Children’s Health Defense [CDC], the anti-vaccine advocacy group founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., has filed a racketeering lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The suit alleges that the 67,000-member AAP—the nation’s largest pediatric medical trade group—engaged in a conspiracy to mislead the public about the safety of the childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule while taking donations from vaccine manufacturers for its charitable efforts.
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The group takes specific aim at a 2002 article in AAP’s peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics by renowned vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, evaluating the safety of administering multiple immunizations to children. …
CHD alleges that the AAP, relying on Offit’s work, has blocked efforts to study the cumulative schedule. Experts have pointed out that denying children vaccines and potentially exposing them to dangerous pathogens is unethical ….
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The lawsuit also repeats the long-discredited, fraudulent narrative that vaccines cause autism and cites as evidence the CDC’s vaccine information page, which was updated in November on Kennedy’s watch. That page, which now endorses the debunked claim, relies on a paper by one of CHD’s co-plaintiffs: Dr. Paul Thomas, whose positions on vaccines lost him his medical licenses.
