The NIH Moves to Stop Studying Vaccine Skepticism
An internal memo says that the agency will not prioritize research on why people are reluctant to take vaccines.
IF YOU HAD ANY DOUBT THAT THE Trump administration and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are going after vaccines, a confidential internal document should put those questions to rest.
A March 25 memo from the National Institutes of Health provides officials at the agency with instructions on how to terminate certain grants. An appendix in the document lists several types of studies that would be subject to termination, and includes “vaccine hesitancy” among the “examples for research activities that NIH no longer supports.”
“It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment,” the document states, as a suggestion of language officials should use when terminating the grants. “NIH is obligated to carefully steward grant awards to ensure taxpayer dollars are used in ways that benefit the American people and improve their quality of life.”
The other studies subject to termination are those related to China, COVID-19, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and transgender issues.
It’s not clear whether the memo—first published by Nature, also obtained by The Bulwark—represents official Trump administration policy or is merely a draft. The Department of Health and Human Services, declined to address The Bulwark’s inquiries about the document directly. Instead, a spokesperson provided a broad statement that “At HHS, we are dedicated to restoring our agencies to their tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science. As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, it’s important to prioritize research that directly affects the health of Americans.”
But the memo certainly looks like policy, given that NIH in the past few weeks has terminated hundreds of studies, including projects investigating “caregiver decision making for seasonal respiratory vaccines for children” and “COVID-19 vaccine uptake and . . . the role of institutional trust.”
And whatever the memo’s legal significance, it is yet another sign of how deeply vaccine skepticism has penetrated the top echelons of government health agencies.
Long before becoming HHS Secretary, RFK Jr. was famous for persistent, dishonest claims that vaccines are ineffective and dangerous. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the newly confirmed head of NIH, has been more broadly supportive of vaccinations but has also been willing to entertain questions about them.
Kennedy’s anti-vax history received a lot of attention during his confirmation hearings. The Senate approved his nomination after the most prominent holdout, Louisiana physician and GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, said Kennedy and the Trump administration had assured him they remained committed “to protecting the public health benefit of vaccination.”
In a floor speech announcing his support for Kennedy, Cassidy remarked that “the most notable opponents of Mr. Kennedy were pediatricians on the front lines of our children’s health who regularly have to combat misinformation; combating vaccine skepticism with correct information—correct information that comes from their education, training and experience as physicians.”
Since then, Kennedy has:
Downplayed the significance of an ongoing measles outbreak along the Texas-New Mexico border, even though it has already sickened hundreds and led to the first measles death—a child—in a decade;
Made multiple statements about vaccine safety and alternative measles treatments, like cod liver oil, that are wildly at odds with the prevailing scientific consensus; and
Launched an inquiry into possible links between vaccines and autism, even though the intellectual foundation for the purported link is a retracted paper and studies since then have found repeatedly that no link exists. (One of the conditions for Cassidy’s support of Kennedy was that “CDC will not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.”)
All of that was before an explosive Washington Post report Tuesday that HHS had tapped “a vaccine skeptic who has long promoted false claims about the connection between immunizations and autism” to lead the inquiry into links between vaccines and autism. The scientist declined to comment, referring the Post’s questions to HHS.
Public health experts feared Kennedy would take these sorts of actions if he took the helm of HHS, which includes not just the NIH but also the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These experts were especially worried because faith in vaccines has been declining, and with it vaccination rates.
You can see how dangerous that is by looking closely at the Texas outbreak. The latest official update shows that of the 327 documented cases, 325 were from people who hadn’t been vaccinated.
Figuring out how to persuade vaccine skeptics to get vaccinated requires understanding why they are skeptical in the first place, which is what some of those newly canceled NIH studies on hesitancy sought to do.
“Terminating vaccine hesitancy research studies is a short-sighted disaster,” Adam Ratner, a pediatric infectious diseases physician in New York City and the author of the book Booster Shots, told The Bulwark over email.
“Any administration that claims to value making its citizens healthy and protecting them from preventable harm should embrace vaccine hesitancy studies, not ban them,” he added.
This post was updated with HHS’s comment.
