Hours after the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) broke with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and recommended COVID-19 vaccines for all young children, Kennedy blasted the association as beholden to corporate interests.
The AAP on Tuesday recommended all infants and children 6 months through 23 months get vaccinated against COVID-19 to help protect against serious illness.
Kennedy responded in a post on social platform X, calling the group’s recommendations “corporate friendly” because the AAP receives donations to its Friends of Children Fund from vaccine companies like Pfizer and Moderna, among others.
The philanthropic fund backs projects supporting child health and equity.
The HHS secretary said the organization should disclose “its corporate entanglements … so that Americans may ask whether the AAP’s recommendations reflect public health interest, or are, perhaps, just a pay-to-play scheme to promote commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors.”
AAP President Susan Kressly said in a statement the group would welcome an opportunity to sit down with Kennedy to review the recommendations.
“This attack on the integrity of pediatricians is unfortunate, but it does not change the facts,” Kressly said. “We are transparent about our funders, follow rigorous conflict-of-interest disclosures and maintain safeguards to ensure the integrity and independence of our guidance.”
The AAP and HHS have been at odds for months, and tensions reached a head when Kennedy dismissed all the members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them with his own handpicked representatives, including some outright vaccine skeptics.
The AAP chose not to participate in the reconstituted panel’s first meeting in June, calling it “illegitimate.” Kennedy later excluded the fund along with other top medical organizations from working with the panel to research and help influence vaccination recommendations.
Kennedy has long criticized the so-called medical establishment for conspiring to make Americans sick. His first “Make America Healthy Again” report accused doctors of being overly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry to overprescribe certain medications that don’t treat the root causes of disease.
