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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is antivax. He is NOT a “vaccine skeptic”

I wish I didn’t have to write this post, but the press won’t stop referring to RFK Jr. as a “vaccine skeptic.” He is not. He is antivax.

RFK Jr and Donald Trump: MAHA?
RFK Jr and Donald Trump.

If there’s one thing that really, really, really irritates the living crap out of me, it’s how large swaths of the press have been describing President-Elect Donald Trump’s nominee to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in their reporting as a “vaccine skeptic,” rather than what he is, an antivaccine conspiracy theorist. Ever since RFK Jr. suspended his campaign and bent the knee to Donald Trump and then became his pick to run basically every non-military health program in the federal government, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, I’ve been increasingly dismayed to see him described by nearly every media outlet—including NPR on at least one occasion!—as a “vaccine skeptic,” his antivax views as “vaccine skepticism,” and antivaxxers as “vaccine skeptics.” I swear, the journalistic malpractice here is just one step removed from credulously repeating and believing RFK Jr.’s decade-long tendency to declare himself not just “not antivaccine” but, risibly, “fiercely pro-vaccine” (or, just the other day, “all for the polio vaccine“). Seriously, I’m reminded of that famous recurring bit in Charlie Brown cartoons in which Lucy pulls the football away just as Charlie Brown is about to kick it, after having promised she wouldn’t do that. Think of RFK Jr. as Lucy and the press as Charlie Brown.

In fairness, I will note that there are several reporters doing yeoman’s work in calling RFK Jr. what he is, antivax. I will even note that some news outlets are inconsistent in what they call him, veering from calling him “antivaccine” to calling him just a “vaccine skeptic” again—and back and forth, as though they can’t make up their minds. Unfortunately, for the most part, overall the press seems not to have learned anything and continues to give the appearance that RFK Jr. is not unreasonable, as they almost fall over themselves to try to say, in essence, “Sure, he’s wrong about out vaccines, but he’s right about chronic disease and diet.” (He ain’t.) This is not unlike some COVID-19 contrarian doctors have been doing as they try to maintain plausible deniability with respect to having enabled RFK Jr.’s antivax views. Unfortunately, there were so many other things going on to grab my attention, including a death in the family, and I didn’t get around to it until now.

I emphasize right now at the outset that this is not a new problem. Far from it. Indeed, nearly eight years ago, I wrote a post entitled, No, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is NOT a “vaccine skeptic.” He is antivaccine. Consider this post to be a reiteration, to remind people that some things never change, coupled with an update, to discuss what RFK Jr. has been saying and doing the last several years. In that spirit, I thought I’d start out doing what I did to begin that post and simply Googling  “vaccine skeptic” and “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.” to see what I found. Here’s but a sampling:

I hasten to point out that I do realize that reporters rarely write their own headlines; editors do. I also realize that editors and a newspaper or media outlet’s standards control the terminology that is used to describe people, even if the reporter disagrees. That’s why I aim this post straight at not just reporters who fall into this trap, but to the editors who write these awful headlines.

Also in fairness, I must note that were some pretty good headlines and stories that popped up with the search, such as:

You get the idea, though. The vast majority of mainstream press outlets have settled on a term to describe RFK Jr., and it’s not “antivax activist” or “antivaxxer.” It’s “vaccine skeptic.” Let’s look into why this might be, after which I’ll document yet again, with updates, why it is incorrect to refer to RFK Jr. by such a term. He is not a “vaccine skeptic.” He is antivaccine, an antivax activist, actually, full stop.

