Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Health Subcommittee in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2025.

The development and fine-tuning of vaccines for COVID-19 unquestionably helped pull America, and much of the world, out of a pandemic that just a few years ago claimed more than 1.2 million lives in this country alone and ravaged the global economy.

In the 2023-2024 flu season, the influenza vaccine was credited with preventing an estimated 7,900 deaths.

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Vaccines against measles, a highly contagious disease that used to kill hundreds of children in the U.S. every year, helped eradicate it in this country 25 years ago.

And thanks to the polio vaccine, that crippling disease was nonexistent in the U.S. for three........

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