“Kennedy, who accepted the offer [to head the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services] Thursday, has been one of the nation’s most prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists for years and has frequently spread false conspiracy theories about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.”
CNN, November 15, 2024
 
From the moment he was appointed, this was the framing—the pre-established bias right out of the starting gate. The implication, all over the legacy press, was that any sensible person would decry Kennedy’s appointment—and if you don’t, you’re a conspiracy theorist yourself. 
 
Another journalist, with a different bias, might have written something like this: “Kennedy, who accepted the offer Thursday, has questioned one of our society’s shibboleths—that vaccines are safe and effective—due to the concomitant rise in childhood vaccination and childhood health disorders.” See how that works?
 
We all know that correlation doesn’t equal causation. But when a population-wide correlation smacks us in the face, it’s scientific to search for causative strings that may be tugging at the data. By the same token, it is scientifically disingenuous to keep bleating the “safe and effective” mantra when worrying signals enter the dataset. It’s also incurious—the most serious character defect in a scientist.
 
Before anyone brands me as an “anti-vax conspiratory theorist,” I’ll take the opportunity to disclose that I have received five—count ’em, five—COVID shots. While I took strong issue with the lockdowns and mandates, I saw no reason to deprive myself of the vaccines. Already 64 during the first roll-out, I figured I stood more to gain than to lose from the shots.
 
I’ve always regarded vaccines as one of the most elegant medical interventions ever developed. Unlike many other treatments, vaccines don’t hijack any natural biochemical pathways—they simply enter the queue of antigens we encounter every day and let the immune system do its thing. My kids were vaxxed up the wazoo, including some shots I had to pay for myself.
 
Also, I write for big pharma. They sponsor all the academic papers I ghostwrite. I don’t consider them the enemy. Their scientists stumble into some diabolically ingenious and life-changing discoveries. Like all big businesses, however, pharmaceutical companies keep their eye on the bottom line and take some shortcuts to ensure it stays black. Like all big businesses, they seek not so much to inform as to persuade—so their “safe and effective” mantra cannot be taken more seriously than any other corporate-speak, such as “new and improved” or “first of its kind.” 
 
At the risk of biting the hand that feeds me, I can attest that big pharma has captured the medical industry. Every year I attend numerous medical conferences, where slick pharma booths with blaring slogans, smiling reps, and shiny espresso machines dominate the exhibition rooms. Companies like Pfizer, Merck, Bayer, and Johnson & Johnson—to name just a few—are all there to make buck. They groom “patient champions” to pressure public and private payers to subsidize every new drug on the market, no matter how modest its benefits. They hold closed-door meetings with physician advisors to discuss how to slice clinical-trial data to best advantage. And if you torture the data enough, it yields. I know this because I’ve sat behind those closed doors.
 
Kennedy wants to fling the doors wide open. He has pledged to “free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture” and provide Americans with transparency. “I’m going to make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them,” he recently stated. Last I checked, transparency was a good thing—something we all should be demanding from our governments. As for loosing the grip of corporate capture, is that not something progressive activists should be celebrating?
 
Bottom line: Kennedy haters can relax. He has plainly stated that he doesn’t intend to take vaccines away from anyone: he simply wants to improve the science of vaccine safety. He’ll be shaking things up, to be sure, but can we honestly say that institutions like the CDC, FDA, and NIH are not due for a shakeup?