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Sniffling into 2026: RFK Jr.'s Anti-Vax Crusade | First Draft with Susan J. Demas and Dr. Paul Offit
Nothing ruins Christmas like COVID, RSV, and the flu. And RFK Jr. wouldn't have it any other way. We talk to Dr. Paul Offit, one of the prominent medical experts Kennedy removed from an FDA panel.
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Anti-vaccine ideology has migrated from fringe activism into the core of Trump’s HHS.
Long-standing scientific guardrails are being dismantled through Kennedy’s personnel purges and the rejection of peer-reviewed evidence.
Public trust erodes fastest when official institutions echo conspiratorial thinking instead of correcting it.
Children, pregnant women, and immunocompromised communities bear the greatest risk from policy driven by denial rather than data.
In this Christmas Eve edition of First Draft, Lincoln Square Executive Editor Susan J. Demas talks to Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician who directs the Vaccine Education Center and serves as an attending physician in Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He’s the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine who’s authored more than 160 papers and 11 books and has served on FDA and CDC advisory committees.
So naturally, Trump’s HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this year made sure to remove Dr. Offit from the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) — which is central to evaluating vaccine safety and efficacy data for approval.
That’s what happens when one of the most prominent anti-vaxxers in America is now in charge of national health policy.
We saw conspiracy theories explode during the COVID pandemic. But RFK Jr. and others have been laying the groundwork for years. There’s a “debate me, bro” mentality in the anti-vax movement. They consider it a gotcha moment when physicians and epidemiologists won’t engage in bad-faith discussions with them. But Dr. Offit argues that vaccine safety isn’t something you “debate” — it’s something you prove through evidence. What do we do when many Americans would rather trust their favorite celebrity than scientists?
Tune in for this urgent First Draft with Susan Demas and Dr. Paul Offit on what happens when science is forced to defend itself—and what it costs when it loses that fight.
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