RFK Jr unorthodox vaccine views on show in interview
Robert F Kennedy Jr's controversial views on vaccines were on display this week during an interview with CBS News in which he suggested that single antigen vaccines for respiratory infections have "never worked."
The comments came in the context of questioning about a delay in the FDA's review of Novavax's latest version of its COVID-19 vaccine Nuvaxovid (NVX-CoV2705), which is intended to upgrade its earlier emergency use authorisation (EUA) to a full license.
The interviewer, CBS' chief medical correspondent Dr Jonathan LaPook, had asked the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary if the wave of job cuts at the regulator was the reason for the agency missing its 1st April deadline for completing the review.
In reply, according to a social media post, Kennedy said: "No, we're looking at that vaccine, and it is a single antigen vaccine. And, for respiratory illnesses, the single antigen vaccines have never worked." He added that HHS is "actually shifting our priorities to multiple antigen vaccines."
Vaccine pioneer Dr Stanley Plotkin – whose work on rubella led to its inclusion in the MMR vaccine that also protects against measles and mumps – told Stat: "This is another example of Kennedy being an ignoramus about vaccination if not other things as well. And you can quote me on that."
The comments in the interview had a predictable impact on Novavax's share price, which lost almost 20% of its value despite vocal pushback by some investors who rallied in support of the company, while other vaccine stocks, including Moderna, BioNTech, Vir Biotech, and Vaxcyte also weakened.
Novavax said in a short statement: "We believe that our biologics license application (BLA) for our COVID-19 vaccine included robust phase 3 clinical trial data that showed our vaccine is safe and effective," adding that it has not yet received an official response from the FDA.
Other comments made by the HHS Secretary this week include the assertion that the US will "uncover the cause of the autism epidemic and will be able to eliminate those exposures." In the past, Kennedy has been a staunch advocate of the debunked notion of a link between vaccines and autism.
His stance on vaccination prompted the abrupt departure last month of the director of the FDA's Centre for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), Peter Marks, who said the HHS Secretary was peddling "misinformation and lies."
Kennedy's position has this week also been called out this week by the American Public Health Association (APHA), whose executive director, Dr Georges Benjamin, said that concerns about Kennedy's anti-vaccine stance voiced during his confirmation hearings have been realised "in the few short weeks that he has been in this position."
Benjamin also slammed Kennedy's reluctance to come out strongly in favour of measles vaccination, recommending vitamins to treat the disease, and the huge staffing reductions at HHS agencies – along with the acknowledgement since that many of the workers shouldn't have been fired – as examples of "poor and thoughtless management that will only undermine the work of our nation's top public health agencies to keep us all healthy."
