CDC director warns about RFK Jr.’s skeptical vaccine views

The top US public health official warned about the threat of curtailing vaccination efforts as longtime skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prepares for an influential role in the incoming Trump administration.

“We have a very short memory of what it is like to hold a child who has been paralyzed with polio, or to comfort a mom who lost their kid from measles,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen said Wednesday at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit in Washington. “I don’t want to have to see us go backward in order to remind ourselves that vaccines work.”

Kennedy has long been critical of immunizations, contending that they lack effectiveness and have links to autism, claims that have been repeatedly debunked. While he said last week that he wouldn’t take vaccines away from Americans, he assailed the science behind the shots’ safety, saying it “has huge deficits, and we’re going to make sure those scientific studies are done and that people can make informed choices.”

Vaccination rates have declined since the pandemic, Cohen said, leading to an increase in US measles cases. Gaps in vaccinations are especially threatening to children and adults with weak immune systems who don’t respond sufficiently to shots on their own, she said. 

“No one wants to see a child paralyzed, a child die, from something that we can prevent,” she said.

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