Before I move on, I will mention that this issue is not a problem that the press has describing just antivaxxers. It is not a problem that is unique to the science of vaccines. For a great many science and history denialist movements, the mainstream press incorrectly labels them as “skeptics.” It’s something the press would never, ever consider doing for Holocaust deniers (although at times they fall for the Holocaust denial spin of referring to Holocaust denial as “Holocaust revisionism”), but they routinely do it for all manner of science. For instance, it was (and in some cases still is) a problem with climate science, where those who deny the overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth is warming, causing potentially ruinous climate change, because of human activity were called “climate skeptics” or “global warming skeptics.” It still is, to some extent, but noticeably less so than in the past. Unfortunately, the AP style recommendation is not to refer to anthropogenic climate change denialists as “skeptics” or “deniers,” but rather to “doubters” or “those who reject mainstream climate science.” I much prefer the latter to the former, the clunkiness of the construct notwithstanding, but both are misleading regarding describing what climate change denialists actually do. Deniers are not skeptics, and, make no mistake, RFK Jr. is a vaccine denialist, not a skeptic.

Skepticism and the antivaccine movement

As the subheading of that NYT article listed above notes, most antivaxxers do their damnedest not to refer to themselves or views as antivax. This is a characteristic that I used to write about (and sometimes mock) dating back at least to Jenny McCarthy, who used to say routinely 17-18 years ago, “I’m not ‘antivaccine.’ I’m ‘pro-safe vaccine,'” or, alternatively, “What I really am is ‘anti-toxins’ in the vaccines.” As I mentioned above, at one point, RFK Jr. even went beyond even that by proclaiming himself a decade ago not just “not antivaccine” but “fiercely pro-vaccine” on The Dr. Oz Show. As I will enumerate in the next section, his entire career since 2005 argues strongly otherwise. As much as RFK Jr. likes to proclaim himself a “skeptic” about vaccines (and the press likes to reinforce that portrayal), denying mountains of scientific evidence showing that, for instance, vaccines are not associated with an increased risk of autism and calling for yet more research into something that has been studied to death without a whiff of a hint of a positive signal for risk is not “skepticism.” It is denial. In this case, it’s antivax, and there is no doubt that RFK Jr. still thinks that vaccines cause autism, given that he plans on “studying” the question even more. Moreover, given his track record, I can guarantee you that he will find what he is looking for, no matter how much he has to torture the data to make it “confess” that, for example, vaccines cause autism. Seriously, does anyone think that RFK Jr. would, when confronted with data refuting his beliefs about all the “harms” that he attributes to vaccines, actually admit his error?

No one who’s followed RFK Jr. for two decades, as I have, would be naive enough to believe that. The man is an ideologue, a walking case of confirmation bias.

It makes sense, of course, that antivaxxers would try to portray themselves as being for “safer” vaccines and against “toxins” in vaccines. After all, who wants less safe vaccines with more “toxins”? Certainly not me. Moreover, antivaxxers know that, even now, most people do not approve of antivaccine views and are, in fact, if not outright pro-vaccine, at least relatively supportive of vaccines. That’s one reason why I sometimes sarcastically—although not 100% so—like to say that, in a way, I have more respect for antivaxxers who just come out and say that they are antivaccine. At least, unlike the “I’m not antivax” antivaxxers, they are being honest with themselves and everyone else. Of course, the problem comes in defining what “safe” (or at least “safe enough”) means for vaccines. If there’s one thing I’ve discussed and demonstrated over the years, it’s that one major difference between a true vaccine safety advocate and an antivaxxer is that antivaxxers often use impossible standards to define “safe” and “effective.” Basically, they operate under the Nirvana fallacy. It is not an exaggeration to note that, to many antivaxxers, any vaccine that doesn’t have 100% efficacy (with 100% prevention of transmission) “doesn’t work” and that any vaccine that is not 100% absolutely safe is too dangerous to use. Again, this is not skepticism. It is denial. It is antivax.

Indeed, I’ve documented time and time again how antivaxxers will spin even a study that shows specific vaccines to be quite safe, with only rare serious adverse events associated with them, into antivax propaganda used to fear monger about vaccines. The way they do this is through two tactics. One is to falsely portray the risk-benefit ratio of vaccines as unacceptable by falsely decreasing the denominator (the benefit) by claiming that the vaccines have little or no benefit. The other is through the Nirvana fallacy, in which any deviation from a perfectly safe vaccine with zero adverse events is used to portray the vaccine as hopelessly dangerous.

