The Truth about RFK Jr

[dann]

Viewpoint: When trust is gone, show your work (CIDRAP, Oct 9, 2026)
The nation’s highest-ranking health official is expanding an effort that he claims is reexamining the safety of vaccines. Americans should insist on seeing exactly how that work is done.
(...)
It cannot be overstated just how poorly positioned Kennedy is to mount a credible effort to examine or improve vaccine safety. He spent years as one of the nation’s most prominent anti-vaccine advocates, and he has a long history of making inaccurate or misleading claims about vaccine testing, the preservative thimerosal, the MMR vaccine, vaccine adverse-event reporting and autism.

 

[Andy_Ross]

𝗗𝗿. 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗮 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝗽𝗲𝗿
@DrLindaHarper
SCANDAL: "Anthony Fauci illegally experimented on orphaned children"... "He buried their bodies in an unmarked mass grave to cover it up"....

Robert F Kennedy Jr

"Fauci made sure none of those children had guardians, which is illegal, and then hid from the boards what he was doing. He took in foster homes across six states and handed them over to the pharmaceutical industry"...

"He made sure the people running those foster homes didn't even have medical training. Most of them were immigrants from the Dominican Republic. They knew nothing about medicine or responsibilities and were sick themselves"...

"And little by little they realized what was being done to those children, that they were torturing them. And, you know, there are videos of those children, an old BBC documentary that'll make you cry".

"I promise you can watch this without crying. One of these kids, 12 years old, is trying to protect an 8-year-old boy and has a tube in his stomach. And he says to them: 'I tried to fight them' and that's what they do"...

"If you fight them, you can't fight them. You just have to take the medications, and the kids didn't want to take them because they were making them terribly sick. And Celia Farber was this incredible investigator who worked on this chapter for me and did a lot of the original research on it"...

"She went to Hawthorne, New York, to the Gates of Heaven cemetery. She found the cemetery where Fauci was disposing of the bodies of these children who died in his illegal experiments"...

"She found an open pit, covered by a carpet of artificial grass. She pulled back the carpet and saw hundreds and hundreds of little coffins stacked haphazardly on top of each other, because they were children with no parents and no one there to protect them"...

"And Tony Fauci treated them like collateral damage and, you know, his goal was to expand markets for these pharmaceutical companies he'd partnered with by allowing toxic chemotherapy drugs against HIV to be administered to the children"...

"And then the next experiments, which are in the following chapter and are equally horrific, are his experiments in Africa"...

Video in link

 

[Helen]

Oh ffs, this can't be real

 

[Andy_Ross]

Yup, video in the link.

 

[Planigale]

Oh ffs, this can't be real

There is an element of truth to it.
Fauci did not run the study. There were only 25 deaths due to AIDS and not the drugs. There was no mass grave.
There were ethical failings in the study, it wasn't criminal, but it probably didn't meet ethical standards for research on vulnerable children. On the other hand it was probably the only way for vulnerable orphans in New York with AIDs to get access to potentially life saving treatment.

In many ways it is little different from those doctors who having no proven treatment for covid latched on to ivermectin. Also ethically dubious.

ETA
The BBC documentary is not entirely correct, so don't believe everything in it.

'Serious concern' at BBC over flawed HIV film

The BBC has apologised after admitting that a documentary about the testing of HIV drugs on children contained 'serious breaches' of its editorial guidelines. By Leigh Holmwood.

www.theguardian.com

Report refutes HIV denialist claims on childrens HIV trials | HIV i-Base

i-base.info

https://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/sites/default/files/BBC%20July31%202007%20letter.pdf

 

[dann]

Some time ago at SBM David Gorski covered the proposed Guinea-Bissau experiment. He wrote, "Nowhere do I see among the primary outcomes to be tracked one that any vaccinologist would consider to be the most important, namely the incidence of hepatitis B in infants receiving the birth dose versus those receiving the current dose at six weeks of age, you know, the disease that the vaccine is designed to prevent. Nor do I find among any of the outcomes another critical outcome, namely the incidence of chronic hepatitis B, which is the form of the infection that produces an enormously elevated risk of liver failure and liver cancer during an individual’s lifetime. Of course, by design, a five year study is far too short to quantify beneficial effects of the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccination on long-term outcomes, which suggests to me that this study is clearly intended to generate data showing adverse health outcomes associated with the birth dose. (This ain’t my first rodeo.)"

