Rfk Jr.’s Anti-vaccine Group Sees Vindication In His Senate Testimony

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn’t want to talk about his past as a leader of the anti-vaccine movement. But as he made his case to be the nation’s top health official, the anti-vaccine movement couldn’t wait to talk about him.

The head of Children’s Health Defense — the anti-vaccine nonprofit that Kennedy founded — praised Kennedy’s performance in front of the Senate Finance Committeeon Wednesday, calling it a moment of vindication for a movement that until now had existed on the fringes of mainstream politics.

“Bobby is challenging the status quo,” Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, told POLITICO. “We’re very happy with the greater attention — and we hope to educate more people that there are issues around a lot of things that people don’t often think about.”

Holland pointed to Kennedy’s vow of “radical transparency” at the health department as a sign that he would order fresh scrutiny of vaccines, arguing that more study is needed to determine that even routine immunizations are safe.

She criticized Democratic senators as overly focused on highlighting Kennedy’s most inflammatory past statements on vaccines. But she also dismissed any suggestion that Kennedy has changed his beliefs since leaving Children’s Health Defense last year, insisting that he holds the same views on vaccines and health care now as he has since founding the organization years ago.

“I’ve worked with Bobby for a long time. He has always said, ‘I am not anti-vaccine, I want there to be real science, I want there to be transparency and I want there to be choice,’” Holland said.

As for Kennedy’s exchange with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who pressed him to disavow baby clothes sold by Children’s Health Defense with “unvaxxed, unafraid” and “no vax, no problem” printed on the front, Holland joked the onesies were now "selling like hotcakes."

But she added that the clothes’ message is also one she believes Kennedy would carry into HHS and shape his approach to vaccines: “All that those onesies were saying is that you as parents have a right not to vaccinate your baby.”

“What Bobby wants to achieve is for people to be able to make those individualized health care decisions,” Holland said, noting that she believes all vaccines should be optional. “This goes to bodily autonomy.”

Holland’s comments come amid a pivotal week for Kennedy’s bid to be President Donald Trump’s health secretary, and as scrutiny has intensified over his vaccine beliefs.

Kennedy has repeatedly denied that he is anti-vaccine, and said Wednesday that he supports the polio and measles vaccines. He also downplayed his ties to Children’s Health Defense, telling Sanders he’s no longer associated with the group, and has vowed not to try to take vaccines away from Americans.

"News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry," Kennedy said Wednesday. "I am neither; I am pro-safety."

Yet Kennedy has continued to surround himself with influential figures in the anti-vaccine movement, and has remained vague about how his agenda would affect access to current vaccines and the potential approvals of new ones.

The HHS secretary has the authority to take several steps that could hinder vaccinations, including dialing back the government’s recommendations for vaccines that are currently part of a standard schedule of childhood immunizations.

Holland, who attended Wednesday’s confirmation hearing, said she did not expect Kennedy to immediately dismantle the childhood vaccination schedule. But she hoped that he would seek a “penetrating” review of those vaccines — one that she believes will show they are unsafe or unnecessary, contrary to the long-held medical consensus.

“We oppose all medical mandates,” Holland said. “It really should be between the parents, the child and their health care practitioners.”

Holland during the interview also went further than Kennedy has in public, advocating for making basic vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella optional — and claiming, in defiance of extensive medical evidence, that those diseases are not particularly dangerous to children.

“The children that are unvaccinated are healthier,” Holland said, adding that she had gotten measles, mumps and rubella as a child. “For a healthy child, it actually helps build the immune system.”

Those are the kinds of beliefs, she said, that Children’s Health Defense has seen gain greater acceptance since the Covid-19 pandemic, as trust in mainstream public health has fallen. And it’s a movement that she credited Kennedy for playing a central role in fueling during his years leading the nonprofit.

“[People] now seem to be more open to hearing what we have to say,” Holland said. “And what we have been doing is a reflection of some of the work that Bobby Kennedy’s been doing for many years.”