STAT+: RFK Jr. plans changes to vaccine injury reporting system
Critiques of the vaccine injury reporting system have long been part of Kennedy’s efforts to questions the safety of immunizations.
WASHINGTON — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday that he plans to roll out changes to the vaccine injury monitoring system that would automate and increase data collection as well as look for negative impacts of the shots.
Reforming the current Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System has long been part of Kennedy’s agenda to raise questions about the safety of immunizations that are currently in use. While the general idea of improving the system is uncontroversial, Kennedy has exaggerated the extent to which side effects of vaccinations go unrecorded, according to researchers.
“It’s outrageous that we don’t have a surveillance system that functions,” he said at a Make America Healthy Again event in Indiana, noting that the agency would add data sets to study the effects of vaccinations.