Let’s put it this way. I’m not trying to be a pedant. I’m not going to try to argue that a movement skeptic’s preferred definition of “skeptic” and “skepticism” is the definition of skepticism, although we do sometimes like to point out that in science the word “theory” means something a lot more concrete and solid than just a wild-assed guess, which seems to be part of the colloquial definition. It is true that the definition of “skepticism” in—for example—the Merriam-Webster dictionary includes “an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object,” but it also notes that the word “skepticism” also “implies unwillingness to believe without conclusive evidence,” and that should be the key part of the definition of the word, although unfortunately it often is not, at least colloquially. Let’s just put it this way. If there exists a large body of high quality evidence from many sources whose conclusion, taken together, directly refutes your belief (e.g., that vaccines cause autism), then continuing to hew to that belief is not “skepticism.” Far from it. It is denial. Ditto the beliefs that evolution can through natural selection, resulting in new species, that human activity is not contributing to potentially catastrophic climate change, and that the Holocaust didn’t happen. These beliefs are not “skepticism.” They are denial. Again, denial is not skepticism.

Equally important to skepticism is a dedication to critical thinking and the use of reason and logic to come to conclusions based on the evidence. Directly contrary to this is a tendency to believe in and promote conspiracy theories, which RFK Jr. has done in abundance. Remember, a conspiracy theory, when boiled down to its simplest definition, involves a nefarious and powerful cabal of evil people meaning to do harm (and doing harm), victims of that harm, a coverup, and a few “enlightened” individuals who, unlike the mass of “sheeple,” are aware of the harm being done and the conspiracy behind it. Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook have published an excellent short e-book on recognizing conspiracy theories and countering conspiratorial thinking, The Conspiracy Theory Handbook, which notes these seven characteristics of conspiracy theories:

Conspiracy theories

And the differences between conspiracy theories and real conspiracies:

Conspiracy theories vs. rational theories

I discussed conspiracy theories related to medicine and vaccines with respect to COVID-19 in a lot more detail a few years ago, but one passage from Lewandowsky and Cook stands out to me:

Actual conspiracies do exist but they are rarely discovered through the methods of conspiracy theorists. Rather, real conspiracies get discovered through conventional thinking—healthy skepticism of official accounts while carefully considering available evidence and being committed to internal consistency. In contrast, conspiratorial thinking is characterized by being hyperskeptical of all information that does not fit the theory, over-interpreting evidence that supports a preferred theory, and inconsistency.

Does this description remind you of anyone? It should. In a nutshell, it’s basically about how RFK Jr. approaches the science and evidence with respect to vaccines and vaccine safety. Come to think of it, it also describes RFK Jr.’s approach to almost everything related to health. It’s why I like to say that, even if he has a point about, for example, food and diet, you can’t trust him to come to the right conclusion based on science and evidence because the way he approaches evidence is rooted in the sort of thinking far more suited to conspiracy theories rather than science. Another way of putting it is that he approaches science and evidence the same way a drunk person approaches a lamppost after dark: For support, not illumination. That’s why he can still say after all these years that the evidence is “inconclusive” about whether vaccines cause autism. Under any scientific definition, it is anything but inconclusive. Vaccines are not associated with a detectably increased risk of autism in many large epidemiological studies. Although I hate the term “settled science,” both for philosophic reasons regarding if science is ever completely settled but also because of how it is often misrepresented by science deniers like RFK Jr., the research that has failed to find a link between vaccines and autism is very large, broad, and deep, coming from multiple fields and using multiple study designs. In that, the science behind the safety and efficacy of vaccines on the CDC schedule is about as close to “settled science” as I can imagine.

