Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no stranger to making inaccurate claims critical of vaccines, but an appearance this week on Fox News was so chockfull of conspiratorial nonsense, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies, a doctor and Stanford University School of Medicine professor took the time to smack them down one-by-one — and then challenged Fox News to bring him on-air to fact-check Kennedy.
President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the namesake of Robert F. Kennedy to lead HHS was loudly criticized because of Kennedy’s long history of controversial comments and anti-vaccine activism. Kennedy insisted to Senators weighing his confirmation that he was not anti-vaccine, but his critics pointed to years and years of him saying things like “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” Nonetheless, he squeaked by the committee by one vote and was confirmed in a 52-48 vote mostly along party lines.
Since his confirmation, Kennedy has been facing mounting criticism amid a measles outbreak that has killed multiple unvaccinated children and hospitalized dozens more, his announcement that he had tapped a proponent of a discredited theory to “prove” what causes autism, for promoting a “Make America Healthy Again” report that was rife with errors and fake sources, and his support for sweeping budget cuts and layoffs of thousands of employees throughout the agencies under his purview.
On Thursday’s episode of The Story With Martha MacCallum, Kennedy covered several topics, including his recent controversial decision to purge the entire board of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a committee within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and replace them with new appointees of his choosing. A transcript of the video clip above:
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR: Martha, thanks for having me.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: Thank you very much for joining us. We’re going to put up the pictures of the individuals that you have named and, of course, you hear some pushback out there to some of these names.
Bill Cassidy, Senator Bill Cassidy suggested that you had promised him that you wouldn’t make changes to ACIP, which is the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. And then, he posted this: “Of course, now the fear is that ACIP will be filled with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion. I’ve spoken with Secretary Kennedy and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”
Your thoughts on that, Sir?
KENNEDY: Well, you know, this change, Martha, has been a long time coming. In 2002, the government Oversight Committee held hearings about AIDS that lasted almost a year. And they issued a scathing report about the institutionalized conflicts of interest and corruption. One of the examples they gave was that, four out of the five members who voted to recommend the rotavirus vaccine to this schedule had a direct financial interest in that vaccine.
One of those individuals voted to add it to the schedule. And then he sold it — subsequently sold his vaccine. He owned and developed, a guy called Dr. Paul Offit. Sold his share, his patent on the vaccine for $186 million. So he said he won the lottery because of his vote.
That panel found that 97 percent of the people on the committee had conflicts of interest. This is a committee that has — we’ve gone up from 11 vaccines in 1986. Today children get between 69 and 92 vaccines before they’re 18. Not one of those vaccines is ever —
MACCALLUM: This is really high. Those are not all mandatory.
KENNEDY: Those are all mandatory. And the reason there is 69 to 92 is, some of the brands require three doses, some of them require four. But none of them have been safety tested except for the Covid vaccine. The only vaccine on this schedule that has gone through placebo controlled trials prior to licensure was the Covid vaccine.
So nobody has any idea what the risk profiles are on these products. And we don’t know whether they have anything to do with the epidemic of chronic disease. Almost all the chronic disease, the autoimmune disease, I mean, these are products that are designed to deregulate your immune system, to change your immune system for life.
And we are now having an epidemic of immune dysregulation in our country. And we don’t have an idea that we have to investigate to see whether that has anything to do with it. It’s one of them —
MACCALLUM: They’re going to meet — the new panel is going to meet on June 25th. And you’ve seen Ashish Jha and a lot of these officials coming out. They’re blasting your editorial. They’re saying that this is going to be dangerous.
Do you expect there’s going to be a change in recommendations and how soon is that going to happen in terms of kids going to school in September or the year after? Are they going to have different rules or not have to get that —
KENNEDY: I mean, ACIP makes those decisions. And these are experts. I mean, Martin Kulldorff is on that committee. He’s regarded as the greatest living epidemiologist. He came out of Harvard. We have the top doctors in America, top scientists with him —
MACCALLUM: The pushback on him is that he served as an expert witness in a Merck trial. Will anyone on this panel be allowed to do that going forward?
KENNEDY: On the trial, we’re not going to allow anybody with conflicts of interest on that. I think, you know, and you had posted the criticism of my choice by Senator Cassidy, and a claim that I had promised Senator Cassidy not to change the vaccine panels. That’s not true.
