Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have said he won't take vaccines away from anyone, but that's exactly what the anti-vaccine organization he founded asked the Food and Drug Administration to do in a petition this week.
Why it matters: The formal document — which the agency is required to respond to — is part of a growing call to pull the shots from the market. And it comes during a week when the agency said it's expanding an investigation of deaths potentially related to the shots, this time in adults.
Driving the news: Children's Health Defense, the organization founded by Kennedy, this week filed a citizen's petition asking FDA commissioner Marty Makary to deem Moderna's and Pfizer's COVID vaccines "misbranded" and revoke their licenses "due to a lack of compliance with FDA regulations."
- The argument is based on the fine print surrounding the vaccines' conversion from emergency use early in the pandemic to full approval later on.
- It is specifically "not arguing about the safety or efficacy of marketed COVID-19 mRNA vaccines," though Children's Health Defense has also been on the forefront of arguing the vaccines are unsafe.
Between the lines: In other administrations, the petition would be an extreme long shot. But Kennedy's personal ties to Children's Health Defense may improve its prospects.
- Other vaccine skeptics with ties to Kennedy — a prominent critic of the shots for years before being tapped as the nation's top health official — have gradually been taking prominent roles in national vaccine discourse.
- Aaron Siri, who worked on Kennedy's presidential campaign and has also filed petitions asking the federal government to halt the distribution of certain vaccines, briefed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine advisory committee last week on the childhood vaccination schedule.
Most administration-watchers think pulling a vaccine off the market altogether — even the COVID ones — is still a bridge too far.
State of play: The petition follows the FDA's own public skepticism of the shots.
- Top FDA vaccine regulator Vinay Prasad claimed in a leaked internal memo — without documented evidence — that the agency has determined COVID vaccines have killed "at least" 10 children, and the agency said this week it's reviewing adult deaths, too.
- The CDC in October dropped a broad recommendation that older Americans get a COVID-19 vaccine.
When asked about the latest calls to pull the vaccine from the market, Health and Human Services pointed to the ongoing review.
- "The FDA is doing a thorough investigation, across multiple age groups, of deaths potentially related to COVID vaccines. Once the investigation is complete, the FDA will make a determination," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said.
- "The FDA is reviewing the petition and will respond directly to the petitioner," Nixon said of the CHD petition itself.
Prasad's leaked memo has further fueled COVID vaccine opponents' argument that the shots should be withdrawn.
- Former CDC director Robert Redfield, who served in the first Trump administration, has joined those arguing for their removal.
- "I really would like to see the mRNA vaccine use curtailed, and personally, I'd like to see it eliminated, because I think there's too many unknowns," Redfield told the Epoch Times.
The other side: A recent review of more than 500 published studies on COVID, flu and RSV vaccines by the Vaccine Integrity Project at the University of Minnesota found that the shots have "reassuring safety profiles consistent with prior evaluations."
- The vaccines are widely credited with saving millions of lives and preventing deaths and severe illness during the pandemic. But uptake of the shots has dramatically tailed off since the height of the crisis, with fewer than 17.5 million doses of the 2025-2026 booster administered.
- "Pulling COVID-19 vaccines from the market would be a public health disaster," said Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's health research group.
The bottom line: HHS isn't showing its hand, but a Kennedy ally has handed the FDA a simple way to answer vaccine critics' calls to get rid of Pfizer and Moderna's COVID vaccines altogether.
- And if Kennedy's going to walk back his vow not to take vaccines away, the COVID shot is probably the least risky candidate for doing so.