However, just because there are a few low quality outlier studies that RFK Jr. can cherry pick, he continues to claim that the “science is not settled” and “more studies are needed,” which is exactly what he is still doing, saying that he does “believe that autism does come from vaccines” and calling for “more research.” In any event, recall that RFK Jr. first emerged on the antivax scene in 2005, when Salon.com and Rolling Stone, to their everlasting shame, co-published his antivax article Deadly Immunity. In the article, RFK Jr. repackaged one of the major antivax conspiracy theories of the time that claimed that the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which used to be in several childhood vaccines until 2001 or so, was responsible for an “epidemic” of autism and that the CDC “knew,” having evidence implicating thimerosal. Here’s where the conspiracy theory came in. In his article, RFK Jr. claimed that in 2000 the CDC met at Simpsonwood, a conference center in suburban Atlanta, to “cover up” the evidence. Basically, RFK Jr. tried to misrepresent scientists adjusting for confounders in a major study examining the question, which led to the disappearance of a correlation between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism, because to him the only purpose of adjusting for confounding variables couldn’t possibly have been done for any legitimate scientific epidemiological reason. It could only have been done to make an “inconvenient” result “disappear.”

Add to that the numerous other conspiracy theories embraced by RFK Jr., which include—but are not limited to—the following claims that “they” are covering up and keeping from you:

  • HIV does not cause AIDS but “they”—led by Anthony Fauci, of course—covered it up.
  • The antisemitic conspiracy theory that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was an ethnically targeted bioweapon designed to spare Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews.
  • The CIA assassinated his uncle President John F. Kennedy.
  • Republicans stole the 2004 election.
  • Antidepressants cause school shootings.

And, of course, he believes many, many conspiracy theories about vaccines, most recently COVID-19 vaccines, as well as conspiracy theories about “lockdowns,” the coronavirus, and public health responses to the pandemic. None of this is “skepticism,” and RFK Jr. is not a “skeptic” in any sense of the word. He is a denier and conspiracy theorist.

RFK Jr. vs. vaccines: “Antivaxxer,” NOT a “vaccine skeptic”

Given that I’ve been writing about RFK Jr.’s antivaccine misinformation and pseudoscience-laden conspiracy theories for nearly 20 years, I really should write a book. For now, though, we’ll have to settle for a “greatest hits” survey, if you will, of the sorts of things that emphasize that, not only is RFK Jr. not in any sense a “skeptic” about anything (unless you mean a mindlessly reflexive one whose doubt is not in any way rooted in scientific evidence) but outright antivax. The easiest way to demonstrate that is to look at what he’s said when anyone has asked him a simple question that I like to ask antivaxxers who claim they’re “not antivaccine,” namely to name at least one vaccine that you consider sufficiently safe and effective that you would have no problem recommending it to children or adults for whom it’s indicated and who don’t have any major contraindications. In general, someone who is antivax will dodge, weave, bob, and in general try to do everything they can to avoid a straight answer, because they can’t bring themselves to say that any vaccine is safe and effective.

This brings me to an interview that RFK Jr. did with CNN This Morning anchor Kasie Hunt that I discussed last year:

The entire interview can be found here and here:

I like to point out how since at least 2014 RFK Jr. has risibly been characterizing himself as “fiercely pro-vaccine,” even as he spews obvious antivaccine misinformation. However, let’s take a look at what RFK Jr. said in the clip played after he had denied being “antivaccine” during an appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast in response to a question similar to what I like to advocate asking antivaxxers:

Although I’m generally not a fan of his (for obvious reasons), I nonetheless gave Lex Fridman some credit for asking this question. It’s obvious, though, that he wasn’t adequately prepared for a lawyer as lawyerly slippery as RFK Jr. has long been, nor should it be a difficult question to name a vaccine or two that you consider safe and effective; that is, unless you are indeed antivaccine, which RFK Jr. most definitely has been for two decades. Personally, I would have followed up by asking specifically which live virus vaccines that RFK Jr. thought were “probably averting more problems than they’re causing.” I would also have pointed out that the measles vaccine, which he has repeatedly demonized as causing autism in the past, is a live attenuated virus vaccine before I asked him if he thought the measles vaccine was “probably averting more problems than it’s causing.” This would likely have provoked more dissembling given that RFK Jr. never wants to be caught saying anything good about vaccines except as a prelude to trashing them, and would have asked him how saying that there is “no vaccine” that is safe and effective is not antivaccine, which Hunt did, leading RFK Jr. to dive into his old tropes:

