Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine campaign is not what you call subtlety. For decades, he has questioned the safety and effectiveness of various childhood vaccines, insisting that some of them cause autism, lie, and dismissed evidence against his views. No matter how he denies it, Kennedy is the "old-fashioned anti-vaxxer".

Kennedy, who joined him in the anti-vaccine campaign when he became U.S. Secretary of Health, brought his firmest, oldest ally in the anti-vaccine campaign. Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services is filled with politically appointed people who see the vaccine as opposed to Kennedy’s. However, these officials also questioned the safety and practicality of at least some vaccines and tried to slow or stop using them.

These officials include new FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and his new special assistant Tracy Beth Høeg. Vinay Prasad, the new director of the FDA center, oversees the regulation of the vaccine; Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the National Institutes of Health. Unlike Kennedy, they have advanced degrees in science, medicine, or public health and have published scientific papers, often directly collaboratively. Each of them has at least endorsed some of the childhood vaccines and even delayed some of Kennedy’s most blatant vaccine-misleading vaccines, such as criticizing his misleading claims that MMR shooting can lead to autism. When contacting comments via email, Emily Hilliard, deputy press secretary of HHS, described my accomplices as “qualified physicians and researchers who have a long-term commitment to evidence-based medicine”, who “was brought to HHS to restore scientific rigor, transparency and public trust and cannot blindly confirm the status quo.” (The emails sent to the FDA and the NIH requested interviews with each of these four officials, either without a reply or redirected me to HHS.)

These newly appointed people can also be described more concisely as common counter-trends who question the value of the vaccine. Their immunization policy approach is less extreme, more involved in the evidence than Kennedy’s approach, and more academic. It is precisely because these officials’ views have the legitimacy that most of the secretary’s usual allies lack, that they may be more effective than Kennedy to undermine the US’s protection of the disease.

In stark contrast to Kennedy, this new cohort (you could call them new anti-vaxxers) is usually built in their respective scientific fields. Makary, for example, has been praised for pioneering several surgical procedures. In the 2010s, hematologist and control scientist Prasad gained recognition for his strict (albeit precise medicine and cancer drugs). Everyone at least admits the immunity of life-saving ability. When they argue about vaccines, they often do so in respected scientific sites and analyze the evidence.

There is no risk without medical intervention, and at the broadest level, what these officials demand seems to conform to the basic principles of public health: thoroughly test the vaccine before it debuts and a careful review of the relative pros and cons of each immunity. But past actions by these officials show that they do not always weigh these scales fairly or objectively.

The four officials began publicly mergers in common early vaccination. None of them have been trained as infectious disease experts or vaccine scientists. But in their public comments and in several publications, they believe the virus is far less dangerous than most public health officials think, and the measures taken by the United States are too extreme. They opposed authorization and boosters, especially for children and young and healthy adults; they exaggerated the side effects of the camera, praised the benefits of gaining immunity through infection, and refuted the idea that people who already have Covid should still shoot later. In October 2020, Bhattacharya and a group of colleagues advocated reopening society before the vaccine debut. While initially supporting the Covid vaccine, Makary continues to praise the Omicron variant of the virus (killing an average of 2,200 Americans per day) as a "natural vaccine." Meanwhile, Prasad said that COVID-vaccine manufacturers should be sued for rare side effects captured and disclosed in standard monitoring. Høeg, who worked with Florida surgeon Joseph Ladapo, influenced his decision to recommend a Covid vaccine for healthy children.

Many Americans are very nervous about developing vaccines with new technologies developed under crisis conditions. But Bhattacharya, Makary, Prasad and Høeg far outweighed caution. They question the legitimacy of data supporting duplicate immunity and sometimes actively recommend against it.

Their criticism of vaccination has gone beyond Covid. It is important that Prasad allows certain vaccines, but it also questions the value of RSV vaccines during pregnancy. He believes the evidence for the annual flu shot is “extremely poor” and devalues ​​all vaccines for lifesaving doctors. He suggested that Kennedy randomize different parts of the United States to determine an optimal dosing strategy to identify an experiment that can prevent children from timely accessing safe and effective lenses. Hogg also called for an overhaul of how the country can test, approve and regulate vaccines. She severely criticized the U.S. pediatric immunization program, which includes more vaccines than Denmark’s citizenship. Makary, while more grumpy in public comments, is still declining at times, urging parents to vaccinate their children with measles and downplaying the risk of the virus.

