On April 13, 2017 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) attended an Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) webinar titled “Vaccine Challenges in a New Administration“. Their presentation slides show their “alarm and disdain” about President Donald Trump’s vaccine safety concerns and they singled out Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK jr) [1, 3]
They knew that Trump was “not beholden to the pharmaceutical industry” as he didn’t accept funding to get him elected in 2016 [though did for his inauguration], and that he has a history of expressing concerns regarding the regressive health trends in children relative to the increasing vaccine trends.
AAP noted on January 10, 2017 that RFK jr met with President-elect Trump at Trump Tower where Kennedy was asked to chair a new commission on “vaccine safety and scientific integrity”, allegedly focused on “autism”. That same day AAP issues a statement declaring “vaccines are safe, vaccines are effective, vaccines save lives“. [2]
At a Feb. 15, 2017 – Press Conference with Robert De Niro and RFK jr before a congressional briefing the next day which was “sparsely attended”, RFK jr offered $100K reward to the “first journalist, or other individual, who can find a peer-reviewed scientific study demonstrating that thimerosal is safe in the amounts contained in vaccines currently being administered to American children and pregnant women.”
What they didn’t note was in late 2016 Trump did accepted millions in donations from pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, for his inauguration celebrations. [4] Shortly after Trump appointed pharma connected Scott Gottlieb (March 2017) to head the FDA and then Alex Azar (Nov 2017) as secretary of HHS. RFK jr has said these two were “hand picked by Pfizer”[?] and they “killed the vaccine safety commission”!
Then over 4 days in March 2018, RFK, Jr. and 15 other advocates presented “Six Steps to Vaccine Safety” to every member of Congress, detaining the steep increase in childhood chronic illness and the actions necessary to introduce sound science and transparency to the US vaccination program. [11, 12]
The Immunization Action Coalition is a 501(c)(3) [9] non-profit founded by Deborah L Wexler, MD with a newsletter from 1990, because of a measles outbreak. By Feb 1994 they ran out of money but by June 1994 Wexler received a $100K grant from Hep B vaccine maker Smith-Kline Beecham.
By September 1994 the newsletter “expanded to include all immunizations and the organization’s name was changed from the Hepatitis B Coalition to the Immunization Action Coalition to reflect the shift. The newsletter’s title also was changed to “Needle Tips & the Hepatitis B Coalition News.”[13]
On August 30, 1995 Wexler won a funding boost of $750K from the CDC, as well as their “prized mailing list of 14,000 health care professionals”! Wexler now promotes for the CDC.
By 2021, Chief Strategy Officer, Litjen Tan MS PhD, pushes for adult immunizations. [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]