I’ve been fighting 40 years to get mercury out of fish. Nobody calls me anti-fish. What I want are vaccines that are proven safe. And, what I meant, which was a bad use of words, is, none of the vaccines that’s currently on the mandated schedule for children, the 72 vaccines, have ever been studied in a pre-licensing safety study. What that means is, we do not know what the risk profile is for those products, and you cannot prove or say with any scientific certainty that those products are causing —

The part about the “72 vaccines” supposedly never having been studied for safety in a moment, because that’s a more recent “classic” antivax trope that RFK Jr. had been repeating (and continues to repeat now, even after he’s been nominated to be HHS Secretary). It’s also one that I discussed in detail when discussing this interview in more detail. It’s nonsense, a variation of the deceptive half-truth that many childhood vaccines have never been tested in randomized controlled clinical trials with a saline control, another trope that I have deconstructed in great detail, along with RFK Jr.’s false claims (usually made through his favorite lawyer Aaron Siri) that postlicensure surveillance of vaccine safety is grossly inadequate. Later in the exchange, Hunt interrupted RFK Jr. as he was claiming that we can’t “say with any scientific certainty that those products are causing —” in order to ask:

“So, you’re saying that you still believe that no vaccines are safe and effective?”

“No! What I’m saying is, none of the 72 vaccines has ever been tested in a safety study.”

Here we go again, and I’ll get to this in a moment, after noting that this statement lead Hunt to ask:

So let me ask you, if you think it’s wise for people to take these vaccines, because you had this to say on a different podcast about whether people with young babies should be getting them shots.

Which led to an image of RFK Jr. over a clip of him saying:

I love how RFK Jr. claimed that he’d never told parents not to vaccinate their children, even after he said this, admitting that he’s a meddling busybody who is so antivaccine that he accosts random parents he encounters to warn them not to vaccinate their children. Publicly. Where he was recorded saying it! Did RFK Jr. think that audio and video disappear? Unfortunately for him, the Internet is forever.

To me, telling random parents that you run into on a hiking trail not to vaccinate their children and that not vaccinating will “save that child” are—to me at least—the very definition of antivaccine, exactly the sort of thing I’d expect an antivaxxer to do. Remember, RFK Jr. has a very hard time naming a single vaccine that he considers safe and effective; when pressed, he stays vague. He also apparently tells parents not to vaccinate their children in order to “save” them.

If that’s not enough for you to conclude that RFK Jr. is antivax, we can dig back into his history a bit more, just to hammer the point home. For instance, how about that time he meddled in the affairs of Samoa in the middle of a massive measles outbreak that occurred due to low MMR uptake after a horrific accident mixing up vaccine that led to the death of two children, all to decrease faith in vaccines even further. Recall that in the midst of that aforementioned deadly measles outbreak in Samoa that had killed over 70 children RFK Jr. wrote a letter to the Samoan Prime Minister insinuating that the outbreak had been caused by a “defective measles vaccine.” He even falsely claimed that the Merck measles vaccine had “created a crisis where infants under the age of one are now highly vulnerable to these infections.” He even invoked “shedding”:

There is also the possibility that children who received the live measles virus during Samoa’s recent vaccination drive may have shed the virus and inadvertently infected vulnerable children. It is a regrettable possibility that these children are causalities of Merck’s vaccine. Alarmed CDC officials documented this emerging phenomenon during the measles outbreak in California in 2015. Federal epidemiological investigations found that at least 1/3 of Californian cases were vaccine strain.

