In the 11 months since he was confirmed as health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has wreaked steady havoc on the nation’s vaccination policies and programs. He canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in federal investment for mRNA vaccines, including ones that would have improved our ability to fight the next flu pandemic. He chased away doctors and scientists at the Food and Drug Administration and the C.D.C. who oversaw federal vaccine policy for decades.
Perhaps worst of all, he fired the entire 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, known as ACIP. The group is responsible for advising the C.D.C. on which vaccines to recommend for whom. It now consists of a mix of ideologues and incompetents handpicked by Mr. Kennedy himself.
We don’t have to wonder what that future will look like. We can glimpse it already in communities across the country where measles and whooping cough are resurgent and where infants and young children have already died from both.
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