RFK Jr. Stacks Key Federal Immunization Committee With Vaccine Skeptics
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From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Leslie McClurg in today for Mina Kim.

Recently, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the federal vaccine advisory panel and then replaced some of them with outspoken vaccine skeptics. That move comes on the heels of his Make America Healthy Again report, which mixes valid concerns about ultra-processed foods and environmental toxins with dubious science and suspected AI-generated content.

Coming up, we'll look at RFK's rhetoric and how it's shaping federal health policy. That's next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Mina Kim. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reshaping health policy fast.

And he's stirring some pretty deep controversy along the way. He's raised questions about vaccine safety. He's fired top federal advisors. He's released this sweeping health report that some medical doctors are calling spot on and others are calling misleading. So what is true? What is not true? And how should we navigate RFK's public health agenda?

We're joined today by Katherine Wu. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic. And Lauren Weber. She's a health and science accountability reporter at The Washington Post. Welcome to you both. Katherine, I'd like to talk with the most recent news that came out last week. This is about the Federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. What exactly does this group do? Yeah.

Yeah, so it is honestly right there in the name. They advise specifically the CDC on the national vaccine recommendations that effectively become kind of a Bible for primary care physicians and professional medical and scientific organizations all across the country. This is what doctors look to when they're administering vaccines to kids. This is what states look to when they're deciding what vaccine should be required for school entry. And this is the expert committee of independent non-government scientists that advises the CDC.

And Lauren, RFK fired all 17 of these independent vaccine experts. What was his rationale?

You know, he said what he said for a long time, which is that he's trying to return the council to gold standard science, what he says oftentimes while making public health decisions that really seem to upset the apple cart. And, you know, he replaced these 18 independent members with eight folks who some medical experts had a lot of questions about. One of those people said,

is a board member on an anti-vaccine group. Others have interesting pasts. And the amount of research that they've done in comparison to past ACIP committees is really quite different. And Lauren, the vaccine committee, he has RFK, he said, quote, he's is plagued, you know, before he's changed over the leadership here is plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become a rubber stamp for vaccines. Is there any truth to that?

Complex of interest, you know, plague all forms of academic and scientific activities.

in the United States. I will say that the numbers he often cites, he cited, I believe it was a 2009 HHS report that implied that the vast majority of the members of ACIP had significant conflicts of interest, and that was a bit of a misrepresentation of what that report actually said, which is that there had been some omissions in their forms, which were rather lengthy and hard to submit. You know, there certainly are, you know, it's important to be on the lookout for conflicts of interest for an independent body like this. They are required

to declare what pharmaceutical groups they've ever consulted or worked for. So the extent to which he is claiming that, some medical experts seem to believe is not quite right.

Well, we talked to Yvonne Maldonado, and we talked to her lots during the COVID pandemic. She was one of the members who was purged from this committee. She's a professor of global health and infectious disease at Stanford University. Let's hear a clip from her. We're in completely uncharted waters here, completely. We have no knowledge of, number one, how these committee members were selected, when they were selected, what information they had to submit.

Katherine, we kind of brushed over it, but what do we know about the members that RFK is now putting in place?

Yeah. I mean, I think that clip is pretty spot on. Not much. Uh, what we do know so far has in part been dug up by journalists trying to figure out these people. Several of them I'd say are still big question marks. They don't have extensive, I'd say across the board, this new group of eight people, which is expected to grow larger, hopefully by the time ACIP meets next week, uh, they largely don't have the, uh,

substantial background in vaccines, infectious disease, public health, epidemiology, immunology, pediatrics, that you would expect to see on a panel like this that is advising immunization practices and that the old committee very much did have. You have folks who are experts in nutrition, for instance, which is not to knock nutrition, but just seems a little out of place on a panel like this. And you do see, Lauren brought this up as well, people who

have backgrounds that just raise other questions. You know, you have people who have claimed vaccine injuries for their own children or on the board of anti-vaccine organizations. They've spoken out publicly against vaccine policies, especially ones involving COVID. And they have falsely attributed deaths to COVID vaccines or, you know, tied them to

which is just bizarre, misinformed statements that don't have evidence behind them. And to have repeated instances of this on a panel that is expected to be objective experts who are tasked with following the evidence on vaccines is,

It's understandable why a lot of experts have questions about this. And, you know, just to piggyback off of what Lauren said earlier, the former ACIP members, like, sure, there may have been conflicts that were raised, but they would generally recuse themselves from votes in which there may have been conflicts. And those conflicts were vetted over the course of months.

months, even years before these people were put on the panel. So Dr. Maldonado's quote about, you know, not really knowing the process by which these new individuals are put on the committee, that should raise a big red flag because it seems that this was almost instantaneous. These people seem to have appeared out of nowhere and there's been no transparency about how they were vetted, if at all.

