Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering plans to add certain autism symptoms to a list of adverse events that require his department to compensate under the national vaccine injury program, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing an advisor.
As HHS Secretary, Kennedy, a well-known vaccine skeptic, has the authority to determine which injuries should be compensated under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Established in the 1980s, the program maintains a fund to offer compensation for people who experience injuries from covered vaccines. It was implemented after lawsuits related to vaccine injury claims jeopardized U.S. vaccine availability and threatened the country’s immunization rates.
On Monday, announcing a range of measures to address autism in children, President Donald Trump, flanked by RFK Jr. and Medicare Administrator Mehmet Oz, suggested a link between the neurodevelopmental disorder and vaccines.
“There are certain groups of people that don’t take vaccines and don’t take any pills that have no autism,” Trump said, triggering backlash from the medical community over his efforts to peddle claims widely debunked in scientific studies.
Leading vaccine makers: Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)/ BioNTech (BNTX), Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA), Novavax (NVAX), GSK (NYSE:GSK), Sanofi (NASDAQ:SNY)
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