Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Lead Vaccine Safety Rally

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will deliver the keynote address March 31 at the Revolution for Truth rally in Washington, D.C., organized by the Vaccination Injury Awareness League to call for more transparency in the research and government approval process of an ever-expanding schedule of vaccines.

Kennedy has said that he is “pro-vaccine,” but he believes more research should be done to investigate potential health risks and is critical of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s handling of the issue.

“CDC recommended five pediatric vaccines when I was a boy in 1954,” says Kennedy, son of the late U.S. Senator and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. “Today’s children generally cannot ­­attend school without at least 56 doses of 14 vaccines by the time they’re 18.”

Ever since British researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s suggested links between vaccines and autism was widely discredited nearly two decades ago, Kennedy says that anyone who questions vaccines is treated as a pariah.

“People who have legitimate concerns about vaccine safety have been ridiculed, marginalized and vilified,” Kennedy tells Newsmax Health. “But there is overwhelming consensus within the scientific research community that raise legitimate safety concerns about the current vaccination schedule.”

Kennedy blames the pharmaceutical industry, U.S. government, and media of colluding in the push to inoculate more and more people with an increasing variety of vaccines.

“The media will not elaborate on this issue,” says Kennedy, founder of the environmental group World Mercury Project. “Part of it is the money that they are making from the industry through advertising, $5.4 billion annually. But most reporters and editors are more concerned that raising any questions about vaccine safety will reduce vaccination coverage, and they believe that will endanger the public health.”

He accuses the media of failing their role as watchdog of American society by refusing to challenge pronouncements of vaccine safety by the CDC, pharmaceutical companies, and others, many of which he claims reference flawed studies.

“The media censorship doesn’t strengthen the vaccine program, but rather emboldens the most reckless and irresponsible behavior by the regulators and the $25 billion-a-year vaccine industry,” says Kennedy.

The explosion in vaccines began in the mid-1980s after Congress gave the pharmaceutical industry blanket immunity from lawsuits for vaccine injury.

Kennedy blasts the CDC as a “cesspool of corruption” in which people who sit on vaccine advisory committees often have vested interests in the drugs they are judging. One example is Dr. Paul Offit, who Kennedy says voted to add his own rotavirus vaccine to CDC’s schedule, and pocketed millions by later selling the royalties of his patent.

Kennedy also accuses the CDC of manipulating data from its own studies, a charge supported by whistleblower Dr. William Thompson. Kennedy says the longtime CDC scientist has said he and his fellow researchers were pressured to alter data about the safety of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal to conceal its causative link to various brain injuries, including autism.

While thimerosal was removed from pediatric vaccines distributed in the U.S. in 2001, Kennedy notes that it’s still used in some flu shots that are routinely given to kids and pregnant women.

“They call on pregnant women to limit their consumption of fish to avoid mercury but recommend they get flu shots containing mercury,” says Kennedy, who edited the book “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak.”

“The CDC claims it’s in a form that is less persistent in the body, so it doesn’t do the same kind of damage. But a lot of science says that’s not true.”

When asked specifically about transparency and conflict of interest in the vaccine approval process, a CDC spokesman said in an email response: “Credible scientific studies provide evidence of no connection between vaccines and autism.”

A representative of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also replied by email, stating, “Vaccines are critical to protecting public health by preventing serious and potentially life-threatening infectious diseases. Ensuring the safety and effectiveness of vaccines is one of the FDA’s top priorities.”

President Donald Trump has expressed his own doubts on the issue, and talked to Kennedy about possibly heading a vaccine safety commission.

“We discussed a number of issues,” Kennedy recalls about his January 10 meeting with the then president-elect.

“He said he won’t cave under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, but it’s very powerful. We’ll see what happens.”