RFK Jr.’s Attack on Global Vaccinations Could Cost Hundreds of Thousands of Children’s Lives

By sabotaging global vaccine efforts, RFK Jr. is turning junk science into deadly policy

There was a wonderful book written ten years ago by the journalist Adam Fifield called A Mighty Purpose: How Jim Grant Sold the World on Saving Its Children. The book tells the story of James P. Grant, a visionary American diplomat who served as Executive Director of UNICEF from 1980 to 1995. Early in his tenure, Grant realized that the lives of children in poorer countries could be saved on a massive scale through the systematic deployment of relatively simple health interventions. These included oral rehydration therapies to fight deaths from diarrhea, efforts to promote breastfeeding, routine monitoring of childhood malnutrition, and immunization against some basic childhood diseases.

The book shows how Grant, through sheer force of will, aggressively promoted these low-cost, high-impact health interventions to governments and donors around the world. He succeeded — and the results were breathtaking. An estimated 25 to 30 million children's lives were saved from 1982 to 1997, an era that global health professionals refer to as the Revolution in Child Survival.

Jim Grant may not be a household name, but he probably should be. Nick Kristof once wrote that his efforts probably saved more people than were killed by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined. He is a true American hero.

And then there’s Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Yesterday, at a major conference dedicated to saving children’s lives in the world’s poorest countries through the routine deployment of childhood vaccines, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services may have single-handedly upended decades of progress in reducing child and infant mortality.

What Kennedy did at that conference is as outrageous as it is deadly.