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U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has inflicted immense damage on the United States’ vaccination program. Although Kennedy, a well-known critic of vaccinations, had promised Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican physician, that he would not undercut public confidence in vaccines during his confirmation hearings, the Trump administration has undertaken a fierce campaign to dismantle key pillars of the nation’s public health program.

Kennedy refused to strongly endorse vaccines when Texas faced an outbreak of measles shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated. He has sharply curtailed funding for vital research programs, including the development of mNRA vaccines. Soon after Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine expert, resigned in March to protest Kennedy spreading misinformation, the agency informed the public that COVID-19 vaccines would only be approved for Americans categorized as high-risk and for those over the age of 65.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has inflicted immense damage on the United States’ vaccination program. Although Kennedy, a well-known critic of vaccinations, had promised Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican physician, that he would not undercut public confidence in vaccines during his confirmation hearings, the Trump administration has undertaken a fierce campaign to dismantle key pillars of the nation’s public health program.

Kennedy refused to strongly endorse vaccines when Texas faced an outbreak of measles shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated. He has sharply curtailed funding for vital research programs, including the development of mNRA vaccines. Soon after Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine expert, resigned in March to protest Kennedy spreading misinformation, the agency informed the public that COVID-19 vaccines would only be approved for Americans categorized as high-risk and for those over the age of 65.

Kennedy fired every member of the 17-person Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which is the panel of experts in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that has been the scientific gold standard for information about vaccine guidelines. Kennedy will soon replace them with questionable figures who have been staunch vaccine skeptics. He also fired Susan Monarez, the CDC director who Trump appointed. She claims she was relieved of her job for refusing Kennedy’s directive to “preapprove the recommendations” of the vaccine advisory panel that he put together.

What is taking place is nothing less than a full-scale war on public health.

Trump’s point man is the nephew of the president who pushed through one of the most consequential pieces of legislation related to vaccines, which strengthened the federal infrastructure for supporting state and local governments in their efforts to disseminate them. U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s landmark Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962 embodies the partnership between government, medicine, and science that once sought to make all........

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