Opinion – RFK Jr. has turned the CDC into ‘a zombie organization’

On Dec. 5, the members of Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, all appointed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to withdraw its recommendation of a Hepatitis B vaccine for all newborn babies — and to limit at birth shots to babies whose mothers were infected with the virus. Because Hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted disease, the panel indicated, most babies do not need protection.

Infectious disease experts were appalled.

Since 1991, when universal vaccination was implemented, Hepatitis B virus infections in children and teens, which can lead to liver failure and death, have decreased by 99 percent. Harmful side effects from the shots are extremely rare. Some 70 percent of Americans afflicted with Hepatitis B do not know they have the disease for quite some time; 14 percent of pregnant women have not been tested for it before they give birth.

And Hepatitis B can be transmitted from toothbrushes, towels, combs and even microscopic amounts of blood on shared surfaces. Before 1991, half of the cases in children resulted from transmission from an infected mother.

The Advisory Committee cited no new studies to justify its recommendations. RFK Jr., it is worth noting, has accused the CDC of covering up and manipulating data showing links between Hepatitis B vaccines and autism.

In less than a year, Kennedy, who has made baseless claims about the dangers posed by vaccines for decades, turned the CDC, once considered the global “gold standard” of public health agencies, into what Demetre Daskalakis, the former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, describes as “a zombie organization.”

Republicans in the U.S. Senate, four of whom are physicians, committed malpractice when they voted to make Kennedy HHS secretary.

Before casting the decisive vote to bring Kennedy’s nomination to the floor of the Senate, Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the Health Committee, got him to promise to support the recommendations of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; to leave on the CDC website a statement that vaccines do not cause autism; and to “do nothing to make it difficult for or discourage people from taking vaccines.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the only Republican to vote against Kennedy’s confirmation, asserted that he would “not condone the re-litigation of proven cures.” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) was even more blunt: “Republicans are choosing to pretend like it is in any way believable that RFK Jr. won’t use his new power to do exactly the thing he has been trying to do for decades: undermine vaccines.”

Since then, Kennedy has opposed vaccine mandates for measles during an outbreak in Texas, even though a 95 percent vaccination rate is needed to achieve “herd immunity.” He has restricted recommendations for who should get COVID shots to senior citizens and people with health problems; removed combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccines as an option for children under four; ended a rule tying federal reimbursements for hospitals to the vaccination rates of their staff; and removed all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices appointed by his predecessors.

Kennedy has cut $500 million for development of mRNA vaccines, alleging without evidence that they fail to protect against upper respiratory infections; funded no-bid contracts for research on potential links between vaccination and autism, despite at least 25 large studies finding no such links; attached an asterisk to the statement on the CDC website, “vaccines do not cause autism,” with an explanation that removing it would violate an agreement with Cassidy, even though “it is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”

In September, Cassidy, who said Kennedy assured him he “would work within the current vaccine approval and safety monitoring system and not establish parallel systems,” declared, “effectively we’re denying vaccines.” A doctor who specialized in liver diseases in Baton Rouge and credited birth dose vaccinations with preventing 20 infections there each year, Cassidy is now powerless to roll back an approach to Hepatitis B vaccinations that he believes “makes America sicker.”

A comprehensive study, published this year in The Lancet, found that vaccines are safe, cost-effective and have saved 154 million lives throughout the world since 1974, 95 percent of them children younger than five. The authors estimate that routine vaccinations will prevent 508 million illnesses in the U.S. during the lifetime of children born between 1994 and 2023, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1 million deaths, 90,000 of them from Hepatitis B. These vaccinations will save Americans $540 billion in direct costs, and an additional $2.7 trillion in societal outlays.

The authors warn, however, that misinformation and disinformation threaten the massive gains in public health produced by vaccination programs.

That warning was issued before Kennedy became secretary of Health and Human Services and the CDC became “a zombie organization,” and well before a measles outbreak this month in South Carolina, in which the vast majority of infected children had not been not vaccinated.

Glenn C. Altschuler is The Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

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