Opinion: RFK Jr.’s dangerous misuse of ‘informed consent’ on vaccines
Giving people an uncontextualized list of possible vaccine side effects is not the kind of "informed consent" worth promoting.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to halt its “Wild to Mild” campaign promoting the flu vaccine. Kennedy wants future vaccine communications to focus on “informed consent,” by which he means giving people information about the adverse events associated with vaccines. That’s a distorted view, one that demonstrates broader confusion about informed consent and the goals of public health. True informed consent requires an understanding of how people process information about risks, and public health must promote collective benefits rather than focus entirely on individual autonomy.
The CDC’s shelved campaign featured clever visual metaphors — grizzly bears transformed into teddy bears — to convey how vaccines reduce the severity of flu infections. The ads emphasized the harm-reducing functions of vaccines, especially for vulnerable populations like pregnant women, young children, and the immunocompromised. Kennedy wants to replace these persuasive messages with data about potential complications, even though the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 already requires health care providers to share that information with patients.
