RFK Jr.’s Plan to Eliminate Vaccines

Think VICP

Despite his claim that anyone who wants vaccines can get them, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), is on the verge of eliminating vaccines from the United States. He believes that vaccines have replaced infectious diseases with chronic diseases. By eliminating vaccines, he believes he can eliminate all manner of chronic diseases, including autism. Here is how he plans to do it.

On June 18, 2025, RFK Jr. directed his newly appointed Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which he recently stocked with members who have a history of anti-vaccine activity, to evaluate aluminum-containing adjuvants in vaccines. What are aluminum adjuvants and why are they in some vaccines?

Aluminum adjuvants have been used in vaccines since 1926 to enhance the immune response, allowing for fewer doses and lesser quantities of vaccine components. Live, attenuated viral vaccines (such as the measles-mumps-rubella [MMR], varicella, and rotavirus vaccines) don’t require adjuvants. But some vaccines, which aren’t live (such as the DTaP, pneumococcal, meningococcal, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b, and HPV vaccines) wouldn’t work well without an adjuvant. Are aluminum adjuvants dangerous?

Aluminum is the third most abundant element on Earth. It’s in soil, water, air, plants, and food. Aluminum is literally everywhere, including in breast milk and infant formula. In the first 6 months of life, babies will be exposed to about 4.4 milligrams of aluminum from vaccines, 7 milligrams from breast milk, 38 milligrams from infant formula, and 117 milligrams from soy formula. Not surprisingly, researchers found that the level of aluminum contained in an infant’s hair and bloodstream didn’t correlate with receipt of vaccines. In other words, aluminum in vaccines is a trivial addition to what infants encounter and manage every day from the environment. Consistent with these findings, researchers in Denmark recently studied 1.2 million children between 1997 and 2020 who received different quantities of aluminum in vaccines. They found no evidence that aluminum adjuvants caused autoimmune, allergic, or neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and asthma.

For RFK Jr., however, none of these reassuring facts or studies about aluminum matter. Sometime in the next few months, he will hold up a poorly done study claiming that aluminum adjuvants cause autism or diabetes or multiple sclerosis or asthma or eczema. Then he will do something that could eliminate vaccine manufacture in the United States. And, if you don’t believe that, just look at what happened in the United States in the early 1980s.

On April 19, 1982, a local NBC affiliate in Washington, DC aired a one-hour documentary titled DPT: Vaccine Roulette. The film featured children with withered arm and legs wearing bicycle helmets, seizing, drooling, and staring vacantly up at the ceiling. The cause of this apparent brain damage, according to the film, was the “P” in DPT: the pertussis or whooping cough vaccine. The film launched a flood of lawsuits against vaccine makers. In 1981, one year before Vaccine Roulette aired, three lawsuits were filed against vaccine makers. By the end of 1982, lawyers had filed 17 lawsuits; during the next four years, they filed 41, 73, 219, and 255. The amount of money requested by plaintiffs increased exponentially from $25 million in 1981 to $414 million in 1982, $655 million in 1983, $1.3 billion in 1984, and $3.2 billion in 1985. The cost of defending these lawsuits exceeded sales from the vaccine.

Vaccine makers left the business. The number of companies making pertussis vaccine dropped from seven to one, measles vaccine makers from six to one and oral polio vaccine makers from three to one. Americans were on the verge of losing childhood vaccines. Then, in 1986, the Regan administration stepped in, creating the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act which included the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Now people could be compensated for vaccine injuries through this special vaccine court, which was funded by a federal excise tax on every dose of vaccine. The bleeding stopped. Nonetheless, whereas 18 companies made vaccines for American children in 1980, only four remained by the end of the decade.

Subsequent studies found that the pertussis vaccine didn’t cause brain damage. But those studies came far too late to save vaccines. Ironically, 25 years later, Samuel Berkovic, an Australian researcher, found that the children featured in Vaccine Roulette had Dravet’s Syndrome, a genetic disorder characterized by a sodium channel transport defect in brain cells. In other words, the pertussis vaccine was blameless.

On January 25, 2025, during RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing before the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee, Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) provided a frightening glimpse into the future. “As Secretary of HHS,” she said, “You could make more injuries eligible for compensation even if there is no causal evidence…You could change which claims are compensated in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. I’m asking you to commit right now that you will not take a financial stake in every one of those lawsuits so that what you do as Secretary will also benefit you financially down the line.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. refused.

Sometime in the next couple of months, RFK Jr. will hold up a bogus “study” that he will claim proves that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines cause autism or some other chronic disorder. Although the “study” won’t have been published in a reputable journal, won’t have been peer-reviewed, will be methodologically flawed and basically uninterpretable, he will call it “landmark” or “gold-standard.” He will also claim that all the studies exonerating aluminum adjuvants were unduly influenced by Big Pharma. Then he will manipulate the VICP to make vaccines less available, more expensive, and more feared. His action won’t lessen the incidence of autism; it will only increase the incidence of suffering and hospitalization from vaccine-preventable diseases.

Buckle up.