Dr Anthony Fauci is ‘concerned’ about the rise of Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is running for president on a hardline anti-vaxx message.
In an interview with DailyMail.com, America’s top infectious disease doctor also suggested that RFK Jnr’s surge in the polls could lead to people ‘unnecessarily dying’ because they don’t get vaccinated.
Mr Kennedy – who has the support of as many as one in five Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans in some polls – has long been critical of vaccines, claiming they cause autism and kill more children than they protect.
When asked if Mr Kennedy’s increasing popularity was ‘concerning’, Dr Fauci said: ‘Of course, I mean I’m a physician and vaccines save lives.
‘Plus, I’m concerned if there’s [a rise in] anti-vaxx. People will unnecessarily suffer and die because they don’t get vaccinated.’
In a podcast released Thursday and viewed by nearly 700,000 people at the time of writing, Mr Kennedy made one of his most sensational claims yet about vaccines, arguing ‘there is no vaccine that is safe and effective’.
Dr Fauci suggested RFK Jnr’s surge in the polls could lead to people ‘unnecessarily dying’ because they don’t get vaccinated (pictured speaking to DailyMail.com)
Dr Fauci spoke to DailyMail.com at the the 2023 Public Health Solutions gala in Tribeca, Manhattan, earlier this month.
Mr Kennedy has moaned that the media portrays him as an anti-vaxxer to discredit him and has repeatedly claimed that he is actually ‘pro-safe vaccine.’
On the Lex Fridman podcast, the Democratic presidential candidate was asked to ‘name any vaccines you think are good’.
Mr Kennedy replied: ‘I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing.’
He added: ‘There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.’
Mr Kennedy went on to claim that the polio vaccine – one of the most studied vaccines in existence – had led to an explosion of soft tissue cancers in recent decades that have ‘killed more people than polio ever did’.
There are no known cases of polio vaccine-related cancer.
Mr Kennedy may have been referring to a polio vaccine used in America in the 1950s and 1960s that was contaminated with a virus that causes cancer in rodents.
Research suggests the virus doesn’t cause cancer in humans. By comparison, polio, or poliomyelitis, the disease caused by the poliovirus, sickens about one in 200 people who contract it.
Paralysis can occur in anywhere from one in 200 to one in 2,000 people who are not vaccinated.
RFK has also used several high-profile appearances on the Joe Rogan podcast and Jordan Peterson’s show to repeat the debunked claim that childhood vaccines cause autism.
Critics have accused RFK Jnr of capitalizing on the rise of medical skepticism in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
Mr Kennedy’s anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, saw its revenues more than double in 2020 to $6.8 million, according to filings made with charity regulators.
His rise comes at a time when vaccine skepticism is on the rise.
The percentage of American children entering kindergarten with their required immunizations fell to 93 percent in the 2021-22 school year, a whole two percentage points below the recommended levels for herd immunity and lower than vaccination rates in 2020-21.
And although approximately 66 percent of US children aged five months were up to date for all childhood vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2016 through 2019, that number declined to slightly over 49 percent by May 2020.
US adults and adolescents have missed more than 37 million routine vaccinations during the Covid pandemic, according to analyses.
Mr Kennedy’s push against the Covid vaccine has linked him at times with anti-democratic figures and groups.
He has appeared at events pushing the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and with people who cheered or downplayed the US Capitol riot.
Mr Kennedy has at times invoked his family’s legacy in his anti-vaccine work, including sometimes using images of President Kennedy.
His sister Kerry Kennedy, who runs Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, the international rights group founded by their mother, Ethel, said her brother has at times removed some of the content at her request.
She told the Associated Press in a 2021 interview her brother is ‘completely wrong on this issue and very dangerous.’
RFK Jnr also released a book in 2021, The Real Anthony Fauci, in which he accused Fauci of assisting in ‘a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy’ by peddling vaccines and drugs to the masses.
