Follow up to C.D.C. Pauses Testing for Rabies and Pox Viruses see ProPublica – How Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Agenda Risks a Resurgence of Deadly Childhood Plagues – “The U.S. government took a half century to build a vaccination system that shieldedchildren from such a fate. Its success depended on two fundamental pillars: parents trusting in vaccines and children having access to them. Both are now in peril, thanks in no small part to the man steering America’s health policy. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who founded an antivaccine group and once likened the immunization of children to a holocaust, is transforming a government that long championed the lifesaving benefits of shots into one that spreads doubts about their safety here and abroad.  Kennedy is also considering changes that could prompt the few companies that make vaccines for American kids to abandon the U.S. market, leaving parents who want the shots unable to get them. The threat to vaccine access reaches across the globe after Kennedy yanked the government’s $1.6 billion pledge to the aid group that provides shots for the world’s poorest children. For decades, the U.S. had funded such work not just as a humanitarian mission but as a way to keep Americans safe from unchecked contagions. Kennedy’s efforts to reshape vaccine policies have been well chronicled, but ProPublica wanted to take a broader look at how the changes might affect Americans’ health in the years to come…”