Vaccine experts and advocates have expressed alarm at recent misleading statements by US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and his department – including that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine includes “aborted fetus debris”, according to The Guardian.
The newspaper reports that health department officials released statements on Wednesday saying they could alter vaccine testing and build new “surveillance systems”, both of which have unnerved experts who view new placebo testing as potentially unethical.
Dr Paul Offit, an expert on infectious disease and immunology and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said about the statements and Kennedy: “It’s his goal to even further lessen trust in vaccines and make it onerous enough for manufacturers that they will abandon it. It’s a fragile market.”
An HHS spokesperson told the Washington Post in response to questions about general vaccine policy and the measles vaccine: All new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure – a radical departure from past practices.” The department did not clarify what it meant by “new vaccine”.
The department spokesperson also described new surveillance systems for vaccines, “that will accurately measure vaccine risks as well as benefits – because real science demands both transparency and accountability”, but did not elaborate on the design of those systems.
The Guardian reports that, in this same week, Kennedy exhorted parents to “do their own research” in a talkshow interview – the phrase has become pop culture shorthand for a shallow internet search that casts people into the arms of the disinformation ecosystem.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/53865099332]