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 "President-elect Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine
policy, and he has questions about it," Kennedy, who has raised
questions about the safety of vaccines, told reporters after a
meeting with Trump in New York on Tuesday.
"He asked me to chair a commission on vaccine safety and scientific
integrity. I said I would," said Kennedy.
However, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks later told Reuters that, while
the president-elect was exploring the possibility of forming a
committee on autism, "no decisions have been made at this time."
Kennedy, an environmentalist and lawyer, is the son of the late U.S.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York and the nephew of assassinated
Democratic President John F. Kennedy.
Vaccine experts decried the announcement by a vaccination skeptic
that he would head a panel to explore the safety of vaccines and
their purported link with autism. The association was raised by a
paper published in the British medical journal in The Lancet in 1998
that claimed to find a connection between the measles, mumps and
rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.
That paper has been debunked, and The Lancet withdrew the study.
Since then, numerous studies have affirmed the safety of the
vaccine.
The American Academy of Pediatrics said vaccines are "the most
significant medical innovation of our time," adding that claims that
vaccines are linked to autism or are unsafe have been disproven "by
a robust body of medical literature."
In addition to measles, mumps and rubella, vaccines protect children
and adults against a wide variety of deadly or crippling diseases,
including polio, typhoid, diphtheria and tetanus.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt
University's medical school in Nashville, Tennessee, who advises the
federal panel that sets U.S. vaccine policy, said the Kennedy news
reinforces the concerns of public health officials, pediatricians
and family doctors.
Schaffner said Kennedy has "raised issues that have been settled
securely and completely by good science."
Nevertheless, concerns have persisted over a link between vaccines
and autism, a range of symptoms that often includes difficulties
with communication and social interaction.
Kennedy, 62, said Trump, 70, was "very pro-vaccine, as am I," but
said, "Everybody ought to be able to be assured that the vaccines
that we have (are) ... as safe as they possibly can be."
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In 2014, Trump, a New York businessman who was not yet a
presidential candidate, posted on Twitter, "I believe in
vaccinations but not massive, all at once, shots. Too much for small
child to handle. Govt. should stop NOW!"
Kennedy in 2005 wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine and the
Salon.com website asserting that the government was conspiring to
cover up the connections between autism and thimerosal, a
mercury-based preservative formerly used in vaccines. Salon.com
later retracted the article because of factual errors, and Rolling
Stone deleted it.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there
is no evidence of harm caused by thimerosal in vaccines. Thimerosal
was never used in the MMR vaccine. CDC said research does not show a
link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. As a precaution, it
was removed from childhood vaccines in the United States in 2001.
Daniel Johnson, a pediatric infectious disease expert at University
of Chicago Medicine, said he thought yet another investigation into
vaccine safety was a waste of public money.
"There's already many systems in place to provide oversight, to
record data, which is constantly being reviewed by many in
government and the scientific community," Johnson said. "There is no
need for still yet another system for doing this."
Johnson said he was "very concerned" that parents may delay getting
their children vaccinated as they await word from a vaccination
safety panel, which could result in "increased harm, illness and
potentially death" of children from diseases that could be prevented
by vaccines.
(Additional reporting by Melissa Fares in New York; Editing by
Jonathan Oatis, Alistair Bell and Bernard Orr)
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