Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a government-wide effort on vaccine injuries on Thursday. The effort has four parts. The National Institutes of Health opened a new clinic in Bethesda, Maryland, this week. It will study and treat people who report health problems after a shot. Medicare and Medicaid officials are proposing to pay doctors for reporting suspected injuries to the federal reporting system, called VAERS. The Department of Health and Human Services says it will require electronic health records to track vaccine side effects. And the government is rebuilding VAERS to make reports easier to file. Since 1988, a federal fund has paid about $5 billion on roughly 12,300 injury and death claims. Kennedy announced the plan as Pennsylvania fights its worst measles outbreak in decades. Five people have died there, all of them unvaccinated.

Supporters Say Injured People Have Been Brushed Off for Years

Kennedy, his NIH director, and injured patients say the government finally has to take these reports seriously.

Officials say the government brushed off injured people. "We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries — not dismiss or gaslight them," Kennedy said in announcing the plan. In a video, he said those families "have been marginalized, vilified, demonized and gaslighted." He also called VAERS "very bad." NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said the clinic exists to make vaccines safer and to listen to people "who have suffered vaccine injury."

Injured patients say the clinic is overdue. Brianne Dressen co-founded the patient group React19 after she got hurt in a COVID vaccine trial. She told The New York Times, "This is the first time there's been anything even remotely official." Danice Hertz is a retired doctor who advocates for injured patients. "In my opinion, it should have happened a long time ago," she said. "There are a lot of very sick people out there."

Researchers Say More Study Is Good, If It's Real Science

Vaccine-safety researchers welcome the attention, but they worry about how the government will run the research.

Serious side effects deserve more study. Dr. Helen Chu is an immunologist who sat on the CDC vaccine advisory panel before Kennedy fired its members. "I do think that we do need to take these adverse events more seriously," she said. Dr. Daniel Salmon directs the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins. He said more safety research "would be very helpful," but it "needs to be rigorous science."

Sloppy studies would only help anti-vaccine claims. Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a Vanderbilt pediatrician, called the effort "really laudable." "But if it's not done in a scientific way it will be more anti-vaccine propaganda," she said. Substack writer Mike Young warns that paying doctors per report "will raise the number of reports." He points out that more reports alone can't prove a vaccine caused anything. The CDC itself says VAERS data can be "incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable."

But Vaccine Experts Say the System Already Works

Longtime vaccine scientists say the U.S. already catches rare side effects. They think Kennedy is looking for a different answer.

The U.S. already watches vaccines closely. "The US already has the most advanced sophisticated system of vaccine monitoring the world has ever seen," said Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital. He points out that during COVID, this system caught heart inflammation in young men and rare blood clots from the Johnson & Johnson shot. Michael Osterholm runs the Vaccine Integrity Project at the University of Minnesota. "The issue really isn't whether we should study vaccine safety — of course we should," he said. "But we already have systems in place."

Critics say Kennedy won't accept results he doesn't like. Dr. Paul Offit directs the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a bias," he told CNN. "His bias is that vaccines cause [chronic diseases], and it doesn't matter how many studies show he's wrong." Osterholm worries Kennedy will use the effort to back his debunked claims linking vaccines to autism. Kennedy founded an anti-vaccine group before he took office.

Where This Lands

Kennedy and injured patients say the government ignored vaccine injuries for years. They say this clinic finally takes those injuries seriously. Researchers like Salmon and Edwards welcome more safety research, but only if it's rigorous enough to trust. Hotez, Offit, and Osterholm say the U.S. already catches rare side effects, and they don't trust Kennedy to accept results he doesn't like. The NIH clinic is open now. The plan to pay doctors for reports is still a proposal.

Sources