Vaccination skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he will oversee a presidential panel to review vaccine safety and science at the request of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in a move likely to reignite debate despite now-debunked research that tied childhood immunizations to autism.
"President-elect Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine policy, and he has questions about it," Kennedy, who has raised questions about the safety of vaccines, told reporters following his meeting with Trump in New York on Tuesday. "He asked me to chair a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity. I said I would."
"Everybody ought to be able to be assured that the vaccines that we have - he's very pro-vaccine, as am I - but they're as safe as they possibly can be," added Kennedy, a son of the late U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
(Reporting by Melissa Fares; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)