Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaccine activism is not what you'd call subtle. For decades, he has questioned the safety and effectiveness of various childhood vaccines, insisting that some of them cause autism, lying about their ingredients, and dismissing troves of evidence that counter his views. However much he might deny it, Kennedy is 'an old-school anti-vaxxer,' Dorit Reiss, an expert in vaccine law at UC Law San Francisco, told me. When he became the United States' health secretary, Kennedy brought few of his staunchest and oldest allies in the anti-vaccine movement with him. Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services is filling with political appointees whose views of vaccines run less obviously counter to evidence than Kennedy's. But these officials, too, question the safety and usefulness of at least some vaccines, and seek to slow or stop their use. Among those officials are Marty Makary, the new FDA commissioner, and Tracy Beth Hoeg, his new special assistant;...
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