It's kind of obvious, but let's just lay it out. Lauren, what is this signal then? What is this move from RFK signal about where we expect vaccination policy to go going forward? Well, a lot of public health officials are very concerned that this would seem to signal that RFK could be moving to change vaccine policy in the country. And I think it's important here to take a step back and take a look at RFK Jr.'s

I mean, he is an anti-vaccine activist. He for years led an organization, children's health defense that currently still advocates against vaccines. He has disparaged vaccines in multiple ways and falsely linked them to autism repeatedly over many, many years. You know, it's also important to note, and you know, Catherine nodded to this as well, that some of the folks that have been picked to have, have said that vaccines can be deadly. I mean, our,

RFK Jr. has called the COVID vaccine, quote, he's falsely called it the deadliest vaccine ever made. So, you know, a lot of public health experts take his past combined with his current actions and are concerned about what it means for the future of access to vaccines, which are important public health tools going forward. Katherine, doesn't this go against what he promised in the Senate confirmation hearings?

It would seem to, you know, certainly Senator Cassidy said during his confirmation hearing, I believe, that he had basically extracted a promise from Kennedy that he would not mess with ACIP. And he's since sort of seemed to muddy the waters on that, saying that, oh, you know, what's happening now is fine. It's not, you know, messing with the process.

process of ACIP. ACIP still exists, but I think a lot of people still feel betrayed by this makeover because they were hoping that it would mean that the integrity of the process and the integrity of the evidence-backed decision-making would remain intact.

And that does not seem to have been the case. You know, no one I've spoken to has been able to think of a case where the entirety of the committee was dismissed in this manner. There was no institutional knowledge left. I mean, realize that this means that the votes coming up are going to be made by a completely fresh committee who generally does not have experience with these matters and haven't worked together in this way before. And they have a lot that's at stake here. They're going to be making some very big decisions. And it's kind of like

having a bunch of interns make decisions that you would expect the CEO to make. And Lauren, is this a done deal? Or I mean, is there anything that the public can do or that legislators can do to reverse this?

That's a great question. I mean, as of right now, I believe that this power, it is within his power as HHS secretary to do this. And since we do not currently have a new CDC director, one has not yet to be confirmed, the power rests with him on this front. You know, it remains to be seen who else he may appoint to this panel. But like Catherine said, you know, these meetings start next week. That's not that long for now. And there's a lot of big decisions that will have to be made. And how will that go?

Go ahead. Go ahead, Catherine, please. I'm sorry. I was just going to say, I think to have all of these committee members so far having been apparently handpicked by the health secretary himself, I think that does also raise questions about, you know, have there been conversations in the background here? Will they hew especially to his worldviews? Normally, you do have...

a range of opinions on this panel, a range of backgrounds, people coming at this from slightly different angles. The discussions at these ECP meetings can get somewhat contentious because people do interpret the evidence a little bit differently sometimes. But for everyone to have sort of come from the same source, I think it does make you wonder, is this basically just going to be a committee that is ironically becoming what RFK claimed to have guarded against? Are they just going to rubber stamp things, but in his name?

Well, he also made some waves. On May 27th, he released a video on social media that was going to change the recommendations for the COVID vaccine. Let's hear that. I couldn't be more pleased to announce that as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.

Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot, despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children. Let's just, Catherine, let's talk about that last sentence there. Is that true? Is there medical consensus that healthy children do not need the COVID vaccine? I would not say there is medical consensus. And I would say there's at the very least medical consensus that

very young kids who have never been vaccinated before likely should be able to get a vaccine. At the very least, they should have the option to. And, you know, I think it's important to distinguish here between having a strategy where you are recommending that everyone six months and above gets a yearly booster in perpetuity. You know, I think a lot of experts do disagree on that. But to not be able to offer vaccines

a six-month-old baby who has no protection left from mom and is totally vulnerable and is young enough that their airways are small and that this virus can be deadly to them, to not give them the option to have this vaccine, I think a lot of pediatricians have pushed back against that idea. And this relates to the question about pregnancy as well. Those vaccines given in pregnancy, they absolutely protect

the mom who's carrying a baby, but they also are expected to pass protection to a newborn who wouldn't get protection otherwise. We're talking about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, agenda.

