Protect Their Future (Formerly @ImmunizeUnder5s)

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I don’t know a single doctor who went to med school to keep people sick. This is remarkably ignorant and frankly insulting. Despite his bravado, the HHS Sec knows remarkably little about health and healthcare in the US.

I spend hours every day talking with parents about ways to keep their children WELL. Good nutrition, adequate sleep, exercise. Lots of books and limited screen time. You name it. So tell me again how I'm profiting by keeping my patients sick.

mRNA vaccines have already saved millions of lives from Covid and they have the potential to save millions more from other diseases. Suspending research on this modern medical miracle will mean more suffering and more preventable death.

RFK Jr. just cut $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine development. Not because the vaccines failed. Not because they’re unsafe. But because of ideology. Twenty-two projects - gone overnight. These weren’t fringe efforts. They included next-gen vaccines for COVID-19, influenza, RSV, and even H5N1 bird flu. Let’s be clear: mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives during the COVID pandemic. They don’t prevent every infection, but they do prevent severe illness and death. That’s the gold standard in real-world vaccine effectiveness. RFK Jr. says he wants “safer” alternatives. But the scientific consensus is crystal clear: mRNA vaccines are among the safest and most effective tools in modern medicine. Pulling support for them isn’t a safety move - it’s an anti-vaccine statement dressed in bureaucratic language. This decision wasn’t grounded in science. It was driven by talking points from online influencers and anti-vax communities - not by the CDC, WHO, or FDA. We’re watching political ideology override evidence-based health policy. And the timing couldn’t be worse. Bird flu is circulating. Pandemic risks are real. And mRNA is still our fastest route to a scalable countermeasure. Cutting this platform means we’ll be slower, less prepared, and more vulnerable next time. Public health leaders are sounding the alarm: “A strategic misstep.” – Rick Bright, former BARDA director. “A disaster for preparedness.” – Paul Offit. “mRNA has saved lives.” – every infectious disease expert not broadcasting on Facebook Live. This is what it looks like when science gets sidelined. We don’t just lose funding. We lose time. We lose lives. We lose the tools that protect us. RFK Jr. isn’t making America safer. He’s dismantling the infrastructure we’ll need for the next crisis - in the name of belief over biology. It’s not principled. It’s reckless.

What's particularly frustrating is that we're still spending enormous time dissecting aluminum exposure data - because of vaccine-autism myths that trace back to a single fraudulent study from 1998. The Wakefield legacy: Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist, published a 12-child case series in The Lancet claiming MMR vaccines might cause autism (MMR never contained thimerosal). He had undisclosed financial conflicts - paid by lawyers suing vaccine makers and had filed a patent for a rival vaccine. Investigations revealed fabricated data, altered medical records, and unethical procedures on children. The Lancet fully retracted the paper in 2010; Wakefield lost his medical license. But the damage was done The real cost: Decades of brilliant scientists forced to disprove what should never have needed refuting. Massive studies like this recent Danish one (1.2 million children) testing aluminum-adjuvant safety because the myth keeps shifting targets - from MMR to thimerosal to aluminum ingredients. Parents living in unnecessary fear. Outbreaks of preventable diseases. Resources diverted from real autism research. Wakefield's fraud spawned countless derivative theories—thimerosal, aluminum, "too many too soon" - each requiring new studies to debunk. And now RFK Jr. keeps the cycle going, ensuring another generation wastes time re-debunking claims rooted in fabricated data. One fraudulent paper launched a mythology that has cost public health immeasurable time, resources, and trust. That's the real scandal.

RFKs tweet has now received a community note due to its enormous misrepresentation of some of the study statistics This is embarrassing for the US administration - it is absolutely basic stuff

RFK: We need to study the safety of aluminium in vaccines! Denmark: Here is a study of *all children* born in a 23 year period, finding no safety issues from aluminium in vaccines RFK: Not THAT kind of study! I meant one that supports what I already decided to believe!

Cherry picking numbers to make false claims does not make it true. RFK Jr is distorting data about Asperger’s by avoiding the wide confidence interval that occurs because of the very small sample size. He and his friends are anti-vaccine and say whatever they want to scare people. Vaccines are medical miracles.

New Nature study shows SARS2 significantly elevates the risk of neuropsychiatric conditions including anxiety, mood disorders, cognitive impairment and psychotic disorders for up to 6 months. “Alarmingly, even individuals with mild or asymptomatic infections face elevated risk.”

Just out in Nature yesterday, SARS-COv-2 infection can awaken sleeping cancer cells! My concern mounts with increasing evidence that COVID is a cancer inducing virus. Viral clearance is more important than ever, especially in those with LONG-COVID. nature.com/articles/d4158…

Can we please get mandatory masking back on cancer wards and healthcare settings now? We know COVID can be oncogenic. We know it’s a much higher risk to those who are immune compromised. Yet healthcare workers won’t mask around cancer patients & many have died. Mask up!

Every teacher. Every administrator. Every parent. Every grandparent. Insist on ventilation and air filtration in classrooms now.

If we cared about children, we would have ventilation, filtration and these in all classrooms.

#Breaking: Vinay Prasad, a top official at the Food and Drug Administration, has suddenly departed after a series of controversial decisions about a treatment for boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. trib.al/vfYBVjn

Breakthrough study: COVID-19 reactivates dormant breast cancer, triggering deadly metastasis (shown in mice). In humans, cancer survivors who got COVID had 4.5× higher cancer-related deaths—and 1.4× greater breast cancer. nature.com/articles/s4158…

Millions of dollars have been pulled from state and local vaccination programs with no explanation. Affected programs will have to cut staffers and vaccination rates will drop as they lose the ability to assist people who are low-income or uninsured. cnn.com/2025/07/25/hea…

I’ve spent 20 years caring for kids. Slashing nearly $1T from Medicaid isn’t a line item, it’s a direct attack on children’s health. As physicians, we have a responsibility to protect the most vulnerable. Read my @medpagetoday op-ed: bit.ly/3ILAmOH