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Kennedy is funding dangerous science to validate his anti-vaccine agenda 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s campaign to undermine the importance of vaccines has taken another dangerous turn.  

What had been an effort to silence the views of public health experts has evolved into an active pursuit of ill-conceived research to further legitimize Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda. Despite promises made during his Senate confirmation hearings, Kennedy’s actions have eroded public trust in the most effective weapon we have to fight some of the world’s deadliest diseases.  

Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded a $1.6 million no-bid grant to two married Danish researchers whose prior research on vaccines had been widely discredited by respected members of their home country’s scientific community.  

The researchers sought to conduct a study where they would withhold a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine to 7,000 newborns while administering it to 7,000 others to see if the vaccine’s recipients would experience any negative health effects. 

Such research puts lives in danger. Hepatitis B can be deadly — it claims nearly 2,000 U.S. lives each year. Additionally, experts have determined that vaccine delays increase the chance of chronic infection that could lead to a “high risk” of liver disease at a young age.  

By 2030, it’s expected the hepatitis B vaccine will have saved more than 40 million lives globally. Putting thousands of babies in potential harm’s way by denying them a therapy that’s been proven for over 50 years is counterintuitive and inhumane. The fact that the U.S. actually sanctioned the study is deeply troubling. 

The timing of HHS’s support of the controversial research — a “funding priority” for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and HHS, according to a Nov. 14 email from a CDC senior advisor — is no coincidence. It was intended to bolster the administration’s decision to stop recommending birth-dose hepatitis B vaccinations for children, an edict the CDC announced just a month later.  

HHS’s selection of Danish researchers to produce the controversial research is also telling. Last August, Kennedy demanded the retraction of a Denmark study that found no connection between aluminum, a component in many vaccines, and child chronic disease. The study’s findings were conclusive — the project was “one of the largest of its kind” and followed 1.2 million children for more than 20 years. 

Kennedy’s demand was denied. When Kennedy couldn’t silence the Denmark study that contradicted his anti-vaccine theories, he tried to create his own research by “handpicking” officials at HHS who commissioned the Danish couple to conduct their project. HHS has reportedly suspended the study, yet department officials have indicated that it will resume. 

According to Rolling Stone, one HHS representative stated that “the study will proceed as planned once the study protocols are finalized.” Another HHS spokesperson continued to defend the research, saying that it’s “designed to answer important questions about the broader health effects of the hepatitis B vaccine,” and that it “aims to fill existing evidence gaps to help inform global hepatitis B vaccine policy.”  

The public health community rightly sounded the alarm over the moral vacancy of withholding life-saving vaccines to thousands of children. One former CDC official said the proposed methodology was “nowhere near where a study of this type should be both scientifically and ethically.”

When the top health official in the nation questions the safety of vaccines, the message it sends is loud and destructive. HHS’s sponsorship of the Danish research is proof of legitimacy to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine followers. And for those who rely on experts for guidance on how to protect themselves and others from spreading serious diseases, it’s a major public health setback. 

In an era when trust in governmental institutions hovers near record lows, federally-funded research that puts people in danger for the purpose of validating fringe claims doesn’t advance public health — it only causes confusion.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll underscores the scale of this damage where an alarming number of respondents expressed a lack of confidence in the CDC. “Six years ago, 85 percent of Americans, and 90 percent of Republicans, trusted the CDC. Now less than half trust the CDC on vaccines,” said Kaiser Family Foundation President Drew Altman.

We’re already seeing the cost. Measles, which was eradicated in the U.S. as of 2000, has returned with new outbreaks across multiple states and college campuses, while overall immunization rates for children are on the decline.  

Defenders argue Kennedy gives voice to those left out of the public health conversation — that mistrust comes from exclusion. There’s truth in that: Despite the best intentions, health agencies have failed to communicate openly, acknowledge mistakes or meet communities where they are.  

But Kennedy is exploiting these failures to promote misguided views on vaccine safety — and this is already having real consequences and putting people’s lives in danger. Public health thrives on trust — trust in our health institutions and in our elected leaders to provide actionable, science-based recommendations to help the American people make important health decisions.

And if that trust is gone, where will we go to find the answers?  

Lyndon Haviland, DrPH, MPH, is a distinguished scholar at the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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