We are joined by Catherine Wu. She's a staff writer for The Atlantic. And Lauren Weber, she's a health and science accountability reporter for The Washington Post. We would love to hear from you. How do you feel about RFK's actions as HHS secretary? Give us a call now at 866-733-6786. Again, that's 866-733-6786. We'll be right back after this break. Stay with us.

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You're listening to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Mina Kim, and we are talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is Health and Human Services Secretary. He has his Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, agenda, and we are

Getting the ins and outs with Catherine Wu. She's a staff writer for The Atlantic and Lauren Weber. She's a health and science accountability reporter for The Washington Post. And again, we would love to hear from you. How do you feel about what you've heard so far about the Maha agenda? Do you agree? Do you disagree with this approach?

Send us your questions, your concerns. You can do that over social media or find us on email at kqed.org or social media, Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, Discord threads. We're at KQED Forum. Or you can give us a call right now with your questions or comments. Again, that's 866-733-6786. Again, that's 866-733-6786.

Catherine, remind us again about Kennedy's past. Where did he come from and how did he kind of rise to fame in recent years?

Yeah. So, I mean, he came up primarily as an environmental lawyer and his anti-vaccine activism appears to have had roots in that. It seems a couple of decades ago, some moms started going to him concerned that, you know, their child's behavioral or developmental issues were stemming from something that they had been exposed to. And it seems to have spun out from there. You know, keep in mind, this was just within a few years of when Andrew Wakefield published his

deeply flawed and conflicted and, you know, since a very much discredited study linking vaccines to autism. Kennedy seems to have really latched himself onto that movement and really made a name for himself, criticizing vaccines baselessly and using a lot of misinformation to stoke fears about them. And that has not really stopped since.

Rick writes, many of these different skeptics on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s restocked committee will say that these vaccines cause autism. As anyone at UCSF will tell you, this is a complete lie. You kind of mentioned it there a bit, Catherine, but Lauren, can you kind of expand on what we know about the connection between autism and the vaccines, just so it's very clear?

Yeah. What scientists and medical researchers have found in study after study, you know, done over the last several years is that there is no link between vaccines and autism. As Catherine was talking about, you know, Andrew Wakefield had drawn this correlation in a now debunked study. And since then, researchers have worked really hard to assuage the public's fears around this because...

Understandably, that's a good question to ask. But what we can say definitively is that in reams and reams and reams of scientific studies that have been done over many years and, you know, in studying many hundreds of thousands of children, there is no link between vaccines and autism.

And Catherine, autism research is actually one of the areas that HHS is pursuing instead of defunding. So are we going to be able to trust that research? What do you think about those studies that are being put forward by RFK?

Oh, it is a great question so far. I am feeling a little wary of their approach. You know, it seems that RFK has, you know, for one, commissioned a new look into autism and vaccines. And the person that he is tasked with leading that has in the past endorsed the again debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. And most scientists consider it settled science that there is no link. And yet he's commissioning a reopening of this very question, which is,

the very least is a waste of federal dollars. You know, the other autism study that he is pushing for at HHS, he already seems to have a narrative in mind and a conclusion in mind, even though he is claiming that this is an open-ended study into the causes of autism. He has basically said that he...

knows that there is some sort of environmental toxin that has been pushed out into the environment by industry, and that is the source of autism. And that does not seem to be the consensus that true experts in the field of autism have reached. It is an incredibly complex condition, probably not easily described by a single set of factors for every single case. And there are genetic contributions, environmental contributions. People think that they

that HHS will need far more resources, far more time, and far more open-mindedness to really answer this question properly. Well, let's go to the phones. Stephen in Napa, you're on the air. Hi, good morning. Thank you for this important show. I think, you know, RFK Jr. is about as qualified to be the head of HHS as Professor Erwin Corey, and I'm giving away my age there. He is...

Everything about him is wrong to be in charge of HHS. It's like I need to get a heart transplant, so I'm going to go to an auto mechanic to get it done. The guy is a joke, as is most of these appointees by definition.

the convicted felon in the White House. I don't know, there's nothing positive you could say about RFK Jr. at this stage in his life. You know, maybe he did some good things with environmental law and the Hudson River,

But, you know, it's an embarrassment for our country and it could be catastrophic for people. Yeah, Stephen, I thank you. Yeah, no, no. Thank you for sharing your thoughts there. I do want to get into that, Catherine. You know, if our vaccination schedule changes dramatically and these changes are put forward by a committee that potentially, you know, rubber stamps RFK's anti-vax ideas, what are some of the potential outcomes that could unfold?

