Disinformation issue: New anti-vaccine film targets Black Americans with false information

Anti-Vaccine Film Targeted To Black Americans Spreads False Information A new movie produced by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaccine group tries to capitalize on the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial justice movement, and renewed interest in the history of medical racism. NPR.org

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The free, online film is the latest effort by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the founder of Children's Health Defense. (He's the son of the former U.S. Attorney General Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.) With this film, Kennedy and his allies in the anti-vaccine movement resurface and promote disproven claims about the dangers of vaccines, but it's aimed squarely at a specific demographic: Black Americans.

The film draws a line from the very real and disturbing history of racism and atrocities in the medical field — like the Tuskegee syphilis study — to interviews with anti-vaccine activists who warn communities of color to be suspicious of modern day vaccines.

At one point in "Medical Racism," viewers are warned that "in black communities something is very sinister" and "the same thing that happened in the 1930s during the eugenics movement" is happening again.

There is lengthy discussion of the thoroughly disproven link between autism and vaccines. For example, the film references a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the MMR vaccine and autism rates as evidence that African American children are being particularly harmed, but in reality the study did not conclude that African Americans are at increased risk of autism because of vaccination.

The movie then displays a chart claiming to use that same CDC data — obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request — to make a connection between vaccinating Black children and autism risk. The findings in the chart closely resemble another study sometimes mentioned by anti-vaccine activists, but the medical journal later retracted the study, because of "undeclared competing interests on the part of the author" and "concerns about the validity of the methods and statistical analysis," (That study's author was also a paid independent contractor for Kennedy's group as of 2020 and sits on its board of directors.)

The film also brings up a 2014 study from the Mayo Clinic that showed Somali Americans and African Americans have a more robust immune response to the rubella vaccine than Caucasians and Hispanic Americans. One of those interviewed in Kennedy's film then asks, "So if you have that process that could be caused by vaccines, why wouldn't there be a link between vaccines and developmental delays?"

But the study's own author and leading vaccine researcher Dr. Gregory Poland says this conjecture is not accurate. ...