Lawsuit: Kennedy’s Anti-Vax Stance Is an ‘Existential Threat’

By Jennifer Porter Gore | Word In Black

Overview: Lack of access and several more issues keep Black Americans’ COVID vaccination rates low–and policy changes won’t help.

(WIB) – Six organizations representing public health and medical professionals, as well as an unnamed pregnant doctor, have sued Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials over its decision to stop recommending potentially life-saving COVID-19 vaccinations for most pregnant women and children. 

The doctor works in a hospital and alleges a pharmacy recently denied her request for a COVID booster shot although she has a high risk of exposure to infectious diseases because of her work.

The groups — including the American Public Health Association, which pays particular attention to the health gap between Black and white Americans — and the doctor filed the lawsuit to block Kennedy’s order, and to have the change in COVID vaccine recommendations declared unlawful. 

“This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America, and those in charge are only just getting started,” said Richard H. Hughes IV, the lead attorney in the lawsuit. “If left unchecked, Secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children.”

Carlene Pavlos, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Health Association, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement her organization is “deeply troubled” by Kennedy’s directive. She said the HHS secretary is destroying “decades” of public confidence in the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and harming overall public health in the process. 

“Secretary Kennedy’s actions are not only dangerous for pregnant women and children, but they also represent a retreat from 60+ years of evidence-based health policy,” she added. 

In May, Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, announced he had removed COVID-19 shots from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of recommended vaccines for children and healthy pregnant women. Before then, health officials, including infectious disease experts, had stressed the importance of annual COVID-19 shots for all Americans over six months of age.

RELATED: RFK Jr., Vaccine Skeptic, Ramps Up COVID Risks For Black People

Experts say the change could do particular harm to Black Americans, who made up around 18% of all COVID cases during the pandemic and accounted for two out of every 10 deaths. Black children who became infected were twice as likely as white kids to require hospitalization and were more than five times as likely to be admitted to intensive care for treatment. 

Only 13% of the U.S. population is Black.

The lawsuit also asserts that Kennedy and others of President Donald Trump’s political appointees at HHS have engaged in an effort to mislead the public. The plaintiffs point to coordinated actions by HHS and Kennedy that ignore federal procedures and protocols that have existed for decades.

Since January, HHS officials have blocked communications from the CDC, and cancelled vaccine panel meetings at CDC and the Food and Drug Administration. Both agencies are under HHS authority. 

HHS also announced studies to investigate a link between vaccines and autism — a theory that was debunked decades ago, yet is at the heart of Kennedy’s health agenda.  

RELATED: 5 Years Later: Black Health Care Workers Reflect on COVID-19

Kennedy also sacked all members of an expert scientific advisory panel that helps the CDC determine who should get which vaccines and when. Health insurers, including Medicaid providers, depend on these recommendations to decide which vaccines they will cover;  the change will likely let insurers deny coverage for patients who request vaccines that the government doesn’t specifically recommend.

Kennedy’s hand-picked replacements — all of them known anti-vaxxers — have spurred concerns on Capitol Hill as well as in the scientific community. Senator Bill Cassidy — a Louisiana Republican and a physician who was the deciding vote in Kennedy’s confirmation as HHS secretary — asked the panel to delay its first meeting but they ignored his request and met anyway. 

On Monday, several health experts — plaintiffs in the lawsuit — said Kennedy’s maneuver disregards the scientific review process first established when the polio and measles vaccines were introduced to the American public. 

In the meantime, a group of infectious disease experts have launched the Vaccine Integrity Project, an independent committee that “will engage professionals across the U.S. immunization landscape to gather feedback on how non-governmental entities may be able to help protect vaccine policy, information, and utilization across the U.S.,” according to the group’s website.