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By Nick Mordowanec and Mandy Taheri
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released the anticipated "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) commission report on Thursday.
The report raises concerns about the growing childhood vaccine schedule, highlights alleged parental unease over a possible link to chronic disease, and calls for placebo-controlled trials to assess vaccine safety.
Why It Matters
Kennedy, who has pledged to "Make America Healthy Again," has spread health misinformation, including linking vaccines to autism, a connection that has been widely discredited by scientists. Prior to taking up the top public health seat, he served as chair of the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense.
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The health secretary's stance on vaccines mirrors a broader decline in public support for childhood immunizations. A 2024 Gallup poll shows 40 percent of Americans say it's extremely important for parents to vaccinate their children, down from 58 percent in 2019 and 64 percent in 2001.
The poll of 1,010 adults was conducted between July 1 and 21 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends a full immunization schedule for children and adolescents under 18 years old, including hepatitis, measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), varicella, and meningococcal.
What To Know
President Donald Trump pledged to review childhood diseases and lifestyle-related health issues within his first few months in office. On Thursday, Kennedy delivered the MAHA Commission's report.
Section 4 of the report, "The Overmedicalization of Our Kids," states that "our understanding of vaccine safety and any links to chronic disease would benefit from more rigorous clinical trial designs, including the use of true placebos, larger sample sizes, and longer follow-up periods." Axios published a copy of the report.
It continues to state that many vaccines on the CDC schedule were tested among small participant groups, had no "inert placebo-controlled trials," and limited monitoring.
Prior to the report, Kennedy had repeated that not enough childhood vaccines have been tested in clinical trials against a placebo, telling Dr. Phil McGraw in April, "the only vaccine that was ever safely tested in a clinical trial against a placebo was the COVID vaccine...None of the others were ever tested against placebo."
That statement is not true. While not all new vaccines are compared to placebos, many childhood vaccines, including polio, MMR, hepatitis B, HPV, and pneumococcal, have undergone placebo-controlled clinical trials, particularly during their initial development phases.
Once a vaccine becomes the standard of care, new vaccines are typically tested against the existing version rather than a placebo, as it raises ethical questions to withhold known treatment.
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The MAHA report raised concerns about the number of vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule, its expansion over recent decades, and how it compares to schedules in European countries.
Miranda Yaver, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh, told Newsweek on Thursday, "The report singles out Denmark as having markedly fewer required childhood vaccinations, but the result of their policy is that in 2023 and extending into 2024, Denmark had a pertussis epidemic."
One infant in Denmark died from pertussis, a highly contagious respiratory infection, and nearly 30 were hospitalized. In January 2024, a pertussis vaccination in pregnant women was introduced to the country's national vaccination program.
"We don't need to create a renaissance of easily preventable infectious diseases, but I fear that's where we're headed," Yaver said shortly after the report was released.
The report also questioned current vaccine regulations and the medical community's handling of them, arguing that "open scientific discussion and inquiry has become more difficult with the expansion of childhood vaccine mandates and public health—combined with efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy."
It continued, "Physicians who question or deviate from the CDC's vaccine schedule may face professional repercussions, including scrutiny from licensing boards and potential disciplinary action."
What People Are Saying
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, told Newsweek: "I don't really understand his premise...it seems to me that most pediatric vaccines were approved by this mechanism."
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says on its website: "Vaccines have prevented countless cases of disease and disability and have saved millions of lives. Ensuring the safety and effectiveness of vaccines is one of FDA's top priorities. FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) ensures that FDA's rigorous scientific and regulatory processes are followed by those who pursue the development of vaccines. Vaccine development is a complex science.
"FDA's scientific and regulatory advice to vaccine developers, as well as FDA's evaluation to determine the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, are among the most robust in the world."
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told NPR earlier this month: Kennedy is "an anti-vaccine activist, a science denialist who is going to do everything he can to tear down the infrastructure in this country of vaccines. Robert F. Kennedy Jr is a dangerous man."
Miranda Yaver, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh, told Newsweek: "It's very distressing to see people at the highest levels of the public health bureaucracy both-sides vaccines. The MAHA report observes that vaccines help to protect children from infectious diseases, but that their benefits must be weighed against the risks.
"This vaccine skepticism presents a fiction that there is any meaningful quandary as to which is worse between measles (which can be fatal) and a vaccine reaction (e.g., mild fever, soreness at the injection site)."
What Happens Next
The report pledges to support "gold-standard scientific research" and recommends conducting larger trials with "true placebos" to better understand the vaccines' effects and potential link to chronic diseases.
It also seeks to launch a national initiative to map "gene-environment interactions affecting childhood disease risk, especially for pollutants, endocrine disruptors, and pharmaceuticals."
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