For years, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has used scare tactics and misinformation campaigns to dissuade the public from receiving HPV vaccines. As he has with many other vaccines, Kennedy linked the HPV vaccine to autism, pushing a long-debunked pseudoscientific claim. Then, he baselessly claimed that the HPV vaccine could cause a “cascade of debilitating autoimmune diseases.” He linked the HPV to cancer, when in fact, the HPV vaccine is one of the most effective tools we have deployed to bring down rates of cervical cancer, with one study showing that the vaccine stops 90 percent of cervical cancer cases. Kennedy recently even blamed poor teen mental health on HPV vaccines.
Even though none of these lies have any merit, Kennedy has filed at least six lawsuits against the HPV vaccine manufacturer – they all went nowhere, but Kennedy still got paid for using his own law firm to litigate the cases. Make no mistake: Kennedy is a liar, an anti-vaccine extremist, and a grifter – his antipathy for the HPV vaccine is one of many conspiratorial ventures demonstrating his utter lack of fitness to run the nation’s top health agency.
Kennedy Has Filed A Half-Dozen Lawsuits Against the HPV Vaccine. As of 2022, Kennedy has filed at least six lawsuits against Merck, the manufacturer of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, through his law firm Wisner Baum and his nonprofit Children’s Health Defense on behalf of several children who had side effects from taking the vaccine. While Children’s Health Defense served as a plaintiff for one of these lawsuits, Kennedy led a nearly hour-long presentation against Gardasil. Although none of these lawsuits have resulted in bans or restrictions on Gardasil, Kennedy himself has made money off the lawsuits by using his own law firm to litigate the cases pushed by his nonprofit.
Kennedy Spread Lies About The HPV Vaccine For Years. For years, Kennedy has been deploying a set of misinformed beliefs and scare tactics intended to deter people from getting the HPV vaccine:
- Kennedy Linked The HPV Vaccine To Cervical Cancer. The Opposite Is True. During his anti-HPV vaccine campaign, Kennedy falsely linked the HPV vaccine to cervical cancer in Australia. In reality, studies have shown that the HPV vaccine is incredibly effective against cervical cancer. Most sexually active individuals will eventually be infected with HPV. The magnitude of the risk of HPV infection is incredibly high; over 80 percent of sexually active people will be infected at some point during their lifetime. 10 percent of infected women retain the virus, which can lead to precancerous cervical lesions. Across the board, research shows that the HPV vaccine has been an essential tool in combating cervical cancer, with one study showing that the vaccine stops 90 percent of cervical cancer cases. Another study even found zero cases of cervical cancer among women vaccinated against the virus before age 14. Researchers also found a 62 percent drop in cervical cancer deaths in young women over the last decade due to HPV vaccination! As Bloomberg columnist Lisa Jarvis wrote, “Imagine if vaccination against HPV (alongside regular screening) eventually allowed the US to cut the 4,000 annual deaths from cervical cancer to zero — or dramatically reduce or even eliminate the nearly 38,000 HPV-related cancers diagnosed in the country each year. […] These new data drive home the profound impact this vaccine has in preventing unnecessary suffering and deaths from HPV-related cancers. What a colossal shame it would be to go backward — at the cost of women’s lives.”
- Kennedy Baselessly Claimed That The HPV Vaccine Is Unsafe And Can Cause A “Cascade Of Debilitating Autoimmune Diseases.” Kennedy also falsely claimed that there was a link between vaccines and autoimmune diseases like postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS): “Mainstream media is finally taking notice of link [sic] between vaccines and this cascade of debilitating autoimmune diseases like POTS. I’m currently representing hundreds of young women and men who got this devastating injury from Gardasil (HPV) vaccines.”
- Kennedy Blamed The HPV Vaccine For Rising Teen Mental Health Challenges Without Any Evidence. Kennedy even blamed the HPV vaccine for a spike in mental health challenges among adolescents, including rising teen anxiety and depression, blaming aluminum present in the vaccine for causing adverse public health outcomes even though experiments have proven definitively that dietary and immunization-based aluminum consumption has no significant impact.
- Kennedy Pushed False Claims Linking The HPV Vaccine To Autism. In 2019, Kennedy published a lengthy article through Children’s Health Defense railing against the HPV vaccine. In this article, he pushed false claims that the vaccine contains autism-causing toxins – a long-debunked trope he has pushed about all kinds of different vaccines. As early as 2005, Kennedy wrote an article for Rolling Stone and Salon asserting that the government was conspiring to cover up the connections between autism and vaccines. Salon.com later retracted the article because of factual errors, and Rolling Stone deleted it. Kennedy once called vaccination a “Holocaust,” repeating his claims about autism and comparing it to genocide. In 2016, he became the chair of Children’s Health Defense, a group considered one of the main sources of misinformation about the supposed dangers of vaccines. As recently as 2023, Kennedy reportedly told Fox News that he “still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism.” Of course, none of these claims hold up. As the American Association for the Advancement of Science noted, “Suffice it to say that this connection has been investigated thoroughly for many years now, and that no such connection has ever been shown to exist…Kennedy’s views on science and medicine are not only wrong, they are actively harmful and destructive.”