Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sparked outrage on Monday after he announced his department was investigating why a peer-reviewed medical journal pulled a study about vaccines leading to sudden infant deaths.
Kennedy posted a letter on his professional X account, arguing that the study was "of great interest to me." Kennedy cited the study in his policy to reduce the federal vaccine schedule for infants from 17 shots to 11. That policy has since been blocked by a federal judge, according to reports.
"Given the high level of public interest in vaccine safety and the history of both overt and obscure pressure against the study of some of these topics, such a brief notice of removal is woefully insufficient," Kennedy wrote in the letter to Toxicology Reports Editor-in-Chief Lawrence H. Lash.
Toxicology Reports said it retracted the 2021 study linking vaccines and infant deaths due to "serious methodological flaws."
Medical professionals and policy experts were astounded by Kennedy's letter and shared their reactions on social media.
"Absolutely baffling. In response, he's going to get an extremely detailed analysis of why that study was garbage (and it was). The brainworm makes bad decisions," Dr. Tyler Black, an emergency psychiatrist, posted on X.
Jeffrey Morris, a public health professor, noted in a post on X that the methodological issues were "so serious" that "the conclusions were unsubstantiated."
"Given this fatal flaw that was not detected by peer review, the entire argument in the paper falls apart, and the conclusion is unsubstantiated," Morris posted.
"I thought @SecKennedy was pro-free speech. Yet here he is, apparently using the power of his position to threaten the editor of a journal for an editorial decision by a private publisher. To antivaxxers, it's free speech for me, but not for thee," Dr. David Gorski, a surgeon, posted on X.
