RFK Jr.'s 'wild' assault on vaccines endangers us all

When President Donald Trump brought on well-known vaccine opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Health and Human Services secretary, Trump said he wanted Kennedy to "go wild" on health, food and medicine. 

Kennedy did just that. 

Kennedy's efforts have opened the door for an ongoing push to loosen vaccine regulations nationwide, including in New York. On Tuesday, opponents of vaccines and vaccine mandates gathered in Albany for a "vaccine rights" advocacy day, sponsored by Children's Health Defense, the group Kennedy founded. Among the rally's goals: to stop school vaccine mandates and restore the state's religious exemption for vaccination.

Meanwhile in Washington, Kennedy's remade Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has tried to undo the all-important childhood immunization schedule piece by piece. A federal judge earlier this month blocked that overhaul, and ruled the committee's membership was invalid after Kennedy had stacked it with unqualified allies, many of whom either oppose or express skepticism about vaccines.

That's left the future of the panel and vaccine-related decision-making in a dysfunctional limbo. While that means it cannot further destroy the essential vaccine schedule, upon which most states base school vaccination requirements, it also means there's no group of independent experts to advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on upcoming vaccine-related decisions, including this fall's flu and COVID shots.

That's particularly worrisome given the limitations of the current state of vaccine research. Last summer, Kennedy canceled $500 million in federal research funds specifically earmarked for research related to mRNA technology, which uses genetic code to teach the body to make targeted proteins that can help it develop immunities. Kennedy has long criticized such technology, but his unproven complaints ramped up in the wake of his distrust of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Yet mRNA technology is significant far beyond COVID, as it can play a role in improving the flu vaccine, developing cancer treatments and more. According to the CDC, the 2025-26 flu vaccine was about 40% effective in preventing outpatient visits and hospitalizations among children, but only about 30% effective against adult hospitalizations. Targeted research could make the flu vaccine better. By cutting such research funding, Kennedy boosts a self-fulfilling effort to support his own notion — however debunked it is — that vaccines are dangerous, unnecessary or ineffective. 

All of this contributes to the constantly eroding public trust in vaccines, which are paramount to the health of the nation and its children. As vaccine trust wanes, so does vaccine use, leaving the door open for once-eradicated diseases to return. The CDC reports there've already been 1,487 measles cases this year. In 2023, the CDC reported 59 cases for the entire year.

The extensive damage done to the research, use and trust in vaccinations over the last year is impossible to calculate. Undoing it won't be easy. The harm likely will ripple through the nation's public health for decades to come — with no short-term cure.