The Secretary of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., implemented an anti-vaccine strategy which includes targeting a federal program that pays money to patients injured by vaccinations, people familiar with KFF Health News said.
The plan consists in expanding the types of injuries eligible for compensation, potentially crushing the fund with complaints that could bankrupt the program. Other elements of the strategy include a potential mandate that vaccinals cease to use a common additive, forcing them to make expensive reformulations or to leave the market completely.
The vaccine remuneration program has paid more than $ 5 billion since its creation in 1988 with funds from a small vaccine tax. The program was created to compensate patients for injuries while preventing proceedings that could jeopardize pharmaceutical companies and vaccine supplies.
Before submitting before the courts, the injured must bring their requests to the vaccination court against the nuns of the program to determine what, if necessary, should be granted.
To extend the list of eligible injuries, Kennedy seeks to link vaccines to allergies or autism, even if no scientific data confirms a connection. HHS has already launched a probe on the causes of autism which should involve vaccines.
“Given the autism rate, if many cases are brought, this could take charge of the program,” said Dorit Reiss, professor at the University of California San Francisco.
Kennedy has weighed for an advisory group against vaccines to examine aluminum, which is used in certain vaccines. In July, he linked aluminum to allergies, although a recent study in the annals of internal medicine found no link.
Some public health leaders have turned the strategy as harmful.
“It’s a radical program,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist to organize vaccines and infectious diseases at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “He uses a lot of different mechanisms and there is really no railing. People will reproduce, but that will not be enough to stop the waves of death and the death of children.”
HHS says Kennedy is not against vaccines.
“Secretary Kennedy is not anti-vaccine-he is pro-security, pro-transparency and pro-accountability,” said Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano, HHS spokesperson, in an email.
Kennedy said he wanted to modify the vaccine injury fund, writing on July 28 on the social platform X that it is “broken, and I intend to repair it”. HHS works with the Ministry of Justice to reorganize the program.
