Donald Trump’s former Food and Drug Administration chief is warning that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could take down America’s child vaccine schedule.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who served as the agency’s commissioner between 2017 and 2019 in Trump’s first term, told CNBC Monday he believes Kennedy will use a forthcoming HHS report to claim an association between alum—a key component in a wide range of shots—and autism, which could in turn lay the ground to “take down the whole pediatric vaccine enterprise.”
“He’s been very systematic, very methodical, and frankly, very effective, putting in place the people and the tools he needs to try to effectuate this goal,” Gottlieb said of the health and human services secretary.
“Look, he’s an avowed anti-vaxxer, he’s spent two decades doing this,” he added. “Sometimes you have to take people at their word. I think this is a mission of his, and there really hasn’t been a lot of pushback until now, and this is mostly rhetorical pushback. No one has really stopped him from implementing these instruments of control.”
When asked what he meant about Kennedy potentially bringing down the pediatric vaccine schedule, Gottlieb explained that linking alum—aluminium salts used in vaccines—with autism could have major implications for manufacturers.
“That adjuvant is used in about 10 vaccines, there’s no good alternative,” he said. “It could force the vaccine manufacturers to try to reformulate the vaccines, decouple them—so instead of having MMR, you have measles, mumps, and rubella separately.”
Decoupling the vaccines, Gottlieb said, would mean children would need more shots, ultimately piling pressure on vaccination rates overall. “It’s gonna cause a lot of people not to get those vaccines,” he said.
The former FDA chief’s comments follow after Kennedy’s disastrous Senate testimony last week, during which Senators from both sides of the aisle grilled the secretary over high-profile firings at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as well as his decisions to limit COVID-19 vaccine access and cancel mRNA research.
More than 1,000 current and former Health and Human Services employees have signed an open letter condemning the secretary’s “reckless disregard for science and truth,” and were joined in calling for his resignation by members of his own family, including his sister, Kerry Kennedy, and cousin, Joe Kennedy III, who’ve called him “misguided,” “incompetent,” and “a threat to the health and well-being of every American.”
His forecasts also follow after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced plans to repeal every law requiring mandatory vaccinations, making it the first state to do so. Ladapo, who has a history of doctoring study data to make COVID-19 jabs appear more dangerous, has described growing vaccine skepticism in the U.S. as “reflections of God’s light against the darkness of tyranny and oppression.”
For Gottlieb, what appears to be most mystifying about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine crusade is that it goes against much of his own experience of working with the president on vaccine issues.
“The president seems to be supportive of Kennedy,” Gottlieb said. “I had many opportunities to talk to the president about vaccines,” he went on, adding that “the president always affirmed the importance of the pediatric schedule, and a few times that he went out and spoke publicly about this forcefully, it was always to encourage people to get vaccinated.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services for comment on Gottlieb’s interview.
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