The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are seen negatively by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In 2019, he accused the federal agency’s vaccine division of intentionally harming children and referred to it as a fascist company. He also likened the extensive conspiracy he perceived to conceal the negative effects of the childhood immunization program to the Catholic Church’s cover-up of child sex abuse.
Kennedy claimed in previously unreported statements to a private audience at AutismOne, a conference for parents of autistic children, in 2019 that the Italian word fascism means a bundle of sticks, and that the bundle is more essential than the sticks. The CDC, the organization, and the vaccination program are more significant than the kids they are meant to safeguard.
He went on to say that it’s the same reason the Catholic Church had a pedophile scandal. Because individuals were able to persuade themselves that the church, as an institution, was more significant than these young rape victims. Additionally, no one spoke out. The Vatican, the press, the prosecutors, the priests, the bishops, the monsignors, and even the parents of the children who either didn’t want to accept it or had such strong faith in the church that they refrained from criticizing it. That’s the ideal metaphor for what’s happening to us, you know. Some parents must take a stand and declare, “We don’t give an s—.”
During his years of visits at AutismOne, Kennedy made these and other, mostly unreported, statements. Claims that the CDC is a corrupt organization full of profiteers and injuring children in a manner he compared to Nazi death camps are among the remarks, which date back to 2013.
When discussing what he believes to be a threat posed by vaccines, Kennedy, an anti-vaccine campaigner, has been known to employ strong language and metaphors, for which he occasionally apologizes. Doctors and public health experts have repeatedly refuted the false information regarding autism and mass injuries.Vaccines are safe, prevent harm and save lives, and do not cause autism, according to numerous studies conducted across nations and continents.
Now that President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy might introduce his erroneous beliefs into the organization he has so harshly condemned.
From disbanding panels that investigate vaccine safety to distorting government data in a way that undermines public faith or prompts manufacturers to remove vaccines from the market, the remarks provide fresh insight into what Kennedy might do with the CDC if the Senate confirms him.
Requests for response from Kennedy and the Trump transition team were not answered. The CDC chose not to respond.
Kennedy has long maintained a broad conspiracy theory about vaccines, claiming that governments, the pharmaceutical business, and the scientific community at large were hiding the risks that immunizations presented to children, such as chronic illness and developmental disorders. Kennedy would have a startling amount of power as health secretary, according to one former secretary, which he might use to eliminate the organizations he has named as major participants in his conspiracy theories.
Kennedy erroneously stated that vaccine scientists were part of a conspiracy to conceal vaccines as the cause of autism in a 2013 address for AutismOne, which bills itself as the largest parent-run autism conference.
Do I exaggerate when I suggest that these individuals ought to be imprisoned? Kennedy told the applauding AutismOne crowd, “They should be in jail and the key should be thrown away,” before quoting the Bible. According to Jesus Christ, it would be preferable for anyone who damages these little children’s hair to have a millstone put around their neck and sent into the deepest ocean. It would also be better if they had never been born.
Kennedy has been quieter about his views on vaccines since the start of his unsuccessful 2023 presidential campaign, sticking to evasive statements about how corporations have taken control of federal public health organizations and how he would free them if he were in power.
As he announced to an audience in Arizona this month that he would replace 600 employees on his first day at HHS, Kennedy has openly stated his intention to dismantle the National Institutes of Health. Kennedy announced last year that he would move the agency away from researching infectious diseases during a conference for Children’s Health Defense, his own anti-vaccine group.
The CDC, a public health organization that Kennedy has long denigrated in writings and speeches, has received less attention. His comments at AutismOne provide insight into the divisions Kennedy might target, such as those that evaluate vaccine safety and data and recommend vaccination schedules for kids.
Kennedy’s director of campaign communications and head of the nation’s second-best-funded anti-vaccine group, Del Bigtree, wrote last week that despite his strategic approach, Kennedy is still dedicated to the anti-vaccine movement. When Bobby eventually entered the castle, Bigtree claimed that he had been dragged through the mud for more than ten years in order to violate his morals.
When questioned about the CDC’s reasons for not recognizing autism as an epidemic during the 2013 AutismOne Q&A session, Kennedy compared it to the Holocaust.
Kennedy stated of the growing number of children with autism diagnoses and what he saw as a link to vaccines that had been disproved more than ten years prior, “To me, this is like Nazi death camps, what happened to these kids.” I am unable to explain why someone would act in such a manner. I am unable to explain why common Germans took part in the Holocaust.
Additionally, he provided more information about the individuals he thought should be incarcerated.
The evil guys always manage to squirm their way out of it, so I don’t think this is going to happen,” he remarked. However, I would give anything to see Paul Offit, who is a nice man, imprisoned.