This is a favorite antivax claim that even has nothing to do with thimerosal. There were no vaccine strain measles cases in the Disneyland outbreak. All measles cases in that outbreak were caused by wild-type measles. The claim that “vaccine shedding” can cause measles outbreaks is not scientifically supported. It is, in fact, utter nonsense. As I said at the time, either RFK Jr. was utterly clueless but didn’t care, or he knew and was lying. Take your pick.

I could go on and on and on, but I think I might conclude this section with a couple of doozies from RFK Jr. I like to start with Dan Olmsted’s report on a talk given by RFK Jr. in 2013 about autism as “vaccine injury,” about which Olmsted wrote a post entitled RFK Jr., Nazi Death Camps and the Battle For Our Future. The link to the article is no longer there, but I did quote from it extensively, asking antivaccinationists if they could please knock it off with the autism-Holocaust analogies, already: 

Each of us will have our highlights from last weekend’s extraordinary Autism One gathering in Chicago, but for me it was Bobby Kennedy Jr. saying, “To my mind this is like the Nazi death camps.”

“This” is the imprisonment of so many of our children in the grip of autism. Talk about cutting through the neurodiverse claptrap! When Bobby Kennedy says something, it gives “cover,” in a sense, for others to use the same kind of language and frame the debate in the same kind of way. (Language that reminds me of David Kirby’s phrase, “the shuttered hell” of autism, in Evidence of Harm.)

Those who can advocate for themselves should do so. Move right along, please. Those who cannot have advocates like their parents and RFK Jr. who are sick of mincing words.

RFK Jr. even “went there” a decade ago:

The enablers may not belong in Nuremburg, but they do belong in jail, Bobby said. “I would do a lot to see Paul Offit and all these good people behind bars,” he said, after listing Offit’s litany of lies and profit. Just to make sure people got the point, he returned to it in his speech. “Is it hyperbole to say they should be in jail? They should be in jail and the key should be thrown away.”

This is an early example of what has since the pandemic come to be known as “Nuremberg 2.0,” the antivax fantasy of justice retribution for vaccine proponents in a Nuremberg-like tribunal. Note how RFK Jr. reportedly openly fantasized about putting vaccine advocates like Dr. Paul Offit behind bars! In 2013! People who are truly pro-vaccine do not fire up an antivax conference by fantasizing about putting their provaccine shared enemies behind bars. Notably, RFK Jr. only disavows such statements when they somehow manage to bubble up into the mainstream press. Basically, they’re examples of him being busted saying what he really thinks to sympathetic antivax audiences whom he thinks he can trust not to spread his words around. However, they just can’t help it. RFK Jr. has been a rockstar in the antivax movement for nearly two decades; so when he says something at an antivax conference the attendees are going to spread it around in their usual channels.

Amusingly, sometime soon after, Olmsted’s article disappeared from AoA, and the site’s file apparently was apparently modified so that the almighty Wayback Machine at Archive.org could no longer keep the article archived after it had been deleted. It doesn’t matter, because, oops, he did it again in 2015:

But some parents fear information about the hazards of vaccines has been suppressed, largely because of what they call the pharmaceutical industry’s influence over health officials. Many parents believe their children have been damaged by vaccines. When Kennedy asked the crowd of a few hundred viewers how many parents had a child injured by vaccines, numerous hands went up.

“They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,” Kennedy said. “This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

I would gently suggest to anyone describing RFK Jr. as a “vaccine skeptic”—especially if they accept at face value RFK Jr.’s lie that he is “not antivax” and, as unbelievable as his claiming that he is “fiercely pro-vaccine”—whether the lie is to himself, to his audience, or to both—that someone who is a skeptic and truly “pro-vaccine” (or at least not antivaccine) will not compare vaccines and autism to the Holocaust He will not suggest that vaccine proponents like Dr. Offit should be behind bars for the “crime” of defending vaccines against antivax misinformation and promoting them as the best means of protecting children from deadly infectious diseases. Of course, the only difference between RFK Jr. in 2015 and RFK Jr. now is that in 2015 he still had enough shame left to apologize after comparing “vaccine-induced autism” to the Holocaust, even if it was a “notpology.” In 2022, for instance, he gleefully invoked Anne Frank in attacking vaccine mandates and masks and never apologized.