As a group, these officials are generally more optimistic than other researchers about Kennedy’s false claims about vaccines and autism. For example, Bhattacharya said during a confirmation hearing that he firmly believed that the vaccine would not cause autism, but added that he would not reject more research on the issue.

Hilliard wrote on HHS that by interrogating vaccines, these officials are only doing what science requires: “Quiting data quality, highlighting past decision-making limitations or advocating better trials is not anti-science – it is anti-science – it is The golden standard of science. "But really strict science also depends on the basis of previous data, and even if they contradict many of their questions, these officials are repeatedly asking and answering them. Risk: Asking certain U.S. jurisdictions to postpone child vaccination, or even skipping certain shots, could make the entire community more vulnerable to the disease.

Fundamentally, like Kennedy, they believe that vaccines should usually be optional for more Americans, a view that confers population-level benefits to broad immunity to the disease. Fundamentally, like Kennedy, they believe that vaccines that have passed strict safety and efficacy tests have successfully managed hundreds of millions of people, and that lives saved around the world are not safe or unnecessary. If these positions further break it down into policies, they could waste the country’s resources to conduct unnecessary testing, generate misleading data and erode confidence across public health.

The officials have turned new powers toward common vaccines, some of which are still authorized for emergency use only. The FDA has delayed full approval of the Novavax Covid vaccine, and even though the lens has passed these studies and has been safely managed to people for years, it is reported that even if the lens has passed the effectiveness of these lenses, it is therefore required to make a new (very expensive and laborious) effort to achieve the effectiveness of the shooting. The agency may also require all COVID-VACCINE manufacturers to submit new effectiveness data to update lenses to include new variants of the virus, which basically treats them as brand new vaccines and has the potential to logically generate new formulas for new common vaccines. (Experts are concerned that the agency will apply the same logic to the flu vaccine and make the same result.) The FDA can also revoke emergency use authorizations, such as the authorization of the pediatric Covid vaccine, which Prasad has said, which should be caused from childhood immunization programs.

These officials have limited powers: the CDC (still without a permanent director), rather than the FDA, recommends the use of a child immunization program. However, at a meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice, Høeg was a liaison (an unconventional option) for the FDA, and Jason Schwartz, a vaccine-policy expert at Yale University, told me that he told me that he has historically played a role filled by a career scientist at the Center for Biological Assessment and Research. (After postponing to HHS, the FDA responded to a request for comment, noting that Høeg holds the title of "Senior Clinical Science Advisor" on CBER, a title she apparently gave her after the meeting. However, Høeg explicitly questioned the safety and effectiveness of multiple vaccines, including shootings, which could affect discussions, final votes, and the final decision of the CDC directors to accept the panel's recommendations, Lee and Schwartz said.

Bhattacharya's swing will likely outperform its own agency, too. Under this administration, NIH has canceled grants for hundreds of infectious disease-centric studies, including dozens of grants to see vaccine intake and hesitation. Now, with Bhattacharya headed, the agency is following Kennedy’s instructions to lead a $50 million study for the causes of autism, which seems to have provided an answer to the question. Asked in a recent interview politics Whether Bhattacharya can raise any mRNA-centric science, “many now think mRNA is a bad platform.” If the U.S. ignores the hesitation of vaccines, or researchers have fewer resources to develop new vaccines, then no matter who runs the FDA or CDC, the immunity in this country will stagnate.

Modern American politics still thinks that certain positions are also Anti-Vaccine: Trump’s initial choice against CDC director Dave Weldon, who has repeatedly raised the idea of ​​a debunking link between vaccines and autism, whose nomination was withdrawn by the White House in March. Kennedy's own confirmation hearing was satisfactory and focused on vaccines. Since then, in official news reports and interviews, he has softened some of his stances, such as defeating the protective power of MMR shooting, so much so that he has angered his extremist base. Bhattacharya and Makary face less resistance at their own hearings, during which they both praised the importance of the vaccine. The vaccine they launched is not as skewed as Kennedy, but it is more difficult to fight.

When Kennedy started a new position, there were concerns that he would immediately bring the sledgehammer to the U.S. vaccine. What he and his new team have done have stopped because they can’t eliminate shots. They're more about creating new barriers, Luciana Borio, a former acting chief scientist at the FDA, told me. But even seemingly minor obstacles can mark a substantial philosophical shift: HHS once viewed U.S. vaccines as censorship, life-saving technologies, now viewed them as dubious tools with a vague trail and pushed to the public by the company. By doubting that vaccines can safely protect people, fewer skeptics of HHS will help legitimize Kennedy – until all their views, as they begin, they may have started and begin to feel completely reasonable.