See also post 4,136

Elizabeth Jacobs on bsky, Oct 10, 2026
This is a disaster. The ethics committee in Denmark that approved the Guinea-Bissau study which will withhold the birth dose of HepB vaccine “had never considered medical studies before but it changed the rules in order to vote on this one”.
Four members of the committee have resigned in protest. 1/3
Controversial vaccine trial touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bissau (TheGuardian, Oct 9, 2026)

Apparently, under normal conditions, a Danish national medical ethics committee would have reviewed it, but since the study won’t be done in Denmark, a group at the University of Southern Denmark did the review instead.
Hats off to @melodyschreiber.com for her diligence in covering this story. 2/3

This seems to be a total collapse of ethics review. There is a reason that experienced scientific and medical researchers review studies that involve human subjects.
Another safety valve is usually the funding agency, which normally wouldn’t let this through. But, you know…RFK Jr. 3/3

Søren Larsen on bsky, Oct 10, 2026
The Declaration of Helsinki demands that medical trials provide access to the best proven intervention available, regardless of the current standard in the country where the trial is conducted. In this case, a hepatitis B vaccine immediately after birth. 1/2
Outrage grows as CDC reportedly poised to fund “unethical” vaccine trial (ArsTechnica, Oct 9, 2026)

The evidence for this is overwhelming and has been for decades - period.
The Stabell Benn group's insane experiment has to be banned. 2/2

 

[Norman Alexander]

That was 20...TWENTY!...years ago!

 

[Blue Mountain]

That was 20...TWENTY!...years ago!

What are you referring to? A lot of things happened 20 years ago.

 

[dann]

... Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com%2Fpost%2F3mvqbf52edk2o

Literally "Old Man Shouts at Clouds"

 

[Tero]

The disproven 1998 autism study of was actually not a study at all. It was an RFK jr type of study: Make conclusions and pick out some real life events to match.

• A Tiny, Uncontrolled Sample: The study was a "case series" tracking just 12 children who already had developmental delays. It lacked any control group of unvaccinated children to compare them against.
• Data Manipulation: An investigation later revealed that Wakefield altered patient records. Five of the 12 children actually had documented developmental delays before receiving the MMR vaccine, even though the paper claimed the symptoms only started afterward.

Why Have Vaccines Been Ruled Out as a Cause of Autism?

A fraudulent study from 1998 opened the doors to unfounded fear of autism.

historyofvaccines.org

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

The disproven 1998 autism study of was actually not a study at all. It was an RFK jr type of study: Make conclusions and pick out some real life events to match.

Why Have Vaccines Been Ruled Out as a Cause of Autism?

A fraudulent study from 1998 opened the doors to unfounded fear of autism.

historyofvaccines.org

Wakefield's study was paid for by solicitors who took on a civil case against drug companies by a bunch of anti-vaxxers. From day one he was being paid to manufacture a link.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The Guardian reported on the Danish ethics committee that reviewed the proposed Guinea-Bissau study. "Stig Børsen Hansen, a founding member who was one of two reviewers who presented the study to the Danish committee, resigned from the group in protest on Friday, citing major ethical issues with the study. “You are now enrolling newborns in a lottery to test a hypothesis,” Hansen said. The children who are randomly selected not to receive the birth dose of the vaccine, those who “lost the lottery”, face in their earliest days the risk of contracting hepatitis B, which can cause irreversible lifelong damage. “They contract hepatitis B in the context of being part of a research project,” Hansen said, which made their infection happen, in effect, “by design”. Three other members of the committee have also resigned in protest."

