• In making similar claims about placebo-controlled studies, vaccine skeptics often take a narrow view of what a “placebo” is, arguing it can only be water or saltwater.
• In reality, there’s a larger group of safe substances that the FDA considers a placebo in vaccine trials.
• Even by that narrower definition, though, there are some childhood vaccines that have gone through trials in which a saline placebo was used, making Johnson’s claim inaccurate.
• Sometimes, new vaccines are tested against old ones for the same disease, which medical experts say is because it would be unethical to leave children unknowingly at risk of a preventable illness.

In picking Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, President-elect Donald Trump is elevating a small but growing segment of the population that distrusts vaccines and spreads or follows misinformation about them.

Kennedy is a long-time vaccine skeptic who founded the major anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense and has repeatedly promoted a debunked theory that vaccines cause autism.

Although he has recently distanced himself somewhat from this stance, declaring he would not “take away anybody’s vaccines” after Trump was elected, his unorthodox views on medicine are raising concern from medical professionals — and some on Capitol Hill. (That includes Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who wrote in a Dec. 13, 2024 statement that “efforts to undermine public confidence in...

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