HHS

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, has intimated that parents are to blame for their children’s autism, and that they are responsible for researching every aspect of their children’s lives that could affect their development.

“We have to recognize we are doing this to our children, and we need to put an end to it,” Kennedy said at his first press conference as health secretary.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a long history of undermining confidence in vaccine safety, including by repeatedly claiming that vaccines are not tested in placebo-controlled trials, a familiar anti-vaccine trope.

Now, an HHS spokesperson has used similar language in a statement that falsely said there’s little available evidence on whether vaccines are safe.

A group of Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit on Monday to challenge the Trump administration's decision to gut the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by firing 10,000 of its employees and shuttering entire agencies within the department.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intends to shift the way vaccines are tested, a move that the agency said will increase transparency but that medical experts fear could limit access to vaccines and undermine the public’s trust in immunization depending on its implementation.

The potential change outlined in a statement says all new vaccines will be required to undergo placebo testing, a procedure in which some people receive the vaccine and others receive an inert substance — such as a saline shot — before the results are compared.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is requiring all new vaccines to be tested against placebos before being licensed, officials said on April 30.

The requirement is “a radical departure from past practices,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Except for the COVID vaccine, none of the vaccines on the CDC’s childhood recommended schedule was tested against an inert placebo, meaning we know very little about the actual risk profiles of these products,” the HHS spokesperson said.

The review commissioned by Trump warns of the potential for ‘clinical recklessness’ where minors are concerned.

There is not strong evidence that “gender-affirming care” for minors is effective for treating gender dysphoria or improving mental health, according to a report issued on Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services, based on a review of existing literature.

The Trump administration is restoring financial support for a landmark study of women's health, an official said Thursday, reversing a defunding decision that shocked medical researchers.

"These studies represent critical contributions to our better understanding of women's health," said a statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The federal government's purported plan to track Americans who have autism, which social media users have referred to as an "autism registry," has been heavily criticized.

On Tuesday, CBS News reported that the National Institutes of Health—a body within the Department of Health and Human Services, which is headed by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—was overseeing the launch of a registry to measure Americans with autism amid a wider plan to collect patient data for autism research.

The federal teams that count public health problems are disappearing — putting efforts to solve those problems in jeopardy.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purge of tens of thousands of federal workers has halted efforts to collect data on everything from cancer rates in firefighters to mother-to-baby transmission of HIV and syphilis to outbreaks of drug-resistant gonorrhea to cases of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Teams manning government hotlines for reporting adverse events from foods, supplements and cosmetics, and call centers that provide other essential safety information were among the thousands of Health and Human Services Department employees laid off last week.

The big picture: Though the department is hurriedly calling some workers back, the episodes show how information blackouts are becoming a feature of the Trump administration's efforts to reorganize the health bureaucracy.