 

[Puppycow]

The Guardian reported on the Danish ethics committee that reviewed the proposed Guinea-Bissau study. "Stig Børsen Hansen, a founding member who was one of two reviewers who presented the study to the Danish committee, resigned from the group in protest on Friday, citing major ethical issues with the study. “You are now enrolling newborns in a lottery to test a hypothesis,” Hansen said. The children who are randomly selected not to receive the birth dose of the vaccine, those who “lost the lottery”, face in their earliest days the risk of contracting hepatitis B, which can cause irreversible lifelong damage. “They contract hepatitis B in the context of being part of a research project,” Hansen said, which made their infection happen, in effect, “by design”. Three other members of the committee have also resigned in protest."

This is absolutely insane.

Guinea-Bissau has some of the highest rates of hepatitis B in the world, with about 18% of adults carrying the virus. While it may be transmitted from mother to child during birth, it could also be transmitted from another parent, relatives, siblings or caregivers. Children who are infected with hepatitis B in the first year of life are significantly more likely to develop severe outcomes, including chronic infection and liver cancer.

Controversial vaccine trial touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bissau

Recommended dose of hepatitis B vaccine will be withheld from thousands of newborns by Danish researchers

www.theguardian.com

Although RFK Jr. seems to be cheerleading for this study, a Danish group is the primary actor here.

The Bandim Health Project, run by Danish researchers Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn, has operated in Guinea-Bissau for decades and is closely enmeshed in the country’s health system. At least one top official, the current director of public health, held a dual appointment with Bandim as recently as December.

Kennedy praised the Danish researchers at a recent anti-vaccine conference, calling them “the deities of vaccine research”. Kennedy claimed that a prior study they conducted indicated that after vaccination, “you can have mass injuries, and catastrophic injuries, and they’re hiding in plain sight.” He did not mention that another follow-up study from the same researchers found no effects at all.

This study will focus on vaccination and mortality, as well as outcomes such as skin conditions and neurodevelopmental conditions. “The main problem of this trial is that you have some very well-known bad diseases that you can protect with this vaccine,” Støvring said. “And what they then want to study is something highly speculative – in a situation where WHO and others are saying that you should give this vaccine at birth, period.”

When asked about the study in a Thursday briefing, an official with the Africa CDC, which has opposed the trial, said there were “ongoing discussions” between the US and Guinea-Bissau and more details would be shared shortly. Guinea-Bissau planned to begin vaccinating all newborns against hepatitis B in 2027, but they pushed the campaign back to 2028.

 

[steenkh]

The Guardian reported on the Danish ethics committee that reviewed the proposed Guinea-Bissau study. "Stig Børsen Hansen, a founding member who was one of two reviewers who presented the study to the Danish committee, resigned from the group in protest on Friday, citing major ethical issues with the study. “You are now enrolling newborns in a lottery to test a hypothesis,” Hansen said. The children who are randomly selected not to receive the birth dose of the vaccine, those who “lost the lottery”, face in their earliest days the risk of contracting hepatitis B, which can cause irreversible lifelong damage. “They contract hepatitis B in the context of being part of a research project,” Hansen said, which made their infection happen, in effect, “by design”. Three other members of the committee have also resigned in protest."

It seems that the Danish ethics committee has approved of the study because Guinea-Bissau has postponed plans for vaccination of all babies from 2027 to 2028. With this study at least some children will get the vaccination who would otherwise not get it. It is a difficult ethical problem.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

“It’s a wholly unethical trial, and it shouldn’t be allowed,” says Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It saddens me to think that our country would in any way participate in a trial where half of the children would be receiving substandard care and thousands will be doomed to develop cirrhosis or liver cancer.” link

The Guardian reported, "Kennedy and the Danish researchers were “taking advantage of that delay in practicing standard care to put these children at risk unnecessarily”, Offit said. “What a terrible thing to do. What a horribly unethical and cruel thing to do.”"

