HHS to ‘Revolutionize’ Vaccine Injury Compensation, RFK Jr. Tells Tucker Carlson
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tucker Carlson discussed the skyrocketing autism rates in U.S. kids, drug ads on TV, a COVID-19 pandemic "truth commission” and the vaccine-injured.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat down yesterday with Tucker Carlson to share an update on his mission to end the skyrocketing rate of autism in U.S. kids.
By the end of their nearly 90-minute conversation, the two had covered a slew of topics, including pharmaceutical ads on TV, increasing compensation for the vaccine-injured, and the need for a “truth commission” to uncover who and what caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carlson, who last year left FOX News after being the network’s “most popular host,” now runs “The Tucker Carlson Show.” He broke his interview with Kennedy into five “chapters”:
Uncovering the Reason for Skyrocketing Rates of Autism
Is It Possible to End the Corrupt Relationship Between Big Pharma and Corporate Media?
Will There Be Compensation for the Vaccine-Injured?
RFK’s Firing of So-Called “Experts”
The Real Reason Fauci Got a Pardon
Below are highlights from each.
HHS will do honest, open research on autism and vaccines
In the past, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) failed to honestly and adequately research the possible link between vaccines and autism, Kennedy said.
The CDC ignored recommendations from the Institute of Medicine to do a “litany” of studies to get at the issue, Kennedy said, including animal models, observational studies, bench studies and epidemiological studies.
“But what we’re going to do now,” he said, “is we’re going to do all the kinds of studies that the Institute of Medicine originally recommended.”
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in April announced a new research program to study what causes autism and why autism diagnoses are on the rise.
NIH will make data from Medicare and Medicaid available to independent scientists for analysis. Data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink — a huge repository for health records — will also be used, Kennedy said.
Raw data will be made available to the public whenever possible, Kennedy said.
“Something new that we’re bringing in is that every study will be replicated,” he added.
Big Pharma ads fail to benefit patients and doctors
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Angus King (I-Maine) last month introduced federal legislation to end direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising.
Kennedy didn’t reference the bill or say he supported a ban on such ads. However, he outlined several reasons why pharmaceutical marketing on mainstream media is bad for public health.
Many ads are misleading, he told Carlson. “Even the music and the video, the photos that they show … it’s sending a message that if you take this drug, you’re going to be riding jet skis and playing volleyball and water skiing and have a great-looking spouse.”
Meanwhile, the ads feature the most expensive version of the drug rather than the generic version.
“They’re not going to advertise the generics because they’re not making any money,” Kennedy said. “So they’re advertising the ones that are the highest profit margins for them.”
Plus, the U.S. taxpayer bears the brunt of the cost while the drug company profits. Kennedy explained:
“Normally, if you see an advertisement on TV like for Coca-Cola, you then have a choice to go get that and you’re paying out of your pocket for it.
“When somebody buys a pharmaceutical drug, it’s Medicaid and Medicare that are paying for it … it’s the taxpayer. … And we’re paying for the ads because they’re tax-deductible.”
When a patient sees the ad and asks a doctor for the drug, the doctor — who is told by a “corporate bean counter” to limit time with a patient to only 11 minutes — has to choose whether to use the time trying to talk the patient out of the drug, Kennedy said. But if the doctor does that, the patient likely goes away unsatisfied.
Or the doctor could just say, “All right, you want this prescription? I’ll write it for you.” Then the patient will be satisfied and come back, Kennedy said. “The doctors hate it. … And nobody thinks that this is good for public health. It is hurting us.”
Kennedy said the censorship of vaccine-related information on social media is also a problem.
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday denied Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) petition to hear its censorship case against Meta, the parent company of Facebook.
CHD sued Meta in August 2020 and filed an amended complaint in November 2020, alleging that government actors partnered with Facebook to censor CHD’s speech — particularly speech related to vaccines and COVID-19 — that should have been protected under the First Amendment. The company deplatformed CHD from Facebook and Instagram in August 2022 and has not reinstated the accounts.
Censorship of scientific results that are critical of vaccines is also a problem, Kennedy added.
