Oversight board chair rebukes Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy over anti-vaccine activities
At a meeting of the board that oversees the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center Research Hospital, chair Jack Leslie diverted from the agenda and spent six minutes delivering a pointed rebuke of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, warning that Kennedy's anti-vaccine activities could tarnish the hospital, often called the “house of hope” for patients with rare conditions or those who have exhausted other options.
Leslie also said he has no concerns about studying potential injuries from vaccines.
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The provocation was a stunt: a surprise ribbon-cutting at the hospital for Kennedy's signature vaccine injury clinic. That makes the objection institutional rather than abstract.
Leslie's caveat complicates the rebuke: he has no concerns about studying potential vaccine injuries, and he calls serious reactions rare but real. That is a different position from dismissing vaccine-injury research outright.