Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Soon to Announce White House Run, Sows Doubts About Vaccines

WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood earlier than the Lincoln Memorial in January 2022 and condemned the federal authorities’s coronavirus response by railing in opposition to totalitarianism. Jews in Nazi Germany, he steered, had extra freedom than Americans going through vaccination mandates and college, church and business closures within the period of Covid-19.

“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland,” he instructed a crowd of flag-waving anti-vaccine fanatics at a “Defeat the Mandates” rally. “You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”

Mr. Kennedy later apologized, although it was not the primary time he had invoked the Holocaust. Over the previous 20 years, as he has pursued what he calls “safe vaccine activism,” Mr. Kennedy has advanced from an environmental lawyer involved about mercury poisoning right into a crusader for particular person liberty — a path that has landed him, a scion of a storied Democratic clan, within the unlikely embrace of the American political proper.

On Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy, plans to formally announce that he’s difficult President Biden for the Democratic nomination for president. His vaccine skepticism offers him one thing in widespread with one other candidate: former President Donald J. Trump, who like Mr. Kennedy has blamed childhood vaccines for autism — a discredited concept that has been repudiated by greater than a dozen peer-reviewed scientific research in a number of international locations.

“Robert F. Kennedy could jump into the Republican primary for president and only DeSantis and Trump, I think, would do better,” Stephen Ok. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, mentioned not too long ago on his podcast, referring to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. Bannon mentioned Mr. Kennedy had a “massive following” along with his viewers. “People love this guy,” he mentioned.

Vaccination is a singular public well being success that has saved untold thousands and thousands of lives. Vaccines have eradicated smallpox, averted thousands and thousands of deaths from measles and despatched naturally occurring polio instances plummeting, from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to 6 reported instances worldwide in 2021, in accordance with the World Health Organization.

Mr. Kennedy has insisted that he’s not against vaccines and that his sole curiosity is in making them safer. “I’m not anti-vaccine, although I’m kind of the poster child for the anti-vax movement,” he mentioned throughout a current speech at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan.

But by means of his nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, and his films, speeches and books — together with one which portrays Dr. Anthony S. Fauci as within the pocket of the pharmaceutical trade — Mr. Kennedy has used his platform and his household’s star energy to sow doubts about vaccine security, spreading misinformation by twisting info out of context.

In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named him one in every of its “Disinformation Dozen” — the 12 individuals whom the group discovered to have been accountable for roughly three-quarters of anti-vaccine content material on Facebook.

Facebook and Instagram have eliminated the accounts of Children’s Health Defense, and Mr. Kennedy has accused them of censorship. He can also be suing the Biden administration and Dr. Fauci, who for many years led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, accusing them of pressuring social media corporations to censor free speech.

Mr. Kennedy declined to be interviewed. In an e mail message, he mentioned Children’s Health Defense had “an extremely robust fact-checking operation.” He additionally pointed to a response by Meta, Facebook’s guardian firm, disputing the “Disinformation Dozen” report. Meta critiqued the research’s design, saying that specializing in simply 12 individuals “misses the forest for the trees.”

Family Backlash

Mr. Kennedy, 69, is the third-eldest youngster of Robert and Ethel Kennedy and a nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, who urged Americans to take the Salk polio vaccine and signed the Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962 to assist states and cities perform childhood immunization applications.

His activism, and now his political aspirations, have been wrenching for his household. Some of his relations have publicly rebuked him. His sister Rory Kennedy instructed CNN she was backing Mr. Biden, whereas his sister Kerry Kennedy mentioned in a press release, “I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues.”

Ahead of his White House bid, Mr. Kennedy is enjoying up his household historical past. He lives in California however plans to make his announcement in Boston, a metropolis carefully recognized with the Kennedys. He not too long ago tweeted a photograph of himself in a classic “Kennedy for President” T-shirt.

His identify and household status have opened doorways for him. Dr. Fauci mentioned he had met with Mr. Kennedy a number of instances and had instructed him “that I believe that his intentions are not evil, but his information is incorrect, and he’s misguided and can inadvertently cause significant harm.” Dr. Fauci mentioned that when Mr. Kennedy’s e-book about him, titled “The Real Anthony Fauci,” got here out in 2021, he was “really shocked.”

“The entire book is such a complete lie,” Dr. Fauci mentioned.

Mr. Kennedy’s messages usually have a grain of reality. The Children’s Health Defense web site, for example, says “vaccines contain many ingredients, some of which are known to be neurotoxic, carcinogenic and cause autoimmunity.” Vaccines do comprise preservatives and components, reminiscent of aluminum salts, which have been in use in vaccines for many years. Studies present hostile reactions are uncommon and sometimes contain pores and skin allergy symptoms.

The Children’s Health Defense web site additionally states that sure vaccines should not examined in opposition to placebos in medical trials, citing polio, hepatitis and meningitis vaccines as examples. That is deceptive. Brand-new vaccines — from polio to measles to Covid-19 — are examined in giant medical trials that embody placebo teams. But scientists agree it could be unethical to withhold lifesaving vaccines from research members. For that purpose, when older vaccines are reformulated or up to date, research don’t embody a placebo group.

“Vaccine injuries can and do happen,” the web site declares. That is true as effectively, however the federal authorities has an aggressive system to trace and detect negative effects to allow them to be addressed.

The measles vaccine, for example, lowers the platelet rely in about one in each 25,000 to 30,000 individuals. That could cause pink spots from bleeding beneath the pores and skin — an issue that’s normally “short-lived and self-resolving,” mentioned Dr. Paul A. Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. But measles causes that drawback in a single in 3,000 youngsters — roughly 10 instances as many because the vaccine, he mentioned.