 

[Planigale]

It seems that the Danish ethics committee has approved of the study because Guinea-Bissau has postponed plans for vaccination of all babies from 2027 to 2028. With this study at least some children will get the vaccination who would otherwise not get it. It is a difficult ethical problem.

I agree. It is a difficult problem. If this trial doesn't happen, then probably all of the infants will be denied the current standard of care. If it goes ahead then half of the children will be denied the current standard of care; but in a situation where there will be the funding for all to receive the current standard of care. To do this you should have therapeutic equipoise. Believe the consequences of neonatal vaccination in terms of adverse reactions are sufficient to balance the consequences of delaying vaccination by six months. If you believe the adverse effects of vaccination are greater then the benefits you shouldn't be offering vaccination. If you feel the benefits of vaccination outweigh the harms (which all current trials would evidence) the you shouldn't deny children the benefit of neonatal vaccination.

 

[dann]

1) We already know that the Hep B vaccine works. That's not the point of the study.
2) Besides, when vaccines already exist, new vaccines aren't tested by comparing unvaccinated people with people vaccinated with the new vaccine. The cohort used for comparisons will be vaccinated with the old alternative(s). But not in this case!
3) Since the point appears to be the study of non-specific effects of the vaccine, it might as well have been carried out in Denmark or in the USA.
4) A study is more expensive than simply vaccinating all the children and not just half of them.
5) We all know why RFK Jr. supports this particular vaccine study.
6) Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn are 'vaccine skeptics', i.e. they have been trying to prove that some vaccines have deleterious effects. The ones they don't like are the ones that are the ones that aren't live attenuated vaccines:
"For example, one hypothesis suggests that all live attenuated vaccines reduce mortality more than explained by prevention of target infections, while all inactivated vaccines may increase overall mortality despite providing protection against the target disease."
Another example of vaccines that Aaby & Stabell Benn don't approve of is mRNA-based coronavirus vaccines.

Kristian G. Andersen on bsky, Oct 12, 2026
Not mentioned about this unethical study is "why Guinea-Bissau"?
The trial is not to test efficacy - we already know it's effective - it's to test non-specific effects.
There is *zero* grounds to do that in a country with high risk of HepB - if UoSD is hell-bent on doing a study, do it in Denmark. 1/5
Controversial vaccine study touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bissau (TheGuardian, Oct 9, 2026)

In Guinea-Bissau, ~18% of the adult population has HepB, so newborns are at very high risk of getting infected - even with testing - with the only, highly effective, prevention being the vaccine itself.That means withholding vaccination for a subset via a lottery is deeply unethical. Full stop. 2/5

In Denmark, that risk is much less (low prevalence +testing), so if one wanted to study "non-specific" vaccine effects - although justifying such a need, given already existing knowledge, is itself highly questionable - could be done there without additional risk. 3/5

Since the HepB vaccine is _not_ given routinely given in Denmark, such a study design would involve offering a randomized group the vaccine vs sham.Again, even such a study would be questionable - because we already know the vaccine is safe and effective - at least it would be better justified. 4/5

So to the question "why Guinea-Bissau"? There is no justification. Period.
Why do the study in the first place? There's honestly no justification either, but if the University of Southern Denmark is so hell-bent on doing it, do it in Denmark. 5/5

dannsim.bsky.social, Oct 12, 2026
True.
"prevalence of 0.24% (95% CI: 0.23–0.37%) in the Danish population older than 15 years."
In , it's estimated to be 18.7% to 19% of the adult population
Hepatitis B prevalence in Denmark - an estimate based on nationwide registers and a national screening programme, as on 31 December 2007 (Copenhagen University Hospitals)

 

[Flo]

So to the question "why Guinea-Bissau"? There is no justification. Period.

Oh yes there is :

2025 Corruption Perceptions Index - Explore Guinea-Bissau's results

How does Guinea-Bissau measure up in the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index?

www.transparency.org