RFK Jr. unveils sweeping federal initiative to find evidence of vaccine injuries

Under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the federal health department is undertaking an agency-wide effort to focus on injuries claimed to be related to vaccines.

In a press announcement Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) laid out four aspects of the large-scale initiative. The first is a new clinic at the National Institutes of Health that is “dedicated to studying and caring for patients experiencing health problems following vaccination.” Despite only being announced today, the clinic actually opened October 5, and Kennedy secretly attended its ribbon-cutting ceremony alongside other high-level Trump administration officials. It’s unclear why his visit and the clinic’s opening were not disclosed by the Trump administration, but they were reported by Bloomberg Law at the time.

Another aspect of the initiative is a proposal to reimburse doctors for reporting possible injuries from vaccines to a federal system called VAERS, or the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. VAERS, which is run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a common focus of anti-vaccine advocates, who incessantly misuse it. The system is meant to be an indiscriminate dragnet of any potential safety concerns linked to vaccines, providing a sensitive early warning monitoring system. Anyone, including members of the public, can submit an unvetted report.

The CDC continuously monitors and assesses those reports, finding that the vast majority are not actually related to vaccinations. Still, anti-vaccine advocates—particularly those involved in litigation seeking money for alleged vaccine injuries—often point to the trove of unsubstantiated reports on VAERS as evidence that vaccines are dangerous.

“Dangerous”

HHS said the proposal to reimburse doctors for filing VAERS reports will “reduce barriers to physician reporting and encourage health care professionals to document suspected adverse events following vaccination.” The announcement did not make clear how doctors would be paid for VAERS reports, but The New York Times reported that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) may introduce a new billing code to reimburse doctors.

In addition to providing a financial incentive for doctors to submit reports, the HHS is also working to overhaul VAERS to make it “simpler, more accessible, and easier to use.” That includes making the reporting system available on mobile devices—so doctors can report vaccine injuries on the go—and adding more tools for researchers studying vaccine injuries. The CDC has already awarded a nearly $1 million contract to a Virginia-based Christian tech company called SPN Solutions Inc.

Last, Kennedy’s initiative will also require electronic health records to include information about vaccine injuries. This requirement will be carried out through the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, which oversees federal health information technology standards. HHS said that by adding vaccine injuries to electronic medical records, healthcare providers will have a “more complete picture of a patient’s medical history.”

“We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries—not dismiss or gaslight them,” Kennedy said in a statement. “President Trump and I are building a health system that takes them seriously, follows the evidence, and uses what we learn to make vaccines safer. This is how we earn back trust in our public health institutions.”

Health and medical experts agree that monitoring post-market vaccine safety events is of vital importance—VAERS has been acting as a sensitive early warning system since 1990, and the federal government has several other overlapping safety surveillance systems in place as well. Boosting research on uncommon adverse reactions to vaccines is also welcomed. But experts expect that Kennedy’s goals are not to improve safety or advance research, but instead to continue attacking life-saving vaccines by inflating risks and overemphasizing rare outcomes. He and his anti-vaccine allies have long done this using VAERS in its current form.

“Somehow the Trump-RFK Jr anti-vax agenda keeps getting more corrupt and dangerous,” Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, said in a statement Thursday. “Now Secretary Kennedy wants to bribe doctors to claim they see vaccine harm without proof, which is just asking for higher insurance costs and a rash of waste, fraud and abuse.”