“There are no risk-free choices, just choices to take different risks,” mentioned Dr. Offit, who has been a vocal critic of Mr. Kennedy. “You could argue the greatest risk of vaccines is driving to the office to get them.”

A Movement Grows

By his personal account, Mr. Kennedy was at first a reluctant critic of vaccination. He obtained concerned in 2005, when he was an environmental lawyer suing coal-fired energy vegetation to power them to scale back emissions of mercury and different poisonous chemical substances.

The anti-vaccine motion within the United States had been rising amid debate over an increase in instances of autism. In 1998, a British physician named Andrew Wakefield printed a research of 12 youngsters in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, that steered a hyperlink between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism.

The article was retracted in 2010, and Mr. Wakefield was later barred from training medication. But within the years after its publication, one other concept started to take maintain: that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that had been used for many years to forestall micro organism from rising in multiple-dose vials of vaccines, brought about autism.

The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine by no means contained thimerosal, however different vaccines given to infants did. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there’s “no evidence” that the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines trigger hurt, “except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site.”

But in 1999, after Congress directed the Food and Drug Administration to have a look at mercury in all merchandise, the American Academy of Pediatrics, federal well being businesses and vaccine producers agreed that thimerosal needs to be faraway from childhood vaccines. The determination was made “out of an abundance of caution,” mentioned Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

But the transfer alarmed dad and mom. As Mr. Kennedy traveled the nation giving speeches, he has mentioned, moms of intellectually disabled youngsters started buttonholing him, urgent him to analyze vaccines.

“They would say to me in a very respectful but also kind of vaguely scolding way, ‘If you’re really interested in mercury exposures to children, you need to look at vaccines,’” he instructed the Hillsdale College viewers.

In 2005, Rolling Stone and Salon copublished an article by Mr. Kennedy, headlined “Deadly Immunity,” that blamed thimerosal in vaccines for fueling the rise in autism. Salon later retracted the article. Mr. Kennedy insisted Salon caved to strain from authorities regulators and the pharmaceutical trade.

Thimerosal continues to be utilized in flu vaccines. In 2015, shortly after Mr. Kennedy printed a e-book concerning the preservative, he met Eric Gladen, an engineer who believes he was sickened by thimerosal in a tetanus vaccine and who made a movie about his expertise. The two joined forces. Mr. Gladen’s advocacy group, World Mercury Project, was later rebranded as Children’s Health Defense.

“We had two huge tools to raise funds; we had my film, which is about 10 years of research put into 90 minutes, and his book,” Mr. Gladen mentioned in an interview, including, “Between him being a Kennedy, the film and his book, it compelled a lot of people to get involved.”

The anti-vaccine motion was, on the time, largely the province of the political left. Mr. Kennedy discovered allies in Hollywood celebrities like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy. In California, he waged an unsuccessful battle in opposition to a invoice to remove the “personal belief” exemption that allowed dad and mom to decide out of vaccinating their youngsters.

Mr. Kennedy has been a vocal opponent of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, a 1986 federal regulation meant to advertise the event of vaccines by shielding producers from lawsuits. In 2003, on the top of the thimerosal controversy, a bipartisan measure to replace the regulation by providing immunity to vaccine additive producers collapsed in Congress.

Mr. Kennedy factors to such efforts as proof that lawmakers and federal regulators are conspiring to guard drug corporations, which he says lack incentives to concentrate on security. During the battle over the California laws, he invoked these arguments, mentioned Dr. Richard Pan, a former state senator who was an creator of the invoice and met with Mr. Kennedy on the time.

“He mainly focused on the F.D.A. being corrupt and in cahoots with the pharmaceutical companies to hide the danger of vaccines,” Dr. Pan mentioned.

Meeting With Trump

Shortly earlier than Mr. Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, Mr. Kennedy met with him at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Mr. Kennedy mentioned afterward that the president-elect needed him to steer a “vaccine safety and scientific integrity” fee. He instructed Science journal that Mr. Trump had instructed him he had 5 associates whose wholesome youngsters “developed a suite of deficits” after being vaccinated.

The fee by no means got here to cross, however the coronavirus pandemic gave Mr. Kennedy a good larger platform. As the nation grew ever extra polarized, with lots of Mr. Trump’s followers shunning the vaccines and Dr. Fauci changing into a lightning rod, Mr. Kennedy’s e-book about Dr. Fauci grew to become a greatest vendor.

Another e-book by Mr. Kennedy is due out in June, this time specializing in the controversy over the origins of the coronavirus. Titled “The Wuhan Cover-Up,” it claims that federal well being officers “conspired with the Chinese military” to cover the pandemic’s origins — an assertion that seems to conflate experiments by the Chinese army on the Wuhan Institute of Virology with different work there funded by the U.S. authorities.

How a lot Mr. Kennedy will speak about vaccine security throughout his presidential marketing campaign stays unclear. As he did in the course of the rally on the Lincoln Memorial, he used his speak at Hillsdale College to cloak his activism in a broader level — that the federal government, the press and social media corporations try to silence him, pushing the United States towards tyranny.

“The founders, specifically Hamilton, Madison, Adams, said, ‘We put freedom of expression in the First Amendment because all the other amendments are dependent on it,’” Mr. Kennedy mentioned. “Because if you give a government the right to silence their opponents, they now have a license for any atrocity.”