Robert F Kennedy Jr

Dr. Vinay Prasad, a known critic of both the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration, has been appointed to lead the FDA's program overseeing vaccines and biotechnology drugs.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced the decision in a message to staff on Tuesday, lauding Prasad's "long and distinguished history in medicine." The FDA falls under the guidance of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Agency commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced Tuesday that Dr. Vinay Prasad, a prominent COVID–19 vaccine critic, has been appointed to lead the Food and Drug Administration Center, which oversees the approval of vaccines and other biologics products.

Prasad, currently a physician-scientist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, gained a following during the pandemic for criticizing mask mandates, lockdowns, and COVID-19 vaccine boosters. 

President Donald Trump hailed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a reformer when appointing him health and human services (HHS) secretary, declaring Kennedy would get “the American people the facts and the answers that we deserve.” Including about autism.

In a shift away from next-generation Covid-19 vaccines, the Trump administration is investing $500 million in a vaccine project championed by two scientists who were recently tapped to serve in senior roles within the National Institutes of Health, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. 

The unusually large sum comes as the nation’s health agencies are cutting budgets, shrinking staff and terminating hundreds of active research grants. 

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.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s pledge to investigate autism’s “root cause” has split advocates for people with the condition: Some, like Kennedy, want to know what’s causing it, while prominent groups think his search could do more harm than good.

He’s correct in questioning the Covid-19 vaccine’s inclusion on the schedule for children.

My criticism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services, has been public for many years and is no secret. Kennedy has not been a science-based policymaker, before or after his confirmation to the Trump cabinet. His proposed policies since becoming the head of HHS have been no better, as he continues to follow his own personal agendas instead of following the science and data.

In announcing new autism prevalence data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. distorted scientific research to argue that there is an “epidemic” of autism that must be due to an “environmental toxin.”

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.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently announced an effort to investigate the dramatic rise in autism in recent years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 36 children now has autism, an over 300 percent increase since 2000. Kennedy pledged to find the cause of the autism epidemic by September and then to take steps to eliminate it.