Breaking News: Kennedy Outs Corporate Donors Behind AAP

On Tuesday, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to X to out the companies that fund the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), an organization ostensibly, as spelled out on its website, “dedicated to improving the health and well-being of children.”

Kennedy named Pfizer, Moderna, Merck, and French pharma giant Sanofi as the main donors to the AAP's Friends of Children Fund, noting, “these four companies make virtually every vaccine on the CDC-recommended childhood vaccine schedule.”

Why did Kennedy feel it necessary to out these funders? Because, since he began at HHS, his mission has been to eliminate federal employees’ conflicts of interest with the Big Pharma companies those employees are tasked to regulate.

As Kennedy explains, “AAP is angry that CDC has eliminated corporate influence in decisions over vaccine recommendations and returned CDC to gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine laser-focused on children’s health.”

The conflict between AAP and Kennedy is escalating. After the Secretary announced the end of Covid vaccine recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women, AAP was livid even though fewer than 0.1% of healthy children with Covid require hospital treatment.

With nearly all its funding coming from Big Pharma, it’s no wonder AAP is all in on childhood vaccines. It’s also no wonder the organization pushed back when Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a board of doctors and scientists who advise the CDC on vaccines. (Kennedy has since restaffed ACIP with medical professionals who are not plagued by conflicts of interest.)

While Kennedy has said that he respects the AAP’s First Amendment right to offer opinions, the secretary added, “AAP should follow the lead of HHS and disclose conflicts of interest, including its corporate entanglements and those of its journal—Pediatrics—so that Americans may ask whether the AAP’s recommendations reflect public health interest, or are, perhaps, just a pay-to-play scheme to promote the commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors.”

Commenting on AAP’s funding structure, Mary S. Holland, the CEO of the non-profit group Children’s Health Defense (CHD) said, “The American Academy of Pediatrics isn’t protecting kids — it’s protecting Pharma. Instead of diet and exercise, they’re pushing $3,000-a-month weight-loss drugs for children. And now they want to eliminate all non-medical vaccine exemptions. This isn’t medicine. It’s profiteering.”

Takeaways:

• Secretary Kennedy outed the Big Pharma backers of the American Academy of Pediatrics that are funding a campaign to oppose the CDC decision to eliminate corporate influence in decisions over vaccine recommendations. The CDC is returning to gold-standard science and evidence-based medicine focusing on children’s health.

• Kennedy also advised that doctors and hospitals recommending vaccines that are not endorsed by the CDC will lose liability protection that was granted to them by the federal government under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act. Any vaccines given outside of the CDC’s schedule that result in vaccine injury will have to be dealt with in open court, with full discovery, and rules of evidence. Big Pharma will have to defend their vaccine’s safety like any other drug.