Long ago, I once listed eight traits that define an antivaccine ideologue, suggesting that if someone has more than three or four of them he’s definitely antivaccine, his denials that he’s “pro-vaccine safety” (or, in the case of RFK Jr, even more risibly, “fiercely pro-vaccine”) notwithstanding. These include:

  1. Claiming to be “pro-safe vaccine” while being unrelentingly critical about vaccines
  2. Falsely claiming that “vaccines don’t work”
  3. Falsely claiming that “vaccines are dangerous”
  4. Preferring anecdotes over science and epidemiology
  5. Cherry-picking and misrepresenting evidence
  6. Copious use of logical fallacies in arguing
  7. Conspiracy mongering
  8. Trying to silence criticism, rather than responding to it

RFK Jr ticks off at least seven of these eight traits, arguably all eight. In particular, he claims to be “pro-vaccine” but never says anything positive about vaccines other than occasionally conceding, almost as an afterthought, that they might work in preventing disease. If all of the above still doesn’t demonstrate to you that RFK Jr. is antivaccine, NOT a vaccine skeptic, I have so much more in the archives of this blog and my not-so-super-secret other blog. Seriously, I could have made this post so much longer.

Intellectual honesty matters when it comes to skepticism, and RFK Jr. is not honest

I’ll conclude with a final observation regarding skepticism. Skepticism, science, and critical thinking assume an intellectually honest approach to evidence, and if there’s one thing that can’t be said about the approach to evidence favored by RFK Jr. is that it’s intellectually honest. I’d even go so far to say that it’s just plain dishonest, intellectually and otherwise. After all, I described above how RFK Jr. just flat-out lied about ever having made antivax statements when confronted with them or claimed that he didn’t mean what he clearly did mean when he made them. Examples include his numerous times comparing vaccines and autism to the Holocaust and his denying that he ever told parents not to vaccinate their children, when he has clearly done so.

As for his approach to evidence, it is unskeptical in the extreme. He accepts the crappiest studies that reinforce his preexisting belief that vaccines cause autism and a variety of harms (and don’t work), while reflexively rejecting the mountains of large epidemiological studies that exonerate vaccines of the “crimes” of which he accuses them. He weaponizes the lack of understanding that most people have about the medical ethics of randomized clinical trials in order to promote a highly misleading half-truth that vaccines haven’t been adequately tested and promotes outright conspiracy theories about vaccines, HIV, COVID-19, public health, masking, and a whole variety of of other topics. Of these, his biggest lie of all is his claim that he is “not antivaccine” but rather “fiercely pro-vaccine.” Whether that is a lie to his audience, to himself, or both, only RFK Jr. can know; that is, if he could ever admit it to himself. What RFK Jr. is not is anything resembling a skeptic, of vaccines or anything else related to health, public health, and health science. He is an antivaxxer and a science denialist, which is why, if he’s confirmed as HHS Secretary, he will wreak havoc on US federal health policy and research as long as he holds the office.

That’s why it can’t be repeated to reporters, editors, and anyone else in the media reporting on RFK Jr.: Stop calling RFK Jr. a “vaccine skeptic” and call him what he is: an antivaxxer and all-around medical conspiracy theorist and denier of well-supported science.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

One reply on “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is antivax. He is NOT a “vaccine skeptic””

I would like to wish you a happy New Year, with much gratitude for you work. I’m sorry to hear of your loss, its a big moment in life – but I bet he was proud to have you as a son. The USA is about to enter a huge experiment which most of us know till go wrong. I can hardly believer what has happened, but online, hater and negativity get more hits than reason and morality. Keep up the good work.

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