What I told Senator Cassidy is that, I would allow him to put one of his candidates on, which we’re going to do.
MacCallum largely allowed Kennedy to make his claims unchallenged, other than a brief moment when he said children today were getting “between 69 and 92 vaccines,” and she interjected to say those were “not all mandatory.” Kennedy retorted “Those are all mandatory,” and the conversation moved on.
Dr. Jake Scott, a board-certified infections diseases specialist who is also a professor at Stanford University, wrote an op-ed this week criticizing Kennedy’s purge of the ACIP board, sharing his experiences treating unvaccinated patients who died from Covid as “casualties of a flood of misinformation,” and warning that Kennedy’s replacement ACIP members would only make conflicts of interest worse, undermine public trust by politicizing the process, and lead to an increased number of preventable deaths.
Scott reacted to the video of Kennedy’s comments on MacCallum’s show, and tweeted a long thread in response debunking the HHS Secretary’s claims in detail.
“RFK Jr. went on national TV and spouted egregious, dangerous falsehoods about vaccines,” wrote Scott. “As a parent and infectious diseases doctor, I couldn’t stay silent. @FoxNews might not fact-check him, but I will.”
“I’ve reviewed the trials. I’ve catalogued them. I have receipts,” he added.
In the eight tweets that followed, Scott bluntly knocked down Kennedy’s claims about conflicts of interest on the ACIP panel, vaccine safety testing, side effects, effectiveness, and more:
❌CLAIM 1: “97% of people on [ACIP] had conflicts of interest”
✅REALITY: Only 41% received any industry payments, mostly under $55k over 6 years
This is flatly false. Reuters reviewed all 17 voting members of the outgoing ACIP panel:
6 received $80 or less TOTAL over 6 years
7 received between $4k-$55k total over 6 years (mostly travel, meals, occasional consulting)
4 had no reported industry payments at allThat’s 7/17 = 41%. Not 97%.
CDC rules require recusal for any vote tied to a relevant conflict. Meeting minutes show ONE recusal in the reviewed period.
ACIP members are unpaid volunteer experts. They don’t get royalties, don’t keep pharma stock, don’t get flown to golf courses.
A published review found <5% of ACIP votes over the past decade involved a declared conflict.
reuters.com/…/kennedys-ouster-us-vaccine-advisers-puts-pharma-ties-under-scrutiny-2025-06-12❌ CLAIM 2: “We’ve gone from 11 vaccines in 1986 to 69-92 vaccines today”
✅ REALITY: About 48-51 shots today (including annual flu). The “92” comes from creative accounting.The 1986 schedule:
DTP x5
OPV (oral polio) x4
MMR x1 = 10 injections + 4 oral dosesToday’s routine schedule (2025), using lowest-dose brands, excluding Covid:
48-51 total injections
2-3 oral doses (rotavirus)Where does “92” come from? Creative accounting – counting each flu shot separately over 18 years, adding optional vaccines, even counting combination shots multiple times. It’s dishonest math.
“Mandatory”? Mandates are state-determined, not ACIP-mandated:
Covid required in ZERO states
HPV required in 3 states (DC, RI, VA)
Flu required in 2 states (CT, MA)
Most states require ~30-32 total shots
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/child-adolescent-age.html🎯 But here’s the key question: Is having more vaccines available somehow bad?
On the contrary. As a father of 2, I’m extremely grateful for these advances since 1986:
Hib (late 1980s): Once the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in infants. Since vaccination: >99% reduction in kids under 5.
Hepatitis B (1991): Prevents liver failure and cancer. Acute infections in children dropped 94%.
Varicella/Chickenpox (1995): Cases down 97%, hospitalizations down 90%, deaths now rare.
Pneumococcal (2000): Invasive disease in young kids dropped 90%.
Rotavirus (2006): Hospitalizations reduced 80% in infants.
Hepatitis A (2006): Cases dropped 97% from the 1990s.
HPV (2006-2011): Infections with vaccine-type HPV in teen girls dropped 88%.All of this is public health progress.
CDC modeling shows routine childhood immunization of U.S. children born 1994-2018 will prevent:
419 million illnesses
936,000 deaths
$1.9 trillion in societal costsYes, today’s schedule includes more shots than 1986. But it also prevents far more hospitalizations, cancers, and deaths. That’s a public health win by any standard.
