RFK Jr.’s Cruelest Cut of All

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just eliminated U.S. vaccine funding for the world’s children. Why?

On June 25, 2025, RFK Jr. cut off U.S. funding to the Global Alliance Vaccine Initiative (GAVI), which supports vaccines for more than half of the world’s children. GAVI, which was founded in 2000, has vaccinated about 1.1 billion children in the world, saving an estimated 20 million lives, especially in resource-poor countries. GAVI’s efforts have halved the childhood mortality rate in about 80 countries.

RFK Jr. explained his actions by claiming that “GAVI had ignored the science” of vaccine safety. To prove his point, he held up a study performed in the 1980s that had examined the impact of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine in the west African country of Guinea-Bissau. Although the DTP vaccine has been estimated to save more than 40 million lives globally, the study claimed that children who had received the vaccine were more likely to die than those who hadn’t received it. RFK Jr. hailed the findings as a “landmark study.” But the study was seriously flawed:

• First, the study “was based on ancient data.” At the time the study was done in the 1980s, the mortality rate in children in Guinea-Bissau was extremely high. The mortality rate is much lower today; so, the findings aren’t relevant to today’s children. Indeed, when the study was repeated 30 years later, the same researchers found “no effects on all-cause mortality.”

• Second, the study was methodologically flawed, failing to control for healthcare seeking behavior, medical background, or socioeconomic background.

• Third, RFK Jr. failed to note that the vaccines used 40 years ago are dramatically different than those used today, so the findings are irrelevant.

• Fourth, no one has been able to repeat the study that RFK Jr. had held up as a proof that the DTP vaccine was killing children in the developing world. Indeed, studies performed in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea “showed no negative effect of DTP vaccination.”

In other words, one ancient, poorly performed, irreproducible study using vaccines that are irrelevant to today that RFK Jr. called “landmark,” is the reason for putting hundreds of millions of children at unnecessary risk. “Of all the global health programs that have been cut,” said Dr. Atul Gawande, who has overseen global health work for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), “this will likely mean more deaths than any other.” More than 14 million children in the world have never received a single dose of any vaccine. RFK Jr.’s recent withdrawal from GAVI will only worsen this ongoing tragedy.

RFK Jr. isn’t finished. In the next few months, he will likely hold up a similarly flawed study claiming that vaccines in the United States are causing autism or asthma or any number of chronic diseases. Then he will do everything possible to make vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. His withdrawal from GAVI is just the beginning of his war against vaccines.