Don’t call Kennedy a vaccine sceptic. Call him what he is – a cynic

The news media labels Robert F. Kennedy Jr a “vaccine sceptic”. He’s not. I’m an actual vaccine sceptic. In fact, everyone who serves with me on the vaccine advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a vaccine sceptic. Pharmaceutical companies must prove to us that a vaccine is safe, that it’s effective. Then and only then will we recommend that it be authorised or licensed for use by Americans.

Mr Kennedy, on the other hand,

is a vaccine cynic

, failing to accept studies that refute his beliefs. He claims that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism despite more than a dozen studies performed in seven countries on three continents involving thousands of children showing that it doesn’t.