I'm a physician who has looked at hundreds of studies of vaccine safety, and here's some of what RFK Jr. gets wrong

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Jake Scott, Stanford University

In the four months since he began serving as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made many public statements about vaccines that have cast doubt on their safety and on the objectivity of long-standing processes established to evaluate them.

Many of these statements are factually incorrect. For example, in a newscast aired on June 12, 2025, Kennedy told Fox News viewers that 97% of federal vaccine advisers are on the take. In the same interview, he also claimed that children receive 92 mandatory shots. He has also widely claimed that only COVID-19 vaccines, not other vaccines in use by both children and adults, were ever tested against placebos and that “nobody has any idea” how safe routine immunizations are.

As an infectious disease physician who curates an open database of hundreds of controlled vaccine trials involving over 6 million participants, I am intimately familiar with the decades of research on vaccine safety. I believe it is important to correct the record – especially because these statements come from the official who now oversees the agencies charged with protecting Americans’ health.

Do children really receive 92 mandatory shots?

In 1986, the childhood vaccine schedule contained about 11 doses protecting against seven diseases. Today, it includes roughly 50 injections covering 16 diseases. State school entry laws typically require 30 to 32 shots across 10 to 12 diseases. No state mandates COVID-19 vaccination. Where Kennedy’s “92 mandatory shots” figure comes from is unclear, but the actual number is significantly lower.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m-physician-looked-hundreds-studies-123147785.html

[snot]

1. Reading the article,

it says that kids receive "roughly 50 shots," not 92. That's a heck of a lot more than I got, although I know there are at least a few that I would have gotten if they'd been available.

And out of 378 "controlled" vaccine trials, 195 compared volunteers' response to a placebo. Are uncontrolled trials relied on at all by the CDC? We'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they're not; that's means 52% involved a placebo. (Of course, nearly all trials are conducted by Big Pharma or their grantees.)

And as for conflicts of interest, committee members are required to divest themselves of any vaccine company stock (completely? what about their family members? But let's assume the best), and only 41% of the members received compensation ranging between $4,000 and $57,000 for travel or "consulting." The article did not address how many members had worked or were likely to go to work for Big Pharma or owned patents on vaccine-related products or processes.

In sum, assuming the article is accurate and relatively complete, the situation is only half as bad as RFK, Jr. claimed.

Is that good enough?