Just like families across America, Georgia families depend on a stable and predictable vaccine system to keep their children safe and communities healthy. Although US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has promised Americans “we’re not taking away vaccines from anybody,” his actions tell a different story … in a moment when Georgia is a hot political commodity.
While offering public reassurances about vaccine access, the Secretary has upended the nation’s vaccine infrastructure — rescinding long-standing “best practice” schedules, firing most of the CDC’s advisory panel for the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and signaling sweeping changes to not only the FDA’s vaccines approvals process, but America’s entire immunization framework.
For Georgia families, the widening gap between promise and policy will prove costly.
Recent reporting noted that Secretary Kennedy’s access pledge echoes a familiar pattern of mendacious promises in US healthcare policy. After President Obama told the American people, “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor,” Politifact dubbed his promise the “lie of the year.” Americans discovered the reality the hard way when new regulations purposefully limited our choices.
Today we have a leading candidate for healthcare Fib of the Year. Secretary Kennedy insists that everybody will have access to all the vaccines under previous CDC recommendations -- even as he oversees the aggressive dismantling of the system that ensures Americans' access to vaccines.
Earlier this year, HHS unilaterally trashed long-standing childhood immunization guidelines. While recommendations aren’t mandates, they serve as the foundation for insurance coverage, state school requirements, and pediatrician-aligned guidance. Without them, parents face confusion about what their children need while insurers limit coverage.
We must also consider the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The VICP provides an efficient way for justice and compensation for those few Americans who experience ultra-rare injuries from vaccines – about one in every 1 million doses. Importantly, the VCIP incentivizes developers to continue advancing the science of vaccines and safer, more efficient manufacturing.
After removing almost half of VICP’s advisory panel, Secretary Kennedy has expressed a desire to expand the list of conditions eligible for compensation, including autism. This despite extensive scientific evidence showing no link between vaccines and autism. None. Zero.
The only people this upside-down anti-vaccine policy helps are trial lawyers who will have a windfall of dubious cases fall into their laps. If the VICP collapses, vaccine manufacturers will have to fight potentially thousands of factually baseless (but highly emotional) cases. The result would be that being in the vaccine business becomes financially risky, resulting in a dramatic reduction in new research and development into new and better products. Fewer available vaccines mean less access, regardless of what the Secretary promises.
Actions by Secretary Kennedy, our nation’s top health official, erodes faith and trust in vaccines and parents naturally grow hesitant. Hesitancy translates directly into lower immunization rates. Lower rates mean disease outbreaks, which is exactly what Georgia is experiencing with measles. Measles!
President Trump faces a choice. He can allow Secretary Kennedy and his coterie of anti-science zealots to continue along their current course of eroding access and confidence in vaccines, or the President can insist on policies that match the Secretary’s forgotten promises to maintain robust vaccine recommendations, preserve the integrity of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and support the infrastructure that makes immunization safe, accessible and affordable.
Shortly, the Peach State will be home to arguably the most watched and expensive Senate race in the country. Republicans can’t afford to alienate voters who want to protect their children from the harms of infectious disease.
More importantly, Georgians should not suffer due to a vaccine policy built on lies. Secretary Kennedy’s lies.
Peter J. Pitts, a former FDA Associate Commissioner, is President of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