❌ CLAIM 3: “The only vaccine that has gone through placebo-controlled trials was the Covid vaccine”
✅ REALITY: One of the most misleading claims I’ve ever seen a government official make on national television. EVERY childhood vaccine has been tested in placebo-controlled trials.As of 6/12/25, our open-access dataset includes:
274 controlled vaccine trials (1944-2025)
3 million total participants
164 placebo-controlled trials
133 used inert placebo (no antigen, no alum)Here’s proof – EVERY routine childhood vaccine antigen has been studied with a placebo of some sort:
Polio (Salk 1954): Saline-controlled, 400k+ kids (PMID: 14376387)
Rotavirus: 12 inert-placebo RCTs including REST trial (~70k kids) (PMID: 16394299)
Hib + Diphtheria: Saline-controlled RCT (PMID: 3497990)
Tetanus: Distilled water-controlled trial (PMID: 381074)
Pertussis: Two no-intervention RCTs (PMIDs: 18015552, DOI: 10.2307/4583816)
Pneumococcal: Multiple saline-controlled trials (PMIDs: 19483514, 15794968)
MMR: 1975 trial with antigen-free diluent (PMID: 764997)
HPV: Adolescent saline-controlled RCT (PMID: 17484215)
Hep B: Two alum-controlled trials in newborns (PMIDs: 3903646, 6143868)Yes, even diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and varicella have been studied in placebo-controlled trials.
https://bradspellberg.com/vaccine-rcts (All trials publicly documented with PubMed IDs)❌ CLAIM 4: “Nobody has any idea what the risk profiles are”
✅ REALITY: We absolutely DO know the safety profiles.Here’s how:
Of the 274 RCTs in our dataset:
253 reported safety outcomes (>90%)Only 21 labeled “not reported” (mostly older trials)
But trials are just the first layer. We also have robust post-licensure safety monitoring:
VAERS
VSD
PRISM
International safety databasesAnd when real safety issues arise, we act on them:
1999: Rotashield withdrawn (intussusception)
2021: J&J Covid shot limited (blood clots)
1969: RSV vaccine pulled (enhanced disease)That’s what a real safety net looks like. It’s not perfect, but it’s comprehensive and responsive.
❌ CLAIM 5: “Vaccines deregulate the immune system”
✅ REALITY: This isn’t science; it’s a scary-sounding buzzword.Vaccines don’t “deregulate” anything. They educate the immune system through targeted antigen exposure so it can defend against real pathogens later.
If anything, it’s the actual viruses that cause immune problems:
Measles causes immune amnesia
Covid triggered MIS-C in children
Hepatitis B can cause kidney diseaseThere is no credible evidence that routine childhood vaccines cause “immune dysregulation” or chronic disease. None.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
RFK Jr. went on national television and systematically misled millions of Americans with false claims about vaccines.But the real evidence is available. The studies exist. The safety data is public.
Why this matters: I’ve seen many people die from vaccine-preventable diseases and it is truly the most awful thing I’ve witnessed.
Don’t be misled. The health and well-being of our children and all of us depends on these vaccines.
If this thread was helpful, share it. Truth matters. Lives depend on it.
P.S. I have zero financial conflicts of interest, and I’ve actually been critical of some vaccine recommendations and requirements, as some people who have followed me on this site since COVID know.
In a follow-up tweet, Scott tagged MacCallum and Fox News to draw attention to his thread and invite them to reach out to him.
“Hi @MarthaMacCallum,” Scott wrote. “I watched your June 12 interview with Secretary Kennedy. Several of his vaccine claims (conflicts on ACIP, 92 “mandatory” shots, lack of placebo trials) are contradicted by published data. I’ve compiled the underlying studies in an open spreadsheet and would be happy to walk viewers through the facts or discuss them on air. My goal is clarity, not confrontation.”
“Happy to provide sources and join a panel with Sec. Kennedy,” he added, “if Fox News is open to an evidence-driven follow-up.”
Scott tweeted a similar message to Anderson Cooper at CNN.
Scott has continued to reply to his social media followers with fact-checks and additional information about vaccines, including a long thread about nearly century-long safety record and increased effectiveness from aluminum salt being used as an adjuvant in vaccines and debunking claims that he had financial conflicts of interest.
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
