Despite concerns from some members—notably, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana—the Senate ultimately confirmed him as HHS secretary on February 13. In the six months since, he has confirmed almost every fear held by his skeptics, with his latest moves being the restoration of the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, announced Thursday, and the cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars in mRNA vaccine research funding earlier this month. Whereas the first Trump administration can be largely credited with the mRNA breakthrough, thanks to its $12 billion private-public partnership known as Operation Warp Speed, RFK’s HHS is reversing course.
Paul Offit, the head of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania and the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, told TMD that he thinks RFK’s changes have nothing to do with safety or improving vaccine quality, but are “solely for the purpose of making vaccines more feared, less available, and more expensive.”
From the jump, Kennedy’s leadership had a distinctly vaccine-skeptical flavor. When measles cases exploded in West Texas earlier this year, leading to 100 hospitalizations and the deaths of two children, Kennedy downplayed the outbreak’s severity, arguing that “healthy diets,” Vitamin A supplements, and cod liver oil were effective measures against the disease. (Kennedy did eventually write in a Fox News op-ed that vaccines prevented measles and that “the decision to vaccinate is a personal one.”)
In May, Kennedy announced the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy pregnant women and children. In June, Kennedy removed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing them with a smaller, hand-picked group that includes two prominent vaccine skeptics: Dr. Robert Malone, who has cast doubt on the safety of mRNA vaccines, and Vicky Pebsworth, who leads the National Vaccine Information Center, a group that argues there is a link between vaccines and autism despite all the evidence to the contrary. Just weeks after the committee’s reshuffling, it voted to no longer recommend flu vaccines that contain the preservative thimerosal. The vote followed a presentation by Lyn Redwood, a longtime Kennedy confidante and the former leader of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, whom Kennedy brought on as a special government employee. One panel member, Dr. Cody Meissner, who teaches at Dartmouth University’s Geisel School of Medicine, was perplexed. “I’m not quite sure how to respond to this presentation,” he said. “There is no scientific evidence that thimerosal has caused a problem.”
Last week, HHS made its latest institutional shift toward vaccine skepticism, announcing on Thursday that the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, which had been dormant since 1998, would be revived. The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act created the task force as part of the law’s mandate to produce a report on the state of childhood vaccine safety. However, it was wound down in 1998, with its final report noting: “Concerns about vaccine safety become increasingly prominent when effective use of vaccines in a population reduces the incidence of the target diseases.”
National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya claimed that the move would bring greater scientific oversight to the childhood vaccine sector. “By reinstating this Task Force, we are reaffirming our commitment to rigorous science, continuous improvement, and the trust of American families,” he said in a statement. The revived task force is set to deliver its first formal report to Congress in two years, with subsequent reports scheduled every two years following.
The announcement follows Kennedy’s July announcement that he would streamline the Vaccine Injury Compensation System (VICP), also created in 1986 by the act, allowing people he referred to as “vaccine victims” to receive compensation for any injuries proven or presumed to be caused by a vaccine. But the VICP was created to hasten and ease vaccine development, as the existing legal framework made it fraught to develop new vaccines. “Companies just bailed,” said Offit. “The Reagan administration stepped in … and stopped the bleeding,” by helping to pass a law that routed civil court claims against vaccine makers into the VICP. “What [Kennedy] wants to do is reopen that.”
The decision to reinstate the task force and “court” was technically the result of a lawsuit, but it was hardly imposed on HHS under duress. Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group founded by Kennedy, sued the agency earlier this year, arguing that reviving the task force was part of Kennedy’s “essential duties” as secretary. HHS quickly settled the lawsuit, with the task force’s resurrection as part of the agreement (during his confirmation process, Kennedy promised Cassidy he would not use “sue-and-settle” techniques—of which this case is a textbook example— to change government policy).
However, even more notable than the institutional changes at HHS, Kennedy’s most lasting legacy regarding vaccines might lie in the roads not taken—that is, the cancellation of funding for research into new vaccines. mRNA immunization is a new, innovative form of vaccine technology that can be updated and manufactured far more quickly than traditional forms. It was responsible for the speed and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, with the two-dose Pfizer vaccine ready under emergency-use authorization in just nine months. And that success has led to immense interest in using it for other immunizations. A June 2025 paper on mRNA cancer vaccines found there were “over 60 treatments in development” with “first commercial approvals expected by 2029.”
But, on August 5, HHS announced a “coordinated wind-down” of $500 million in funding for research into mRNA vaccines.
“That has raised a lot of eyebrows and concern,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s medical school, told TMD. He pointed out that yanking federal support would severely curtail the future prospects of several mRNA vaccine research projects, including efforts to develop vaccines for cancer and a “universal” flu vaccine.
Despite criticism from the medical community, Kennedy’s campaign against vaccines looks set to continue apace. Schaffner and Offit said several types of vaccines were likely to be targeted next. The decision to pull mRNA funding also “casts a shadow on the currently available mRNA vaccines,” said Schaffner, including most current vaccines that protect against coronavirus. Offit also predicted that vaccines containing aluminum adjuvants—which include the hepatitis, tetanus, and HPV vaccines—may be next in the HHS crosshairs.