Kennedy’s plans to expand vaccine injury compensation program
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which granted legal immunity to vaccine makers and created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, also made it difficult for anyone injured by a vaccine to obtain compensation.
“We just brought a guy in this week who is going to be revolutionizing the [National] Vaccine Injury Compensation program,” Kennedy said.
“We’re looking at ways to enlarge the program so that COVID vaccine-injured people can be compensated … we’re looking at ways to enlarge the statute of limitations,” Kennedy told Carlson.
It’s currently limited to three years. “A lot of people don’t discover their injuries till after that,” Kennedy said.
The program has other flaws, including that it has no discovery process, no rules of evidence and historically had corrupt leadership.
“We’re going to change all that,” Kennedy said. “I’ve brought in a team this week that is starting to work on that.”
Kennedy also said HHS will use AI (artificial intelligence) to track vaccine injuries more effectively. The agency plans to use AI in other ways, too, such as speeding up drug approval processes and detecting fraud.
Why CDC vaccine advisory committee needed a clean sweep
Kennedy defended his recent move to fire all members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, saying the board had become “a sock puppet for the industry that it was supposed to regulate.”
On June 11, Kennedy named eight researchers and physicians to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), two days after removing all 17 of the previous ACIP members.
“This was a long time coming, Tucker,” Kennedy said. He gave an example to illustrate the kind of financial conflict of interest that had plagued the board for years.
Years ago, the committee approved adding a rotavirus vaccine to the childhood immunization schedule, he said.
Four of the five committee members had “direct financial interest in the rotavirus vaccine,” Kennedy said. “They were working for the companies that made the vaccine, or they were receiving grants to do clinical trials on that vaccine.”
Within a year, that specific rotavirus vaccine was linked to “disastrous” disease in kids and pulled from the market. It was replaced by a different rotavirus vaccine that then-committee member Dr. Paul Offit had helped develop.
“Then [Offit] and his business partners, Dr. Stanley Plotkin, and a couple of other people, sold that vaccine to Merck for $186 million,” Kennedy recalled.
According to Kennedy, Offit told Newsweek that he won the lottery. “It’s been said of him that he voted himself rich, so that kind of conflict was typical on that committee.”
Could a ‘truth commission’ hold Fauci accountable?
Carlson and Kennedy discussed the origins of COVID-19 and the possible reasons for Dr. Anthony Fauci’s presidential pardon.
Just before leaving office, former President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci. The pardon, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2014, addresses “any offenses” Fauci committed during this period, including in his former capacities as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, member of the White House COVID-19 Response Team and chief medical adviser to Biden.
When Carlson pressed Kennedy to comment on Fauci’s motivations for funding coronavirus research in China, Kennedy said he tried to avoid speculation.
That’s why in his book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” he reports only what Fauci did, not Fauci’s possible motivations, he said.
Carlson said, “It sounds like Fauci is beyond the reach of the law at this point.”
Kennedy responded, “Yeah, I think generally, unless there was a truth commission, you know, which they did in South Africa. They did it in Central America after the 1980s wars there, and they were very, very helpful to those societies. I think we should probably do something like that now.”
Kennedy explained how a truth commission works:
“You have a commission that hears testimony on what exactly happened. Anybody who comes and volunteers to testify truthfully is then given immunity from prosecution. But so that at least the public knows who did what. …
“People who are called and don’t take that deal and perjure themselves, they then can be prosecuted criminally.”
Watch the interview here:
Related articles in The Defender
limit time with a patient to only 11 minutes ! now I understand why the doc I went lately comes in for one minute, then goes out (probably to another patient?) comes back in for 2 minutes and so on. Where is the time that you could actually talk to a doctor? How can a doc who never came to your place, know anything about you? As to meds, only those that can afford health insurance get paid. Until 2 years ago I had to pay everything out of pocket. Now on Medicare, I had to take med twice and both times a generic that cost only a few cents. I do not have TV and see no ads, so cannot ask a doc to prescribe me A or B.
It became obvious that RFK Jr. was over the target when the pharmaceutical companies vehemently reacted to his suggestion to ban pharmaceutical ads on television and print ads again.