Thread by @PeterHotez

1/n The reality: since Mr. Kennedy became HHS Secretary he/staff have waged a war of antivaccine disinformation against the American people on a frequent/regular basis. He did this as U.S. experienced its worse measles epidemic in years, showing zero concern for our health/safety

https://twitter.com/seckennedy/status/1932580198198964241

2/n Here I will list what I consider are some of his worst public statements and acts, it may take me a day or so to get through it all, I hope it’s a useful reference.

3/n first regarding the MMR vaccine vs measles in our pandemic now in 4 states in the Southern Great Plains

acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.73…

4/n he drew a false equivalency between the MMR vaccine, among our safest and most effective vaccines, and a useless cocktail of supplements: budesonide, vitamin A, clarithromycin, a narrative from the very corrupt wellness/supplement/influencer industry

5/n he said the hospitalizations in West Texas were due to isolation/quarantine measures when in fact 90+ Texas kids and adults, mostly kids required hospitalization for measles pneumonia dehydration neurological impairment and 2 tragic deaths of unvaccinated health school kids

6/n he said the MMR was a “leaky vaccine” whatever that means and said that it’s protection declines 4% annually. It’s nonsense, he conveniently miscalculated by a factor of 100X jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

6/n he said the MMR contains aborted fetal debris, when in fact the measles mumps attenuated viruses are grown in chick embryo cells, and the R is in a human cell line propagated in vitro for 60+ years theconversation.com/the-mmr-vaccin…

8/n whoops repeated a number, on to 8. He said MMR vaccine was never tested in placebo controlled trials. Here’s my informal PubMed NLM search

9/n all this when as HHS Secretary he should have been pleading with parents in areas of high transmission to vaccinate their kids to prevent additional hospitalizations and deaths. Who does that?

10/n next he worked with FDA to withhold Covid vaccines in pregnant women when anyone working in a large ICU saw first hand the devastating effects of Covid in pregnancy. Covid vaccination of pregnant women resulted in 94% reduction in hospitalization. gh.bmj.com/content/9/4/e0…

11/n same with Covid vaccinations in adolescents and children despite compelling evidence for reduction in long COVID during the delta and omicron waves. This is the @Penn study
thelancet.com/journals/eclin…

@Penn 12/n he halted a promising mRNA flu vaccine program in favor a complicated and ancient whole inactivated virus technology used for the swine flu vaccine in 1976 which was halted due to Guillain Barre Syndrome and production problems growing enough virus

cdc.gov/museum/online/…

@Penn 13/n he resurrected the discredited links between vaccines and autism despite massive evidence showing no link and the overwhelming role of autism genes in early fetal brain development. I wrote this book about my daughter based on my detailed discussions with him in 2017

@Penn 14/n it doesn’t mean there’s no role for environmental exposures but as I explained to him they occur in early fetal brain development. I listed for him a half-dozen exposures including valproate but he had no interest nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

@Penn 15/n and then he makes a public statement attempting to position himself vs the scientific community claiming he alone has been promoting investigations for environmental exposures, when he was actually the guy refusing to look into this for his phony baloney vaccine links

@Penn 16/n then he talks about kids and adults on the autism spectrum in the darkest terms saying they can’t use the toilet or work or pay taxes. Later he tried to walk it back saying he misspoke he meant only 25%? But he wants to create a dark and suspicious registry of those kids

@Penn 16/n on at least 2 occasions he compares vaccines to the Holocaust apologizing afterwards. Putting all that together, do I want my daughter on his registry? Is he so tone deaf to what terrifies us?

@Penn 18/n and his public views on AIDS washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/…

@Penn 19/n and now 40% NIH budget cuts, which would cause permanent damage to our nation’s biomedical infrastructure, ignite an unprecedented brain drain to Europe, Canada, Australia, Asia chiefhealthcareexecutive.com/view/kennedy-g…

@Penn 20/n and now he deconstructs the ACIP and is aghast that we don’t trust his judgement on this…enough