• WAR ON VACCINESThe Military Traded Its Flu Vaccine Mandate for “Medical Freedom” – an Outbreak Quickly Followed

    By Katrine L. Wallace

    The logic that drove George Washington in 1777 and the Army surgeon general in 1945 to require vaccination hasn’t really changed. A sick soldier can’t deploy, can’t train and can spread illness through an entire unit. The secretary of defense thought that ideological sloganeering was more important than science, medical knowledge, and the basic requirements of military readiness and operational readiness.

  • WAR ON VACCINESNew ACIP Charter Could Allow RFK Jr. to Further Restrict Vaccine Access, Critics Say

    By Liz Szabo

    Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is continuing his battle to remake federal vaccine policy, this time by rewriting the charter of a federal committee that wields enormous influence over childhood immunizations to shift its focus beyond vaccines.

  • PUBLIC HEALTHMeasles, Whooping Cough Spike Amid Low Vaccination Rates

    By Tim Henderson

    Vaccine hesitancy fed by misinformation is causing new surges of measles and whooping cough, while COVID-19 hotspots persist in some states and a new threat looms from an Ebola outbreak in central Africa. Twelve states and DC already have seen more measles cases than in all of 2025.

  • VACCINESThe Return of Measles: Vaccine Hesitancy and the Erosion of U.S. Public Health

    By Cameron Daniel Benton

    Previously eradicated diseases are reemerging in the United States due to vaccine hesitancy and shifting policies under the current presidential administration. The 2025 measles outbreak in West Texas serves as a warning sign of what may follow if the nation continues to neglect preventable diseases.

  • PUBLIC HEALTHHow Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Agenda Risks a Resurgence of Deadly Childhood Plagues

    By Patricia Callahan

    The U.S. took a half century to build a vaccination system that shielded children from deadly diseases. Its success depended on two fundamental pillars: parents trusting in vaccines and children having access to them. Both are now in peril, thanks to the man steering America’s health policy. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a founder of an antivaccine group who likened the immunization of children to a holocaust, is transforming a government that long championed the lifesaving benefits of shots into one that spreads doubts about their safety here and abroad.

  • TARGETING SCIENCEThe FDA Refused to Review a Flu Vaccine, Contrary to Evidence. Now the Agency Reversed Itself

    By Jake Scott, MD

    Strong, predictable, science-based regulation protects the public. A refuse-to-file letter—for a vaccine with no identified safety or efficacy concerns; tested under an FDA-approved trial design; supported by data showing superiority over both standard-dose and high-dose comparators; and submitted through a pathway that prior vaccines used to gain the very approvals Vinay Prasad, Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) now demands as the benchmark—does not meet that standard.

  • WAR ON VACCINESVaccine Myths That Won’t Die and How to Counter Them—Part 2

    By Jake Scott, MD

    This article and its Part 1 catalogue the debunked myths driving the vaccine skeptics who now run HHS. These myths share four fundamental errors: First, the conflation of temporal association with causation. Second, the confusion of regulatory paperwork with the totality of scientific evidence. Third, the demand for impossible standards. Fourth, the selective citation of evidence. The current political moment has given unprecedented platforms to vaccine skepticism. But politics cannot change biology.

  • WAR ON VACCINESVaccine Myths That Won't Die and How to Counter Them—Part 1

    By Jake Scott, MD

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has spent decades promoting vaccine skepticism. He has replaced scientists at different HHS such as CDC and NIH with vaccine skeptics and anti-vaccine activists. They have polluted the information environment with, and base their policy changes on, myths about the supposed risks of vaccines. Each of these myths has been studied extensively. Each has been refuted. And yet each persists, because misinformation travels faster than correction and because these myths tap into fears that are genuinely human.

  • WAR ON VACCINESStates Go Their Own Way as RFK Jr. Shifts Federal Vaccine Policy

    By Tim Henderson

    In response to the new federal vaccine guidance, advanced by anti-vaxx activists now determining vaccine policy at HHS, many states have created formal alliances to share health information and formulate science-based policies for their residents. “The science is clear. Vaccines remain the best protection for keeping children and communities healthy,” the Northeast Public Health Collaborative said in a statement.

  • TARGETING SCIENCECDC Advisers Drop Decades-Old Universal Hepatitis B Birth Dose Recommendation, Suggest Blood Testing After One Dose

    By Mary Van Beusekom, Laine Bergeson, Liz Szabo, and Chris Dall

    Scientists say that hepatitis B vaccine is safe and effective, and that dropping the decades-old practice of a universal dose at birth will have only one result: hepatitis B rates and resulting liver cancer, cirrhosis, and premature death will rise among the unvaccinated or undervaccinated—whether in infancy or later in life, when unprotected adults will be vulnerable to infection.

  • TARGETING SCIENCEAluminum in Vaccines: Separating RFK Jr.’s Claims from Scientific Evidence

    By Antony Black

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s belief that aluminum in vaccines can cause health issues is contradicted by scientific evidence, a fact which RFK Jr. does not allow to interfere with his campaign against vaccination. What is incontrovertible is that increasing vaccine hesitancy and reduced vaccination rates lead to more vulnerable people and more infectious diseases, illnesses, and deaths. It is important to question medical interventions, but this questioning should be informed, rational, and open.

  • PUBLIC HEALTHSouth Carolina’s Measles Outbreak Shows Chilling Effect of Vaccine Misinformation

    By Lauren Sausser

    For the first time in more than two decades, the United States is poised to lose its measles elimination status, a designation indicating that outbreaks are rare and rapidly contained. The confluence of larger national trends —including historically low vaccination rates, skepticism fueled by the pandemic, misinformation, and “health freedom” ideologies promoted by conservative politicians —have put communities at risk for the reemergence of a preventable, potentially deadly virus.

  • PUBLIC HEALTHCDC’s New Deputy Director Is Vocal Critic of Vaccines, Advocated for Ivermectin

    By Stephanie Soucheray

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. named a critic o COVID vaccines — and a promoter of a worthless alternative to such vaccines – as deputy director of CDC.

  • ASSAULT ON SCIENCEAfter Unprecedented Autism-Vaccine Messaging Change, Scientists, Advocates Say CDC No Longer Trustworthy

    By Liz Szabo and Laine Bergeson

    “Ideology has replaced science as the means for addressing life-saving research and best practices that save lives,” said CIDRAP director Michael T. Osterholm. The “propaganda machine for RFK Jr.’s fixed, immutable, science-resistant theories” has triumphed at the CDC, said Paul Offit, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s not enough to push the snake oil. You have to discredit mainstream biomedical science and portray scientists as public enemies or cartoon villains, and that’s what Kennedy’s seeking to do,” said Peter Hotez, codirector of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

  • REFORMING CDCThe CDC’s Return to Autism Panic Is Exactly Why It Needs Reform

    By Jeffrey A. Singer

    Resurrecting a claim disproven countless times doesn’t protect public health—it undermines trust in the very institution meant to safeguard it. The controversy, however, makes the points I’ve made before even more urgent: The CDC should be restored to its original role —a dedicated partner that supports and coordinates disease-control efforts.