Oh, gosh, where do we even start? So let's say at a bare minimum, a bunch of recommendations change. And this is the power that ACIP has. You know, they're basically advising the CDC on how all approved licensed vaccines in the U.S. can and should be used by the public. So they're able to say this group should get vaccines, this group, you know, by ACIP.

should not get vaccines, the strength of those recommendations, whether or not those recommendations involve a discussion with a health care provider. And so words matter incredibly here. Change something from like should to may and you could see uptake of a particular vaccine crater. You could see states back off on mandated vaccines for entry into schools.

You could see healthcare providers across the country just be less enthusiastic about saying, hey, your kid is one. It's time for MMR. Or, hey, they are 11 years old. It's time for their first HPV shot. I think the implications here are big, right? And then you go a step out from that and say, okay,

Some vaccines drop in just a couple percentage points in terms of uptake. For some, that may not be a big deal, but for measles, we're already seeing the outcomes of a change like that. The virus is so infectious, so transistible, that just a couple percentage points in the percentage of people who are vaccinated can mean the difference between no outbreak and a deadly outbreak that has already killed multiple people across North America.

I think a lot of people are very afraid that we are inching our way back through the decades to a time when people were not vaccinated enough and infectious diseases spread with abandon. Only it'll feel worse because we have the option of being protected and we're not taking it.

Parker writes, at what point will our medical professionals start ignoring the federal government's bogus guidelines on vaccines and health care more generally? I tried to get a COVID shot last month and was turned away because of the new, quote, guidelines from this health department. I expect doctors to continue using their own sound judgment and not just follow these people off a cliff.

Lauren, let's talk about the Maha report that was released last month. For those who haven't read it, what is this report? And give us, I know it's a huge report, but give us kind of a brief summary of what it said.

Yeah, it was a sweeping report that was commissioned by President Donald Trump that RFK Jr. was in charge of really corralling a bunch of cabinet members and some of his health force into writing. And essentially, he calls it a diagnosis of what's wrong with America's health. What's interesting is he focuses primarily on chronic diseases. There's not conversations around access to health care. There's not any mention of gun violence whatsoever.

There's not any mention of any of that. It's mostly focused on what he says are the chronic diseases that are killing Americans at rapid rates. And that report ran into a bit of scrutiny because my fellow colleague, Caitlin Gilbert, and I, following some of the reporting by notice, were able to speak with some experts who said that it had all the fingerprints of AI on some of the footnotes, which then led to some question over the science that underpins the report.

Well, I read a really interesting, I mean, the AI issue is obviously raises, you know, scrutiny in terms of the science and how legitimate it was that they used. But I did read a pretty compelling opinion piece in Slate, and this was by a pediatrician at Stanford. It was titled, RFK Junior's Report Actually Nails What's Wrong with American Health. So it did sort of lay out, at least the first half, right, laid out the

some major issues that we're struggling with, screen dependence, anxiety, depression, obesity. And so what did doctors like about this report? And then this opinion piece went on to scrutinize that the protocols for what we should do were completely off base. So go a little bit deeper in terms of what doctors liked and what they didn't like about the report. Lauren? No, doctors definitely...

Obesity is a huge problem in the United States. I think it's about 40% of Americans are obese. That's four in 10. That's some pretty striking numbers. Anything that looks at nutrition for the country is certainly something that most physicians are really excited about. Screen time obviously is a hot button issue with a lot of parents. The science is a little less advanced.

solid on what that means and if that is really driving the things that the report seemed to imply that it was. So there was some consternation from experts that maybe some of the prescriptions or some of the policies that the report somewhat hinted at took it a step

too far, so to speak. There was also a fair amount of science in the report, setting aside even the AI, that seemed to misstate or misrepresent some of the underlying scientific papers. But as you noted, and as some physicians have said, any movement in the United States to getting kids healthier and eating better is something that, you know, has bipartisan interest. I mean, there's a reason the Maha movement has grown so much, and it's because

I mean, it's a pretty, who's going to say they want kids to not eat healthy? I mean, that's just not a position that anyone really will take. So there's a lot of enthusiasm over those parts of the report, but I kind of the extra steps it then takes drew a lot of scrutiny.

