Watch live as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. holds a press conference on the latest autism figures from the CDC.
With former director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., out of the picture, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) appears to be setting his sights on the vaccine safety database that was reportedly a key factor in Marks’ departure.
At a Tuesday event in Indiana, Kennedy pledged to unleash changes to HHS’ Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), Stat News reports. Along with implementing an automated data collection system and adding new datasets on the effects of vaccinations, the health secretary said he’s looking to create global data-sharing programs on vaccine use and health, according to the report.
“It’s outrageous that we don’t have a surveillance system that functions," he said at the event, as quoted by Stat. “We’re going to find out what contribution vaccines and everything else—mold, [electromagnetic fields], food, all of these other exposures [that] began in the late 1980s — which one of those are the culprits?”
