Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in The Washington Post, in “RFK Jr. Says Vaccines Aren’t Tested Enough. Experts Say That’s Baseless.” by Lauren Weber and Caitlin Gilbert. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., awaiting confirmation to become secretary of health and human services, has repeatedly claimed that vaccines are not tested rigorously enough and has called for an alternative type of testing that medical experts say would be unethical, according to a Washington Post review of his public statements from recent years. …
Kennedy’s long history of throwing out scientific-sounding statements should not disguise the truth of the robust vaccine monitoring that takes place in the United States, said Richard Hughes IV, a former vice president of public policy at Moderna who teaches vaccine law at the George Washington University Law School.
“What [Kennedy] does is he repeats this and it sounds important, it sounds like why would we not develop the safety data?” Hughes said. “And lawmakers sometimes buy into that and say ‘Well, why shouldn’t we have the safety data?’ But the fact is we already have the safety data. And we have these robust systems for continuously monitoring vaccines.”