I thought it was interesting that he has, you know, slammed pesticides over and over. And then the section on pesticides was actually quite light. I'm wondering if that's sort of illustrative that now he's running up against, you know, potentially food lobbies. And what we sort of predicted, it's everyone's, you know, in favor of getting environmental toxins out of the environment. And then, you know, you deal with chemical companies and it becomes a little bit more difficult. Did you see some of that conflict inside the report reflected and inside what we saw in the report, Lauren? Yeah.

You know, I actually was also very interested by that and had an opportunity to ask both the EPA administrator and Kennedy a question about that in a briefing of the report and got quite an interesting answer, which is, look, at the end of the day,

They compiled this report together and reading between the lines of what both EPA administrator and Kennedy had to say, I think they may have different feelings on how that's going. Kennedy publicly has said that the EPA has promised him that they're looking into that. But what has also been reported pretty clearly is that the EPA is rolling back some PFAS regulations. So I think there is some internal dynamics in Trump's cabinet itself on some disagreement over pesticides that you can kind of see reflected in the report.

Gotcha. Well, let's turn back to the phones. Jay in Palo Alto, you're on the air. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. So I'm a doctor and I see this as a pretty clear case of

a complete lack of scientific literacy. If you read or listen to some of the critiques of RFK, sometimes the only conclusion is that he's misinterpreting things. It's also a lack of recognition of expertise. So if you read a scientific article, you need to have experience reading scientific articles, and even in a specific field. If you're a scientist in one field, it doesn't make you a

scientific expert in another field. And when we're training our trainees, there's something called journal club where you sit every week or every month and you read a few articles and you talk about it and you say, well, what's the conclusion? And sometimes we say, well, actually, no, that's not the conclusion. It's something different. So there's a lack of scientific literacy, which is an education problem, and a feeling that you can read something and just come to your own conclusion, which is not the case. Thanks.

Thank you, Jay. Catherine, any comments there in terms of his scientific expertise? That there is not very much of it. I mean, I think you normally have people elected to

Well, sorry, not elected. You normally have people appointed to all of these positions across HHS. You know, the top spot is health secretary, commissioner of the FDA, the folks who are running the vaccine centers, director of the CDC, who have extensive experience in specific fields. At the very least, they have an MD, a PhD, sometimes both. And they have extensive public health experience. I think to see a lot of these positions not being elected

filled with people with those specific backgrounds, especially if they are being put in charge of, say, vaccine centers, is concerning. I think it raises questions. And, you know, if they have concerns, are they really focusing their attention on the right areas? And I think it stands to maybe shift the public discourse in ways that could be dangerous and actually counterproductive to public health.

Joan writes,

Catherine on Blue Sky writes, no one who's watching Secretary Kennedy's anti-vaccine work over the past 15 years thought he would do the right thing. The majority of public health experts did not think for one minute that he would leave the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices alone. Lauren, any comments there in terms of expectations? Is he what we thought he would be or is this turning out even potentially tougher for public health officials?

I mean, I think it depends on who you're talking to. I mean, as that poster pointed out, many folks that have watched the anti-vaccine space and have watched Kennedy and his career over the years repeatedly will tell me they're not surprised by some of the actions that they're seeing take place. I think what's also fascinating, which we've seen, too, is that he is starting to draw some heat, though, from some of his most ardent anti-vaccine supporters who are frustrated he hasn't gone online.

far enough in their eyes. We've seen some more of that chatter, especially over the weekend, where they're frustrated he hasn't taken the vaccines off the schedule altogether. So he does have this kind of interesting audience, big tent deal with Maha, where you have folks that are really interested in the Maha movement for the food and folks that are really interested for the vaccines and folks that are somewhere in the middle or aren't really sure where they end up. And I think corralling that constituency will be interesting going forward. Okay.

Katherine, how do you think about that tension? So he has, I think, some topics, you know, like what Lauren just said there, you know, the food issues, the synthetic chemicals in our food, the environmental toxins, you know, fewer pesticides. These are things that really resonate with a lot of people. And there is some truth in what he says. And there is some pretty dubious science. So how do you deal with that tension as we report going forward? And how does the public make sense of what he's saying?

Right. I think my biggest concern is how the public interprets this. And honestly, I think having that dubiousness and the occasional element of truth is what makes his mis- and disinformation so effective sometimes, right? You sprinkle in just enough truth that so many other things feel plausible. You know, you hook someone's emotional stakes with one issue, and you get them to come along with the rest.

