Alicia Meehan, Campus Carrier deputy news editor
In January 2025, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kennedy proposed to reduce the amount of recommended childhood vaccines from 18 to 11, the COVID-19 vaccine included.
Since his appointment Kennedy Jr. has proposed many changes to public health guidelines including cancelling funding for scientific research and using his position to endorse misinformation about vaccines. On March 16, Judge Brian Murphy of the district of Massachusetts overturned his changes.
Assistant Professor of Political Science Sam Call said that the judge rejected the changes because Kennedy’s suggestions were not based on any scientific research.
“[His proposed changes] weren’t relying on any kind of research that has been conducted by actual scientists,” Call said. “Therefore, they said that the agency is not allowed to administer those changes because it goes against their policies.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has rules in place that prevent the approval of decisions that are not based on scientific evidence. These rules are in place to prevent policies or guidelines from being changed easily because of the HHS secretary’s opinions, according to Call.
“You want to have these kinds of rules set in place so that things can’t be changed arbitrarily based on whoever is in office,” Call said. “They apply evenly to every administration in order to keep potentially dangerous things from happening.”
In May 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) withdrew its recommendation that children and pregnant women get the COVID-19 vaccine. The next month, Kennedy removed all members of a CDC vaccine advising committee. He replaced them with new members, who withdrew recommendations for the COVID-19 vaccine and the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns.
Call said that various medical advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against Kennedy’s changes.
“Pretty much all of the policies that he has tried to change have been challenged in some kind of way by a variety of groups, mostly by groups that advocate for the special interests of doctors or medical field,” Call said.
Associate Professor of Biology and Head of OneHealth Christopher Hall explained how vaccines work.
“The point of the vaccine is just to present those foreign molecules to the immune system in such a way that it’s safe,” Hall said. “You’re not administering the live pathogen typically, but you’re just giving parts of it so that now the immune system can recognize it like it would a wanted poster.”
Hall said that this type of immunity can develop naturally. If a child gets infected with a certain virus, their immune system will recognize and fight the virus the next time the body encounters it.
“Vaccines mimic what you might see naturally, but in a much more safely presented way,” Hall said. “But you’re hoping to present it in a vaccine so that first interaction doesn’t kill you or make you deathly ill.”
In 1991, the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) began recommending that children be given the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. According to Hall, the hepatitis B vaccine is shown to significantly reduce the risk of liver cancer caused by hepatitis B.
“Vaccines have just reduced so many childhood deaths, not only here in the United States, but of course globally,” Hall said.
Hall said that people who decide not to vaccinate themselves or their children will become more susceptible to illness. At this point, their medical insurance providers may choose to not pay for their medical expenses because their sickness was preventable.
“Insurance companies are going to have to be faced with a decision. If somebody says, ‘I don’t want to vaccinate my kid from measles,’ do they have to insure your kid?” Hall said. “If they’re forced to insure these people that choose not to get vaccinated, are all our insurance rates going to go up?”
Hall said that vaccines’ usefulness is not the problem in question. He said that the debate is about whether an individual’s right to choose what they do with their body supersedes what is best for the health of the population.
“There’s no question vaccines work; they’ve saved millions and millions of lives globally,” Hall said. “It’s not about medicine.It’s about ethics, the rights of the individual over the rights of the population and the power of government to control Public Health.”
Hall hopes that Kennedy’s changes to official guidelines do not sway citizens away from the protecting themselves and their children.
“We’re going to see kids getting diseases that we thought we wouldn’t have to deal with anymore,” Hall said. “I hope that if it’s in the hands of the people, that parents look at the medical literature, not this propaganda.”