Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has employed an anti-vaccine recommend and longtime best friend to a place on the Well being and Human Services and products Division, an individual acquainted with the subject showed to ABC Information.
Lyn Redwood served for years as president of Kids’s Well being Protection, the anti-vaccine group based through Kennedy. Her actual position at HHS is unclear.
Andrew Nixon, a division spokesman, declined to remark.
In the meantime, Redwood is anticipated to ship a presentation on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) assembly on Thursday the use of a document on thimerosal this is recently to be had on-line, which incorporates deceptive knowledge and cites a supply that it seems that does no longer exist, in keeping with one writer, who informed ABC Information he’s falsely cited within the document.
Thimerosal is a preservative in vaccines supposed to stop contamination. It is recently utilized in about 4% of flu pictures however was once got rid of from regimen early life vaccines in 2001.
“To the most efficient of my wisdom, the learn about in rats referred to within the deliberate CDC presentation through Lyn Redwood record Berman RF as first writer does no longer exist,” Robert F Berman, Ph.D., professor emeritus on the College of California Davis, mentioned.
“I’ve no longer revealed a paper with that identify or with that set of co-authors within the magazine Neurotoxicology in 2008. Additionally, none of my analysis has made any statements about conceivable thimerosal results on microglia within the mind or leading to neuroimmune results,” Berman mentioned.
That quotation has since been got rid of from the revised presentation on-line.
The Washington Publish was once first to document Redwood’s appointment to HHS.
Redwood has held a longstanding trust that mercury publicity via thimerosal-containing vaccines reasons autism. Particularly, she has without delay attributed her son’s autism to mercury publicity from early life vaccines as just lately as October 2024 in a podcast with RFK Jr.
Many years of analysis has discovered no hyperlink between autism and vaccines or any vaccine preservative, together with thimerosal.
Well being and Human Services and products Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies ahead of the Area Power and Trade Committee Well being Subcommittee, June 24, 2025 in Washington.
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Photographs
“Thimerosal was once got rid of from all regimen early life vaccines in the USA out of an abundance of warning – it’s nonetheless used as a preservative in a lot of the sector. Many research have demonstrated that it’s protected and has no affiliation with neurodevelopmental issues,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Sicknesses and AAP’s liaison to ACIP, informed ABC Information.
An intensive document of present proof through the Institute of Medication in 2004 concluded, “the frame of epidemiological proof favors rejection of a causal courting between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.”
The Facilities for Illness Keep watch over and Prevention additionally says, “analysis does no longer display any hyperlink between thimerosal and autism.”
Whilst this preservative isn’t used continuously within the U.S., whether it is got rid of or not advisable in the ones last flu pictures, medical doctors concern it will result in useless gaps in vaccine get right of entry to and the possibility of hurt through no longer protective those other people.
“Any lower within the choice of flu vaccines to be had will most probably lead to fewer other people being vaccinated and therefore, extra hospitalizations and deaths. Its elimination may additionally sign to most people unwarranted protection issues,” O’Leary mentioned.
No less than one vaccine skilled mentioned she shuddered Wednesday on the concept of Redwood becoming a member of HHS.
Fiona Havers, a 13-year CDC veteran who labored on vaccine coverage, informed ABC Information in a commentary, “Lyn Redwood is well known for spreading vaccine incorrect information. It’s troubling that Redwood would possibly now have an legit position inside of HHS and can probably be ready to intervene with legit messaging about vaccine protection.”
ABC Information has reached out to Redwood for a remark.
Redwood and Kennedy have lengthy been shut. In a dialog between the 2 of them on Kennedy’s podcast ultimate 12 months, Kennedy credited Redwood with being the determine who “coordinated” the “stalking campaign” through moms who satisfied Kennedy to start out having a look into the possible harms of vaccines within the early 2000s.
Redwood was once additionally excited about Kennedy’s contemporary presidential marketing campaign, coordinating volunteer and petition-gathering trainings in Georgia, her house state, in keeping with sign-up pages at the marketing campaign’s web site.