I think, you know, he, in general, I think he speaks to common things that people care about the health of our children, the safety of the food that we're eating, you know, very

wanting less chronic disease. Those are all great things. I want those things too. But I think by playing on those relatively universal fears, it's honestly a smart and effective strategy to get people to believe that the methods by which he would like to see those things decrease or change

are plausible as well. And I think this comes back to the idea of scientific literacy, right? Not everyone in America can or should be charged with evaluating the scientific literature themselves and making informed decisions in the same way. It's a very, very enormous ask, which is why we generally have trusted public health officials to help us navigate those decisions. To have people in charge that are maybe not doing the same service is a really dangerous position to be in.

We're talking about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and his MAHA agenda. We will be right back after this break. Stay with us.

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You're listening to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Mina Kim. And we're talking about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again or MAHA agenda. We're joined by Catherine Wu. She's a staff writer for The Atlantic. And Lauren Weber. She is a health and science accountability reporter for The Washington Post.

And we'd love to hear from you. What do you think of the Maha agenda? What are your questions? What are your concerns? Maybe have you found some common ground with RFK? What topics do you hope he takes up going forward as health secretary? Email your comments, your questions to forum at kqed.org. Or you can find us on Blue Sky, on Facebook, Instagram, on Discord threads.

Again, we're at KQED Forum. Or you can give us a call right now at 866-733-6786. Again, that's 866-733-6786. Let's go straight to the phones. Marianne in Berkeley, you're on the air.

Thank you for taking my call. Thank you for this section. It has been very informative. As an alternative healthcare provider, I'm especially concerned about the way he touches upon truth.

And then veers widely from what is accepted science. My question, I'd actually like to focus on, there is, as I understand, a new variant of the COVID virus. And my question is, is the vaccine which is currently available, will that address that?

and combat the new variant, which, as I understand, will affect not only the respiratory system, but also the GI tract. Katherine, do you want to take that one?

Sure, I can try to. And I think, unfortunately, as usual, the answer is it is not 100 percent clear. I mean, it's expected that in general, most currently available vaccines should still offer some degree of protection. But I think your concern is spot on. Right. I think now in this new system where there is going to be.

large hurdles to approve and license new formulations, new recipes of COVID vaccines that cover new variants for people under the age of 64 who don't have underlying health conditions. That's just going to be much more difficult. And so there are big questions about what the fall rollout is going to look like, what options are going to be available to people, and what future updates are going to look like in future years.

I think it's right to be asking these questions because certainly protection is not going to be optimized for most of the population. And I think it's a big question about how big a difference that really will make in terms of how sick people are getting, how often people are getting long COVID, and certainly to what degree children will be protected.

David writes, Kennedy proves himself time and time again to be a conspiracy-believing anti-science fool. He is unqualified to manage a first aid clinic, much less lead the HHS. His appointment, like so many others, is a deep embarrassment for this nation. I think we have a caller with quite a different opinion. Paula in West Sacramento, you're on the air.

Yes. Hi. I'm sure we're all concerned about vaccine safety, and this is why I believe that the ACIP committee needs to be overhauled, as RFK suggested, even though I don't agree with RFK on other policies, but on this I do. And

for four reasons. One is that the ACIP committee is rife with conflicts of interest, collusion and cooperation with the vaccine industry, and this is not independent oversight. Two is that the vaccine industry has a get-out-of-jail-free approach

based on the 1986 National Childhood Vaccination Injury Act, where they are not liable for vaccine injuries, no matter what kind of injuries. Three is the oversight of...

the vaccine industry, which was supposed to happen with HHS. I don't know if it's going to happen, but they have not fulfilled their independent oversight of the vaccine industry's testing and recommendations. And so,

their findings, the vaccine industry findings are not questioned. And four, there's a lot of censorship, suppression and vilification of people concerned about vaccine safety. And it's the...

I think the people that are experts in questioning and having experience in the field should be interviewed, not filtered through people who object to them. And so if you could have on people like Dr. Alan Palmer, Dr. McCulloch, Peter McCulloch. I think Paulette.

I would love those recommendations. You can talk to one of our producers and we'll get them down. But I want, those are several big points. I've heard many of those points made from folks who question vaccine safety. Catherine, can you tell us what's true and what's not true? Yeah, and I mean, I would also love to hear Lauren's input on this. I mean, I do actually...

I think that there has been a really, really, really great process in place for vetting ACIP members in the past. I mean, the months and sometimes even years of vetting that these individuals have had to go through has worked really well. And I think that is evidenced by ACIP.

