A Great Day for Children

On February 13, 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). For more than 20 years, he had been an anti-vaccine activist, science denialist, and conspiracy theorist. Now, as the leader of the nation’s premier health agency, with a budget of about $1.8 trillion, RFK Jr. had the power to convert activism into public policy. In only one year, he has taken a sledgehammer to vaccines.

On May 27, 2025, without input from any medical or scientific advisory group, RFK Jr. unilaterally declared that HHS would no longer recommend the COVID vaccine for healthy young children or pregnant women. This decision was made despite studies showing that about 2,000 children had been admitted to the hospital the previous year, that half were previously healthy, that 20% were admitted to the intensive care unit, and that most were unvaccinated. In addition, pregnant women are more likely to suffer severe COVID compared with women of the same age who aren’t pregnant. Under the leadership of RFK Jr., the United States became the first country to exclude pregnancy as a risk factor for severe COVID.

On June 9, 2025, RFK Jr. fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with people who, like him, had an anti-vaccine, anti-science bias.

On June 25, 2025, RFK Jr.’s ACIP voted against the use of thimerosal-containing influenza vaccine, even though scientific studies had shown that thimerosal at the level contained in vaccines was safe. This was the first of what were to be several anti-science votes by this ACIP.

On September 18, 2025, RFK Jr.’s ACIP recommended delaying the the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine until two months of age for children born to mothers who weren’t infected. This recommendation implied that the birth dose was less safe than the delayed dose, which wasn’t true, and will likely cause an increase in the number of children who later suffer cirrhosis and liver cancer.

On November 19, 2025, RFK Jr. changed the CDC website to imply that vaccines might cause autism, ignoring decades of evidence to the contrary.

On January 5, 2026, again behind closed doors and without input from scientific or medical experts, RFK Jr. unilaterally changed the childhood immunization schedule. The revised schedule removed three vaccines (influenza, rotavirus, and COVID) from the recommended list even though all three viruses continue to circulate and do harm. The new schedule also removed five other vaccines (RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and two meningococcal vaccines) from the recommended list stating that they should be reserved only for high-risk groups when in fact everyone was at some risk of severe disease.

As an anti-vaccine activist turned policy maker, RFK Jr.’s goal during the past year has been to make vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. In that, he has been enormously successful. During 2025 into early 2026, children in the United States have been hospitalized or died from measles, whooping cough, and influenza at rates that haven’t been seen for decades.

In response to this war against children, on July 7, 2025, six leading medical organizations brought a lawsuit against RFK Jr. and HHS charging that “decisions limiting access to vaccines were unscientific and harmful to the public”. Eight months later, on March 16, 2026, in a federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, judge Brian Murphy rendered his verdict:

“For now, the revised childhood vaccine schedule issued in January 2026 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which reduced the number of routine childhood immunizations without evidence, may not be implemented.”

“Secretary Kennedy’s hand-picked appointments to CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) were likely improper. Therefore, the committee may not meet or take new votes on vaccine policy changes.”

“All votes taken by the reconstituted ACIP are invalidated, which includes votes from last year that altered recommendations for COVID-19, flu, MMRV and hepatitis B vaccines.”

In other words, the ACIP, as reconstructed by RFK Jr., no longer exists and every decision made by this fake ACIP is now invalidated. We can now return to the recommended childhood vaccine schedule before RFK Jr. became Secretary of HHS. Although this has been a rough year for vaccines in this country, this was a great day for children. Maybe the worm has finally turned. Or, in the words of Jonathan Cohn at The Bulwark, “the brain worm has finally turned.”

Not surprisingly, appalled that the courts have restricted his anti-vaccine agenda, RFK Jr. has vowed to appeal. We will now hold our breath to see what happens next.