Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” report distorts research and uses language that undermines the safety of vaccines as a public health tool, marking one of the vaccine skeptic’s latest efforts to scale back their use.
For example, the report, released in May, questioned the reliability of the Vaccine Safety Datalink system, a collaboration between health care providers and the U.S. government that collects and shares data on adverse effects of vaccinations.
The report makes the case that VSD research is susceptible to issues of confounding and bias. But Sophia Newcomer, one of the authors of a paper cited in the report to make that argument, said the way the MAHA report characterizes the research is misleading. She added that the paper the report cites never claimed those problems are unique to VSD, and the paper she worked on even calls VSD “an important resource for conducting this research.”
It’s one of several examples NOTUS found of how the report misinterprets the real studies it cites to advance scientifically dubious claims about vaccines.
Trending
“These issues can be found in all research. Graduate training in epidemiology and biostatistics teaches researchers to identify and deal with these issues,” said Newcomer, who teaches epidemiology at the University of Montana. “VSD researchers are the best trained and experienced in addressing confounding and bias in vaccine safety studies, and they acknowledge when issues still remain.”
In an email to NOTUS, an HHS spokesperson reiterated the report’s claims.
“Despite public funding, VSD data remains largely closed off, limiting transparency and accountability,” the spokesperson said.
“The MAHA report raises legitimate, evidence-based concerns about the U.S. vaccine safety monitoring system and the expanding childhood immunization schedule — concerns that deserve serious engagement,“ the spokesperson continued. “The American people deserve honest answers, not bureaucratic stonewalling. That’s why they elected President Trump and appointed Secretary Kennedy — to Make America Healthy Again.”
The report’s language about vaccines and other public health interventions illustrates how Kennedy and the MAHA movement are trying to subvert the scientific process to support their unproven claims about vaccines — even after Kennedy faced considerable scrutiny about his past anti-vaccine activism during his confirmation process, including from some Republicans. This week, he also took the step of firing the members of a committee that makes recommendations on vaccine safety. (On Tuesday, Kennedy told reporters he had no plans to put “anti-vaxxers” on the committee).
But the MAHA report is the blueprint of Kennedy’s plans, and it has broader issues. NOTUS first reported that it also includes citations to studies that don’t exist, and The Washington Post later identified several signs that the report’s authors likely used artificial intelligence.
Also in the vaccine section of the report is a claim that vaccines have “many possible adverse events for which there is inadequate evidence to accept or reject a causal relationship.” It cites a lengthy review of whether there are causal relationships between injections and adverse events, but the chair of the committee that wrote the review also said the MAHA report misconstrues it.
“What that should say is that the absence of evidence does not suggest that a causal relationship would exist were there more data. The absence of data means only that there is not enough data,” Ellen Wright Clayton, a law and medicine researcher at Vanderbilt University, emailed NOTUS.
The report also leans into what it calls “overmedicalization,” the concept that children are prescribed more medications than they need. It argues that medical interventions, like vaccines, have a “cost” that comes with little benefit. Both arguments run contrary to the bulk of medical research: The reality is that the risk of a serious reaction to an immunization is small, but that’s never stopped Kennedy from making unsubstantiated claims about vaccines, including linking them to rising autism rates in children.
In making the case of “overmedicalization,” the report assumes outcomes of studies that haven’t been completed, calling them proven instances of the phenomenon. Despite those studies not being done, it goes on to say that they illustrate the “important likelihood of undetected but potentially major long-term repercussions.” But the report doesn’t give evidence that the likelihood exists.
The MAHA report also states that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccination schedule for the first 12 months after a child is born has increased from three to 29 injections since 1986, citing a broken link from the CDC.
While the number of vaccinations the CDC actually recommends for infants changes depending on factors like the mother’s vaccination status, the CDC recommends as few as 17 injections. Even on the upper end of the range of recommendations, the number for most babies is well below 29.
“This report sows doubt in the safety of the childhood vaccine schedule at a time when we’re facing a growing measles outbreak,” Sean T. O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases, said in a statement. “Public trust in vaccines is essential to maintaining high immunization rates and preventing the resurgence of deadly diseases. This report seeks to accomplish the opposite and will only further endanger the health of our children.”
And it cites three European countries’ vaccine recommendations to claim that American children receive more injections — despite those countries having similar vaccine schedules that vary based on factors like disease patterns and national health care system capacity. Pointing to a review from 12 years ago, which is dated for scientific research, it states that “no trials have compared the advisability and safety of the U.S. vaccine schedule as compared to other nations.” They have, but HHS disputed the existence of such research.
“The report also questions why, after decades of a dramatically expanded schedule, no long-term, controlled studies have compared it to alternatives — a reasonable concern given rising chronic conditions in children,” the HHS spokesperson said. “Comparisons to peer nations’ schedules are valid, and the report challenges whether U.S. policy reflects sound science or entrenched regulatory interests.”
Kennedy’s already gearing up to use the report as the foundation for wide-reaching reforms at the nation’s public health agencies — the report’s introduction even states that’s why it exists.
“Real transformation requires more than vision — it requires clarity. Before we act, we must fully understand the scope of the crisis, the conditions that created it, and the mechanisms through which it continues to grow. Without this foundation, interventions risk being reactive, fragmented or ineffective,” the report states.
Despite the rush of news coverage scrutinizing the report’s content and research, major MAHA figures and Trump officials aren’t backing down from standing behind its “substance.”
“It was a great disservice to President Trump and Bobby Kennedy that that report had some errors in its citations,” Calley Means, one of Kennedy’s top advisers, told NewsNation last week. “There was not one word of the MAHA report that was factually corrected — a couple footnote errors.”
—
Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.
Authors