In general, how well vaccines have gone in this country. In general, the ACIP recommendations are so strong and so evidence-based that I can think of only two instances in which a CDC director has overruled those recommendations. Generally, when I speak to experts outside of ACIP, they have endorsed those same recommendations and they have kept them.

a really large sector of the American population that does opt into vaccines healthy and protected for decades at this point. ACIP has been around for, gosh, I think it's 60 years now, if I'm doing my math correctly. And up until this point, the system has worked quite well. Not saying it's perfect. There have actually been revisions over the years aimed at improving the process and maintaining its integrity. But I have not seen any

A case, a compelling case for the overhaul that the committee just went through to this degree, this suddenly before so many important votes. Lauren, is there anything you want to add there?

Yeah, I wanted to talk about the experts that that caller mentioned. She mentioned Peter McCullough, who I've run across in my reporting a bit. I wrote a story at the beginning of this year. There's a county in Idaho that it's actually it's a state health district that bans for some 300,000 residents access to the COVID vaccine through their public health clinics.

And they did that in part because Peter McCullough, one of the experts that Clark just mentioned, gave a presentation to the health board saying that he believes that COVID vaccines, you know, disparaging COVID vaccines, along with other physicians and doctors,

I will say McCullough and these other physicians have been sanctioned by National Specialty Certification Board. Some other doctors have been sanctioned by state medical licensing boards for some of these statements. So I think it is important to keep in mind that some of this information is coming from different sources that may have different agendas.

Cody writes,

Lauren, I think that's the hope that many doctors I've talked to, I'm a health reporter when I'm not in this seat, you know, really have, is that he will make some big changes. I've been following the synthetic food dyes for years. And I was a little disappointed, I think, as many people in that sort of activist community on that, in that he, you know, came forward and said, we're going to eliminate them and then made it a voluntary move.

you know, offer for the industry to pull those dyes. How successful do you think he's going to be in being able to make the changes that he promises, given the big players on the table, you know, the lobbyists, etc., that have made it challenging for a long time to change what we eat and what we take into our bodies?

I think you pointed out a fascinating example. And I mean, you saw a similar thing with his recommendation for the COVID vaccines is what he said was going to happen and what ended up happening from the CDC was slightly different. So he has a history of kind of using the bully pulpit to say he's going to do something, but he may not actually have the statutory authority to do some of the things that he promises from his position as HHS secretary. I mean, I think as you point out,

I mean, look, life expectancy in this country is not where anybody wants it to be. No public health expert is happy that the United States life expectancy is kind of staggering where it is. You know, as we've talked about earlier, people want

They want to not have chronic health conditions. They want to live longer lives. And so RFK's spotlight, RFK Jr.'s spotlight that he's put on this is certainly something that some public health experts appreciate. I think where it gets concerning is what he blames for shortening life expectancies.

You know, Catherine mentioned earlier, but he constantly and many of his speeches will talk about these environmental toxins that have caused the United States to fall behind on life expectancy. And the question is, is that, you know, is that vaccines? Is that what he means? And if so, will will will he falsely then blame vaccines for autism and other things and change access to them? That's the question that many people are watching. Yeah.

Deborah writes, RFK Jr. was appointed by Trump to allow insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies to make more money. These actions will not make America healthy again. They will cause the already marginalized populations to be even poorer and even sicker. Catherine, do you agree with that statement from Deborah? That is certainly something that a lot of experts are concerned about, I think, especially when we're thinking about the example of vaccines.

Any action that limits access to vaccines, softening recommendations, talking about them in a way that makes them seem less appealing, that is unfortunately incentive to limit coverage of those vaccines, limit access to those vaccines. So to bring back the ACIP example, what ACIP decides isn't just public health recommendations. It guides what insurers cover, what low-income kids have access to in terms of free vaccines.

And so, you know, the people that will be most immediately hit will be those who can least afford to lose access to vaccines. And I think also there is a large danger that, you know, the sort of rhetoric of mis- and disinformation, those same populations are also going to be more vulnerable to it because they may not have access to healthcare providers that can help them push back and recognize that misinformation.

Thomas writes, yes, there are huge conflicts of interest in the government. Yes, the health industry is a huge ripoff. So let's surgically remove the corruption from our health system and not remove the medical practices that are saving millions of lives. You're listening to Forum. I'm Leslie McClurg. I'm in today for Mina Kim.

