Mike the Mad Biologist

This is yet another reason why you don’t let crazy ass anti-vaxxers run HHS (boldface mine):

The Department of Health and Human Services has terminated seven grants totaling millions of dollars to the American Academy of Pediatrics, including for research on reducing sudden infant deaths, improving adolescent health, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome and identifying autism early, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The abrupt loss of funds this week surprised the professional pediatrician association, which has been one of the harshest critics of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s changes to federal vaccine policy.

“The sudden withdrawal of these funds will directly impact and potentially harm infants, children, youth, and their families in communities across the United States,” Mark Del Monte, AAP’s chief executive and executive vice president, said in a statement to The Post. The organization is exploring options to push back, he said, including a legal challenge.

Administration officials cited a range of reasons for cutting off the funding to AAP, including the group’s use of “identity-based language,” including references to racial disparities and “pregnant people,” and insufficient focus in at least one grant program on nutrition and chronic disease prevention, which they said runs afoul of HHS’s priorities.

The AAP has criticized Kennedy for making unilateral changes to federal vaccine policy, calling them unscientific and arguing that his actions undermined evidence-based medicine, sidelined expert advice, eroded trust in vaccines and jeopardized public health by making communities more vulnerable to preventable diseases. The group condemned his firing of the CDC’s independent vaccine advisers to replace them with his own picks, many of whom previously criticized vaccine guidance.

Kennedy has blasted AAP for receiving funding from vaccine manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies. In response to the organization contradicting him by recommending annual covid vaccination for infants and toddlers, Kennedy called on the group to disclose conflicts of interest “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.”

The AAP and other medical groups are suing HHS and Kennedy in federal court, alleging that his coronavirus vaccine policy changes violate federal law. The lawsuit is seeking that the Kennedy’s vaccine advisory panel be disbanded and reconstituted under court supervision.

When Trump says something about awful and petty, it’s gross and disgusting. But this is an attempt to silence critics–who are in the right–because they correctly oppose Kennedy’s rabid anti-vaccinationism.

During the 2024 election, I kept posting on Bluesky how most people didn’t realize how many things a Trump administration would break–or even realize those things could be broken. I hate this. And it didn’t have to be like this at all.