RFK Jr. sued over a task force by the anti-vaccine group he founded
'Our first priority will ALWAYS be children's health. Sec. Kennedy has FAILED 'to establish a task force dedicated to making childhood vaccines safer, as mandated by federal law,' so we WILL be holding him accountable,' Children's Health Defense (CHD) posted on social platform X.
The lawsuit claims Kennedy is violating the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which requires the HHS secretary to stand up a task force consisting of the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The law also requires the health secretary to provide Congress with progress reports every two years. CHD contends that the steps taken to make vaccines safer has never been reported to lawmakers.
Kennedy and his allies have been interested in the panel for years, arguing that its absence shows the government has not taken appropriate steps to ensure vaccines are safe for children.
While he was part of Children's Health Defense in 2018, Kennedy — along with fellow vaccine critic and adviser Del Bigtree — filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for copies of the reports from HHS.
When no reports were found, Kennedy and Bigtree sued HHS to produce them, part of an effort to bolster their misleading narrative about vaccine safety
A task force was created in the wake of the law's passage and produced reports. It was short-lived and made its final report to Congress in 1998.
During a 2019 Senate hearing about vaccines and rising rates of preventable disease, then-Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) noted the Health, Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee received two reports from HHS about vaccine safety in 1988 and 1989. Alexander said the law only required HHS to submit a report to Congress 'within two years.'
The former lawmaker during the hearing blasted 'internet fraudsters' for 'preying on the unfounded fears and daily struggles of parents' by convincing them vaccines aren't safe.
Dorit Reiss, a law professor at UC Law San Francisco and expert on vaccine litigation, said she thinks the CHD lawsuit is 'performative,' and doesn't mean Kennedy's former group has turned on him.
Reiss noted that the lawsuit could be a way to give Kennedy cover to set up the vaccine safety panel he's been floating for years.
Ray Flores, the CHD attorney who filed the complaint, indicated that is exactly what the group wants to do.
'It may appear as though we are being unfriendly to Mr. Kennedy. On the contrary, we're helping him to have an excuse to do his job,' Flores said in an interview with CHD TV.
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