RFK Jr says he'll 'fix' a vaccine program - by canceling compensation for people with vaccine injuries [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Sun 31 Aug 2025 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 31 Aug 2025 08.31 EDT


While unrest and new vaccine restrictions have kept US health agencies in headlines, there’s one vaccine program in particular that Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recently vowed to “fix”, which experts say could further upend the vaccine industry and prevent people experiencing rare side effects from vaccines from getting financial help.

While some changes to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which compensates people who suffer very rare side effects from vaccination, must come from Congress, Kennedy could take several actions to reshape or affect the program’s operations.

Kennedy “seems to be pursuing two opposite theories” on changing VICP, said Anna Kirkland, a professor at the University of Michigan and author of Vaccine Court. “Make it easier and compensate more, versus blow it all up. And then maybe there’s a third way of, foment skepticism, undercut recommendations,” she said.

The moves represent the latest battle in “the war on vaccines that he’s been waging for decades”, Art Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine said. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist for about two decades, has reported more than $2.4m in income for referring vaccine-related cases to a law firm, for instance. Making major changes to the program may open up vaccine makers to more litigation, making it difficult for them to keep existing vaccines on the market or to produce new ones.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/31/rfk-jr-vaccine-injury-compensation