RFK Jr. Denied He Is Anti-Vaccine During His Confirmation Hearing. Here’s His Record

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the most famous vaccine skeptics in the U.S., tried to distance himself from his decades of anti-vaccine sentiment during his Jan. 29 hearing to be confirmed as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). If confirmed, Kennedy would oversee agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health.

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“News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety,” Kennedy said in his opening statement before the Senate Committee on Finance, prompting a protester to shout, “He lies!” Kennedy added that all of his children are vaccinated—a decision he has previously said he regrets—and said vaccines “play a critical role in health care.”

Some Republican senators accepted Kennedy’s pro-vaccine comments at the hearing. But many senators—including Oregon’s Ron Wyden, a Democrat—pressed Kennedy on discrepancies between his past public statements—in which he has repeatedly questioned the safety and necessity of vaccines and said they are linked to autism and chronic diseases—and his sanitized comments during the hearing. “Mr. Kennedy, all of these things cannot be true,” Wyden said. “So are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all those podcasts?”

Here’s what to know about Kennedy’s history on vaccines.

What RFK has said in the past about vaccines

Despite Kennedy’s efforts to distance himself from the anti-vaccine movement during the hearing, he has “made a career” out of “planting seeds of doubt about vaccines,” says James Hodge, director of the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University.

Kennedy has for years questioned vaccines and spread misinformation about them, ignoring broad scientific consensus about their safety and efficacy to argue that they have not been adequately studied. He has also perpetuated the thoroughly disproven idea that vaccines cause autism. “I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” Kennedy said in a 2023 interview with Fox News. Kennedy repeated that view in private emails recently published by STAT, along with other false claims—including that one COVID-19 vaccine had a “100% injury rate” in early clinical trials.

He “has a series of beliefs that are not supported by science,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in a November interview with TIME.

Kennedy’s views are amplified by Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a nonprofit he founded and recently resigned from as he’s considered for HHS secretary. CHD’s website implies, without qualitative evidence, that vaccines are to blame for rising rates of autism and chronic disease in the U.S. The organization has also brought legal challenges against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and laws that allow minors to be vaccinated without parental consent.

What happened with the measles outbreak in Samoa

Kennedy and CHD have reportedly exploited tragedy to spread anti-vaccine sentiment. In 2018, two babies in Samoa died after they received improperly prepared measles, mumps, and rubella shots, leading to a temporary pause on vaccine distribution. Even after regular vaccination resumed, some parents were afraid to have their children vaccinated, worsening a dramatic drop in the small South Pacific nation’s vaccination rates.

In the aftermath of the incident, Kennedy traveled to Samoa and met with numerous health officials, apparently to perpetuate anti-vaccine ideas. (Kennedy denied that characterization during the hearing, saying that his trip had “nothing to do with vaccines.”) CHD also used the situation as fodder for social media posts questioning vaccines, as NBC News recently reported.

Not long after Kennedy’s visit, a measles outbreak killed 83 people—most of them children—in Samoa. While Kennedy has repeatedly denied responsibility for the outbreak, many scientific experts disagree. Offit said in November that there is “no better example” of the real-world consequences of vaccine skepticism.

Kennedy again denied blame during the hearing. “You cannot find a single Samoan who will say, ‘I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy,’” he said.

Kennedy’s stance on banning vaccines

During the hearing, Kennedy said he will “do nothing, as HHS secretary, that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking” vaccines, saying specifically that he supports the polio and measles vaccines.

But his past actions—and ongoing alliances—make experts and lawmakers doubt those assurances. In 2021, on behalf of CHD, Kennedy unsuccessfully petitioned the FDA to reverse its emergency authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and refrain from fully approving any COVID-19 shots in the future, according to the New York Times. The following year, Aaron Siri, a lawyer working closely with Kennedy, petitioned the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine, the Times reported in December. (The petition is reportedly still under review.) And, as of 2024, Kennedy had ongoing financial relationships with law firms suing vaccine manufacturers.

Kennedy tried to walk back some of his most blatantly anti-vaccine statements during the hearing, sparking anger from several lawmakers. “There is no reason that any of us should believe that you have reversed the anti-vaccine views that you have promoted for 25 years,” said New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat.

How Kennedy could shape vaccine policy as HHS secretary

HHS wouldn’t need to ban or rescind approvals of vaccines to affect U.S. health policy, Hodge says. His research has outlined numerous ways that a Kennedy-led HHS could erode current vaccine standards, from adding additional warning labels to vaccine packaging to refusing to stock the Strategic National Stockpile with shots needed for emergencies. Kennedy outlined some similar possibilities in his 2023 book Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, listed others during the hearing, including making it easier for people to sue vaccine makers based on “junk science” or seek compensation for allegedly vaccine-related health issues. “No one should be fooled,” Warren said. If confirmed, “Kennedy will have the power to undercut vaccines and vaccine manufacturing across our country.”

Even seemingly small changes, Hodge says, have the potential to chip away at the confidence Americans have in vaccines, thereby reducing vaccination rates and increasing the chances of disease outbreaks. Hodge also points to three major pathways by which Kennedy could act. First, he could influence people who hold key roles at the FDA and CDC as well as on those agencies’ vaccine advisory committees, potentially slow-walking the approval of new vaccines and influencing guidance about which already-approved shots should be recommended for the general public and covered by insurance.

Second, his HHS could attach strings to federal funding for vaccines. While states set their own vaccine policies, including which are required for children entering school, the CDC provides much of the funding states use to carry out their vaccination programs. The federal government could require states to comply with certain policies set by Kennedy’s HHS if they want to continue to receive that money, Hodge says.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Kennedy would have a major and official platform from which to spread vaccine skepticism. “The anti-public-health impact of that, from a pure influencer perspective, is profound—even though it doesn’t require any legal action,” Hodge says. “It would be damaging beyond all control.”