In addition to being a co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine, Dr. Paul Offit is the head of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Vaccine Education Center. He is currently a member of an advisory council on vaccines at the Food and Drug Administration. When contacted for response, Offit claimed that Kennedy had been using him and other members of government vaccine committees as the focal points of irrational conspiracy theories for almost 20 years, attacks that have resulted in threats and harassment.
“As a pediatrician, I put a lot of effort into developing a vaccine,” Offit said. I’m a decent man. However, RFK thinks that the FDA, CDC, and advisory committees are all part of a huge global conspiracy to conceal the truth, which is being planned by the pharmaceutical firms, who control the government and the medical establishment. In other words, he is a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, and wild-eyed conspiracy theorists advocate locking everyone up.
Kennedy presented his broad hypothesis to the AutismOne audience in a 2017 speech.
According to him, it’s a web of interconnected ties between the FDA, CDC, and the vaccination sector. Kennedy added that in addition to the doctors, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the media, the pharmaceutical firms and the military were also involved.
He continued, “They’re all telling us that what we know to be true is not true.” As we sit here, we realize that the alternate world they are forcing upon us is a lie—the Matrix reality.
In response to Trump’s selection of Kennedy as HHS secretary, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement arguing that vaccines are the safest and most economical means of preventing illness, disability, and death in children, families, and communities.
Kennedy mentioned a number of CDC departments that he was worried about in his 2017 speech.
First was the CDC’s vaccination schedule, which is developed by the Advisory Committee on vaccination Practices (ACIP), a panel of public health and medical professionals that evaluate safety data and suggest vaccines. Kennedy would be responsible for selecting ACIP members in his capacity as HHS secretary. For years, anti-vaccine organizations have participated in ACIP meetings to provide misleading information during public discussion. Kennedy denounced ACIP in his 2017 address as a collection of self-serving individuals who make choices based on money rather than public health.
The people who are on ACIP are not public health advocates, he said. They are employed by the vaccine business.
The CDCscreensACIP members, who are largely medical professionals and cannot be employed by vaccine manufacturers. Members are required to disclose both real and perceived conflicts of interest.
Another branch of the CDC that we worry about, Kennedy said in 2017, was the Immunization Safety Office, which, alongside other agencies, monitors vaccine safety and reports findings and concerns to ACIP.
Kennedy claimed the mission of the Immunization Safety Office has become subsumed by the broader mission of CDC, which is: Promote vaccines and get as many people to use them as possible. One of Kennedy s central pieces of evidence involved William Thompson, a psychologist and former senior scientist at the CDC who came forwardin 2014to allege he and other researchers had hidden data that suggested the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine increased the risk of autism in Black boys. (Those claimshave beendebunked.)
The Immunization Safety Office maintains the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which houses data from patient health records used to conduct studies about rare adverse events following immunization. This raw data is available to researchers, but isn t public for a variety of reasons including concerns over privacy, misrepresentation of data, and manpower.
Kennedy suggested in the 2017 speech that the walled access is nefarious. Oh, they ve hidden it, and they won t let anybody in it, except their own guys who cherry-pick and design these fabricated studies and change the protocols constantly to try to use it to defend vaccines, Kennedy said. It s being used instead to craft these fabricated, fraudulent studies by in-house bought-and-paid-for biostitutes to fool the public about vaccine safety. (Biostitutes is a term Kennedy has used often: Seemingly it is a portmanteau of biologist and prostitutehe has explainedmeans industry-paid junk scientists. )
Kennedyrecently saidthat within two months of leading HHS and CDC, he will be able to figure outwhat causes autism. In his 2017 speech, he explained his belief that the CDC s vaccine safety database would provide the answer to whether something in vaccines was making children vulnerable to other kinds of disease a theory without evidence. We would know the answer to that question if we were given access to the vaccine safety database, but they ve hidden it, Kennedy said.
Last monthon CNN, Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump s transition team, said that after a conversation with the not-yet-nominated HHS secretary, he understood Kennedy wanted access to federal health data so he could show vaccines are unsafe and force manufacturers to stop making them.
He says, if you give me the data, all I want is the data and I ll take on the data and show that it s not safe. And then if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off of the market. So that s his point, Lutnick said.
This weekend, Trump pickedformer congressman Dr. Dave Weldonto lead the CDC. Weldon has also spoken at AutismOne conferences. He introduceda bill in 2007related to vaccine data that died in committee; it would have removed vaccine safety research from the purview of the CDC to a separate HHS agency.
In2004 remarksat AutismOne, Weldon suggested vaccines caused neurological problems and said parents of autistic children were “the 900-pound gorilla that has not had its voice heard adequately on Capitol Hill.”
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