It was one of the more tense exchanges in an already heated confirmation hearing as senators put Robert F Kennedy Jr.'s record on vaccines — and his shifting stances on their safety and efficacy — under the microscope.
Senator Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat from Maryland, pointed to past comments made by Kennedy in which he said, "We should not be giving black people the same vaccine schedule that's given to whites because their immune system is better than ours."
"So what different vaccine schedule would you say I should have received?" asked Alsobrooks, who's Black. "With all due respect, that is so dangerous."
In response, Kennedy cited a well-known vaccine researcher and said there are a "series of studies" showing that "to particular antigens blacks have a much stronger reaction."
The basis for Kennedy's comment appears to be work done by a team at the Mayo Clinic who looked at differences in the immune response to vaccination by race. The data did show African Americans mounted a higher antibody response after MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccination compared to white people.
However, the study's own author tells NPR the data doesn't support a change in vaccine schedule based on race.
Dr. Richard Kennedy — a vaccine researcher at the Mayo Clinic who's not related to Robert F Kennedy Jr. — says it's true the immune response to vaccination can vary by race, sex, and "potentially dozens of other factors."
But suggesting that African Americans should have different schedules would be "twisting the data far beyond what they actually demonstrate," he says.
Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor of medicine at Emory University, agrees, saying such a conclusion is "taking it to a very unsafe place," in part because vaccination rates are already lower among Black children.
Despite his history of undermining trust in the safety of vaccines, Kennedy has spent the confirmation hearings arguing he's supportive of them. But he's stopped short of actually renouncing past statements including debunked assertions that vaccines cause autism.
A review of Kennedy's full comments during that 2021 appearance which Alsobrooks quoted from, shows Kennedy making additional false claims about the safety of vaccines.
He begins by citing a statistic from a study that reported finding a much higher rate of autism in Black children who received the MMR vaccine on schedule. However, that paper was retracted because of undeclared competing interests on the part of the author and concerns about the validity of the methods and statistical analysis. The author is the chief scientific officer for Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine advocacy group Kennedy founded and led for many years.
Kennedy then seems to reference the Mayo Clinic study, saying it shows the measles vaccine will "push their immune response over the cliff" and "the body of those black boys is going to begin to attack their own body thinking that it is a foreign invader."
He adds: "The vaccines that we're giving them are overloading them and causing autoimmunity."
None of this is supported by the actual study, which didn't look at adverse events or side effects.
"The data do not show that one racial group experiences increased harm or autoimmunity compared to any other racial group," says study author Richard Kennedy.
RFK Jr. has been involved in other efforts to cast doubt on the safety of vaccines based on race.
A film that was produced by Kennedy several years ago raised the idea that vaccines could be disproportionately harming people of color — and misrepresents another study by the Mayo Clinic, this one on the rubella vaccine, to bolster its argument.
That study's author, Dr. Gregory Poland, told NPR they found "no evidence of increased vaccine side effects" and that any claim of "increased vulnerability" among African-Americans who receive the rubella vaccine is "simply not supported by either this study or the science."
This story was edited by Jane Greenhalgh
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