trump administration are engaging in public health globally and, of course, locally in vaccination programs. So mRNA vaccines have helped save millions of lives by stopping people from getting really severe COVID and dying from it. They also hold promise for enabling us to quickly pivot to vaccine development with a new virus that could be the next pandemic. So one of the concerns has been about avian influenza, bird flu. This mRNA technology enables you to quickly develop the vaccine without sort of having to sort of grow the incubate, the germ in eggs and take six months or more in production. So there's so much promise with these vaccines. And then the therapeutics have promise and are being studied for their ability to treat cancer and certain types of anemia. So huge promise. And it's just driven a massive wedge in that scientific field and in development. So we're going to see a big brain drain in mRNA science, particularly from the US, where there's been so much exciting and positive work.
Sam Hawley: Well, in a video released on social media, RFK Jr. argued that mRNA vaccines don't work.
Robert F. Kennedy Jnr: After reviewing the science and consulting top experts at NIH and FDA, HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risk and benefits for these respiratory viruses.
Sam Hawley: And then he then said in a statement that they encourage new mutations and can actually, he says, prolong pandemics. That's his view. How damaging are those words?
Julie Leask: They are damaging. A lot of my research is in how people respond to these kinds of messages. What this is doing, and it's unique, this is one of the most influential countries in the world when it comes to vaccine science and policy. And it now has its leadership, someone who is ostensibly, by their actions, demonstrated to be an anti-vaccination activist in the health portfolio. And this is going to really supercharge not just the vaccine misinformation that is peddling, but also diminish people's confidence in vaccines because we rely a great deal on trust and trust in the expert systems that produce and recommend vaccines. And now the public are being told, yes, trust those systems and those experts, except when it comes to the United States. So in a way, we're having to sort of do this dual thing of saying, trust us, but don't trust them. And that becomes incredibly confusing and difficult for the public.
Sam Hawley: And presumably that's not contained within America. Faith in public health, that could have an impact here too, right? In a GP surgery in Australia.
Julie Leask: It could and, you know, we're hearing from the nurses and nurses are the biggest providers of vaccines. I'm a former nurse myself and a midwife. We're hearing from them around the country that they're getting more and more questions about vaccine, the schedule in the first year of life. You know, whether there are too many vaccines given, whether they're really that necessary, because these what we're seeing is very marginal positions and now being, you know, allegedly legitimised by the US administration. So it is going to affect Australia. We might not be seeing too much of it yet, but we will in the coming years as this administration continues to reap the havoc on public health.
Sam Hawley: Well, Julie, Donald Trump, we presume, is backing this move, even though he hailed mRNA vaccines as a medical miracle during the pandemic. And he did seem to still support the technology when he was asked about the funding cut by a reporter last week.
Journalist: You were the driving force behind Operation Warp Speed, these mRNA vaccines that are the gold standard. Now your health secretary is pulling back all the funding for research. He's saying that the risks outweigh the benefits, which puts him at odds with the entire medical community and with you. What is going on?
Donald Trump, US President: Research on what?
Journalist: Into mRNA vaccines.
Donald Trump, US President: Well, we're going to look at that. We're talking about it and they're doing a very good job. Operation Warp Speed was, whether you're Republican or Democrat, considered one of the most incredible things ever done in this country.
Sam Hawley: So what do you fear? What do you think we might see next from RFK Jr.?
Julie Leask: It's going to be very interesting because Trump likes chaos. That's pretty clear from what he's done. And even saying about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I'm going to let Bobby go wild on health. So if he's sort of seen or feels like the technologies that he once promoted are now being undermined by his health secretary, he might start to push back against that. And really, the hope would be that he doesn't like to see quite so much damage being done to this technology. It's, as always with Trump, sometimes quite hard to predict what he will do.
Sam Hawley: But it sounds like if this isn't reversed, it could have very severe and lasting consequences for the world. Exactly.
Julie Leask: And, you know, it will not just undermine our access to these technologies, but it's undermining public confidence. And one of the things that we think is very important is getting people mentally ready for the sorts of misinformation they might hear about vaccines, such as, you know, we found the cause of autism, it's this or that ingredient of vaccines. And therefore, you know, avoid having it. And then the government could probably be stronger in the way it supports research and development. So if we've lost all this capacity in the US, there's that opportunity that comes with that, that we can capture some, harness some of that lost talent from the US and augment our existing incredible talent we've got here in Australia too.
Sam Hawley: Julie Leask is a professor of public health at the University of Sydney's Infectious Diseases Institute. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Cinnamon Nippard and Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.
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