We've been talking about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again or MAHA agenda with Catherine Wu. She's a staff writer for The Atlantic and Lauren Weber. She's a health and science accountability reporter for The Washington Post.

Lauren, I'd love to squeeze in here before the end of the hour, a little discussion about Dr. Casey Means. She's also a fan of the Maha agenda, and she's President Trump's pick for Surgeon General. Can you tell us a little bit about Dr. Means?

Yeah, Dr. Means certainly has been influential in the rise of Maha as a whole. She wrote a bestselling book in 2024 called Good Energy that speaks about metabolic health. She and her brother, Callie Means, seem to have been instrumental in shaping the Maha moment and shaping how RFK Jr. thinks about food and thinks about consumption.

his policy positions going forward. And after President Trump withdrew the previous Surgeon General nominee, he put forward Casey Means. And we have yet to see her nomination has yet to be considered by the Senate, but it should be in the coming weeks. And what are her qualifications? What do you expect? What do you what are her qualifications, I should say? And what do you expect from her? What do we know about where she might guide things?

So Casey's background is quite interesting. You know, RFK Jr. said that the reason he picked her, he said this in a long ex post, was that she stepped away from the system and is convinced that she will fix it. So she actually is a Stanford educated physician who was in her final month of residency, a very competitive residency in ENT.

ear, nose, and throat surgeon up in Oregon and decided to quit. And so she did not finish her surgical residency and does not currently have an active medical license and has since then promoted, you know, metabolic health as a way to make Americans healthier. She

feels very strongly that Americans should not be eating ultra-processed foods. I would imagine that if confirmed to Surgeon General, we would see a lot of rhetoric and action around that front. And a lot of some of her positions that she's put forward in her book and in her newsletters have already started to trickle into what it appears to be public health policy.

You know, she has talked about ultra processed foods. A lot of the rhetoric she used around calling out food companies that her brother also uses. And her brother currently is a White House advisor to RFK Jr. You can see that reflected in some of his comments. So we'll see how that continues to unfold.

Paul writes, I find it both sad and funny that many of the Make America Healthy Again recommendations, fewer additives, less junk food, etc., are the same things Republicans have derided as hippie wackos for recommending for the last several decades. Catherine, what do you think about this mix? I mean, I've covered that and seen that as well, that generally a lot of what RFK is pushing has not had huge support from the Republican Party. So how does this play out going forward politically, do you think?

Yeah, it's a good question. And honestly, I think my prediction is about as useful as anyone else's. I think the main things that I will be looking for are

you know, if things are starting to splinter along both scientific and political lines, you know, how are states going to treat this? Are we going to start to see a really checkered public health landscape when it comes to what states are deciding to do? And when there is an expert consensus at the top or between government and expert scientists,

What is the net effect that's going to have on trust in government and trust in science? You know, to come back to something that I think a caller said earlier, you know, you're starting to see these professional organizations diverge in opinion from what the government is saying about scientific recommendations, health recommendations. Who do people decide?

to follow. You know, the questions are very similar when it comes to elected officials at the local level. And so I think we're about to enter some very confusing times where people are really not sure who to trust. And a lot of the decision around health is punted back to the individual, which will probably not vote well for our future.

Steve on Discord writes, there's plenty of well-researched nutrition-forward health research. I would love to see Secretary Kennedy pushing much harder on that issue. And I think it's one close to his heart. I think it's terrible shame that he's gone all anti-science on the vaccine issue. Lauren, what will you be looking for this fall?

I think we'll just be tracking closely, as I'm sure Catherine will be as well, you know, RFK's juniors' continued policy decisions. You know, it's one thing, obviously, to have, you know, to get up at the bully pulpit and make proclamations. But, you know, the actual policy that he puts forward and the ripple effects that that has amid the industry, amid the United States, amid access to vaccines and so forth will obviously be something that we'll be watching closely.

A listener on Blue Sky writes, I think we underestimate how much Americans distrust medicine and are looking for natural remedies for illnesses. And to this issue is the cost. Americans are frantically looking for other options. Well, to be continued on what Secretary Kennedy brings forward. Thank you both so much. We've been joined by Catherine Wu. She's a staff writer for The Atlantic. And Lauren Weber, health and science accountability reporter for The Washington Post, who will be following your reporting closely. Thank you both so much.

Thank you for having us. Yeah, take care. And thank you to all of our listeners and our callers. I appreciate your comments. I'm Leslie McClurg in today for Mina Kim. Have a wonderful day.

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