Originally published June 29, 2023 8:18 am PDT
Democrat 2024 U.S. Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.) revealed to NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas that the U.S. government has admitted that there are no records of pre-licensing safety data for any childhood vaccine.
Kennedy sat before an audience of American voters for his first town hall with a national news network.
Vargas asked Kennedy about “one of the biggest controversies” surrounding his candidacy, namely his stance on childhood vaccines.
“Nearly every scientific and medical organization including the CDC, the FDA, the AMA, the American Academy of Pediatrics—all say you’re wrong on this issue,” Vargas claimed, before allowing an audience member to tell Kennedy his stance on vaccines is “dangerous.”
“Medical experts are deeply concerned about your message,” claims the audience member, who was said to be a doctor himself. “How can we help you to come to the side of science?”
RFK Jr. responded, pointing out the ad hominem nature of the audience member’s question.
“I think most people don’t know what my stance is on vaccines,” Kennedy began. “I’ve never been anti-vaccine. And I’ve said that hundreds and hundreds of times, but it doesn’t matter because that is a way of silencing—using a pejorative to describe me is his way of silencing or marginalizing me.”
RFK Jr. emphasized that his position on vaccines is that the drugs should be tested for safety before they are given to children.
“I think virtually every American would agree with my stance on vaccines, which is that vaccines should be tested like other medicines. They should be safety tested. And unfortunately, vaccines are not safety tested,” he argued.
The 2024 presidential contender then pointed out that no vaccine “has ever been subject to a pre-licensing placebo-controlled trial.”
He said: “Of the 72 vaccine doses now mandated essentially mandated—they recommended, but they’re really mandated for American children—none of them, not one, has ever been subject to a pre-licensing placebo-controlled trial.”
“Yes they have,” Vargas interjected before Kennedy corrected her, explaining that former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) corroborate his position.
“So I met with Dr. Fauci in 2016. And I agreed to go on Trump’s vaccine safety commission,” he continued. “We said to [Fauci], ‘Can you show us one test from any vaccine pre-licensing safety tests?’ And he said, ‘I’ll send it to you. I can’t find one now.'”
“He never did,” Kennedy said. “So we sued him,” adding, “And after a year of litigation and stonewalling, they said that they could not provide a single safety study for any vaccine that is on the childhood schedule—pre-licensing safety study.”
“So anybody who wants to read that can go to the Children’s Health Defense website and you can read HHS’s admission that not a single one has ever been safety tested pre-licensing,” he went on to say.
“What I’ve said is [that] other medicines are required to [provide pre-licensing safety testing], and we should have to do that for vaccines. If I’m wrong, show me the test, show me the study. You won’t be able to because there are none.”
He reasoned, “That means that we don’t know what the long-term risks are, the risk profile of those products.”
Kennedy’s lawsuit shows that in response to his Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) request, HHS confirmed that the Department’s “searches for records did not locate any records” of pre-licensing vaccine safety testing.
HHS conducted “a thorough search of its document tracking systems” as well as “a comprehensive review of all relevant indexes of HHS Secretarial Correspondence records maintained at Federal Records Centers that remain in the custody of HHS.”
“These searches did not locate records responsive to your request, or indications that records responsive to your request and in the custody of HHS are located at Federal Records Centers,” HHS admits in the court document.
HHS was asked to explain how the agency “justifies licensing any pediatric vaccine without first conducting a long-term clinical trial in which the rate of adverse reactions is compared between the subject group and a control group receiving an inert placebo.”
In its response, HHS affirmed that the health body does not collect the safety data because “[i]nert placebo controls are not required to understand the safety profile of a new vaccine, and are thus not required.”
You can read the full lawsuit here:
Watch RFK Jr.’s exchange with Vargas and the audience member below:
