Healthand Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated false and misleading claims on a wide range of health topics in his hearing Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee. Chiefly, he reiterated false or unsubstantiated claims about the purported harms of vaccination. Several senators also made misleading or false statements. Here are some of the major claims that are false or misleading: Fact check:False and misleading Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, pointed to a sign that said "76 JABS," noting that is how many vaccines children in the U.S. received. This is an overestimate of the number of shots. It is true that children and teens may receive dozens of vaccines before adulthood, especially if you count annual COVID and flu shots. Generally, children get about 30 shots by 2 years of age. These multiple doses do not overwhelm a baby's immune system, the CDC says. Vaccines are often clustered early in life because they are a high-risk population, and you want kids to get immunized before they are exposed to vaccine-preventable illnesses. Many vaccines are now combined into one shot for fewer "jabs." Fact check:Recent FDA restrictions mean many Americans face barriers Kennedy repeated the promise that "anyone can get a [COVID] booster" and "I'm not taking [them] away from people" when the reality on the ground is that some people are not able to access COVID vaccines because of the narrowing of FDA approvals and subsequent policy confusion. Kennedy was also not accurate in saying there is "no clinical data" to support COVID vaccines. They were studied in large, randomized clinical trials showing they reduce the risk of infection and serious illness. Fact check:False and misleading Sen. Ron Johnson said that thousands of deaths following COVID vaccination have been reported in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). This is missing crucial context about the VAERS database, which does not contain confirmed cases of vaccine injuries. Rather, the database serves as an important early warning systems for unforeseen problems with approved vaccinations, though reports can be submitted voluntarily by anyone -- which means many of the reports may not be accurate, or the injury was not actually caused by a vaccine. Fact check:Misleading Kennedy said that HHS will conduct fresh placebo-controlled trials for vaccines. ABC News has previously reported on his call for "new" vaccines to undergo placebo-controlled trials. Today we have vaccines against dozens of diseases. The original studies for many of these vaccines -- sometimes conducted decades ago -- were done using placebo-controlled studies. After the first vaccine was approved for a particular disease, subsequent studies for newer, better vaccines were no longer tested against placebo and were tested against the existing vaccine. Some experts consider it unethical to conduct such trials when a vaccine or treatment is already considered safe and efficacious. For example, they say, giving half of the kids in a trial a placebo for the measles vaccine when an already proven vaccine exists would put those participants unnecessarily at risk for the virus. So, while technically accurate, it's misleading to say that current vaccines have not been studied in placebo-controlled trials. Fact check:Needs context Kennedy pointed out the U.S. comprises roughly 4% of the population but had 20% of COVID deaths. This statistic was roughly accurate as of 2021. However, the missing context is that the U.S. had strong data systems to track deaths compared to other countries so it might have more documented deaths on paper. Meanwhile, Kennedy places the blame for COVID mistakes squarely on the CDC. Many public health experts argue that politics and social resistance hampered the CDC's efforts to quell the pandemic and save lives and the U.S. has a high burden of some chronic diseases that can lead to more severe COVID-19 infections, the CDC says. Fact check:Needs context Marshall questioned whether every baby needs the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, as is currently recommended. The reason this is currently recommended is because hepatitis B infection is still a major problem today, with the most recent data from the CDC showing 16,729 newly reported chronic hepatitis B cases in the U.S. Mothers can pass hepatitis B on to their babies. In some countries, mothers are screened selectively for hepatitis B if they use injection drugs or have other risk factors, and babies are selectively given shots if the mother tests positive. But this system means some cases will fall through the cracks. In the U.S., hepatitis B vaccines are recommended universally because they are safe and low-risk, and it helps prevent a child from developing a potentially deadly disease.
