RFK Jr. unveils sweeping federal initiative to find evidence of vaccine injuries

Under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the federal health department is undertaking an agency-wide effort to focus on injuries claimed to be related to vaccines. In a press announcement Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) laid out four aspects of the large-scale initiative.

在反疫苗立场的卫生部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.）领导下，联邦卫生部门正在开展一项全机构范围的行动，重点关注声称与疫苗有关的伤害。在周四的新闻发布会上，美国卫生与公众服务部（HHS）概述了这一大规模倡议的四个方面。

The first is a new clinic at the National Institutes of Health that is “dedicated to studying and caring for patients experiencing health problems following vaccination.” Despite only being announced today, the clinic actually opened October 5, and Kennedy secretly attended its ribbon-cutting ceremony alongside other high-level Trump administration officials. It’s unclear why his visit and the clinic’s opening were not disclosed by the Trump administration, but they were reported by Bloomberg Law at the time.

首先是在美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）设立的一家新诊所，该诊所“致力于研究和护理接种疫苗后出现健康问题的患者”。尽管今天才宣布，但该诊所实际上已于10月5日开业，肯尼迪曾与其他特朗普政府的高级官员一起秘密参加了剪彩仪式。目前尚不清楚为何他的访问和诊所的开业未被特朗普政府披露，但彭博法律（Bloomberg Law）当时对此进行了报道。

Another aspect of the initiative is a proposal to reimburse doctors for reporting possible injuries from vaccines to a federal system called VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System). VAERS, which is run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a common focus of anti-vaccine advocates, who incessantly misuse it. The system is meant to be an indiscriminate dragnet of any potential safety concerns linked to vaccines, providing a sensitive early warning monitoring system. Anyone, including members of the public, can submit an unvetted report.

该倡议的另一个方面是提议向医生提供报酬，以鼓励他们向名为VAERS（疫苗不良事件报告系统）的联邦系统报告可能的疫苗伤害。由美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）运营的VAERS是反疫苗倡导者关注的焦点，他们经常滥用该系统。该系统的初衷是对与疫苗相关的任何潜在安全问题进行无差别的广泛搜集，从而提供一个敏感的早期预警监测系统。任何人，包括公众成员，都可以提交未经核实的报告。

The CDC continuously monitors and assesses those reports, finding that the vast majority are not actually related to vaccinations. Still, anti-vaccine advocates—particularly those involved in litigation seeking money for alleged vaccine injuries—often point to the trove of unsubstantiated reports on VAERS as evidence that vaccines are dangerous.

CDC持续监测和评估这些报告，发现绝大多数报告实际上与疫苗接种无关。尽管如此，反疫苗倡导者——特别是那些参与寻求疫苗伤害赔偿诉讼的人——经常将VAERS上大量未经证实的报告作为疫苗具有危险性的证据。

HHS said the proposal to reimburse doctors for filing VAERS reports will “reduce barriers to physician reporting and encourage health care professionals to document suspected adverse events following vaccination.” The announcement did not make clear how doctors would be paid for VAERS reports, but The New York Times reported that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) may introduce a new billing code to reimburse doctors.

HHS表示，向医生支付提交VAERS报告费用的提议将“减少医生报告的障碍，并鼓励医疗保健专业人员记录疫苗接种后疑似的不良事件”。该公告并未明确医生将如何因VAERS报告获得报酬，但《纽约时报》报道称，美国医疗保险和医疗补助服务中心（CMS）可能会引入一个新的计费代码来补偿医生。

In addition to providing a financial incentive for doctors to submit reports, the HHS is also working to overhaul VAERS to make it “simpler, more accessible, and easier to use.” That includes making the reporting system available on mobile devices—so doctors can report vaccine injuries on the go—and adding more tools for researchers studying vaccine injuries. The CDC has already awarded a nearly $1 million contract to a Virginia-based Christian tech company called SPN Solutions Inc.

除了为医生提交报告提供经济激励外，HHS还致力于彻底改革VAERS，使其“更简单、更易于访问且更易于使用”。这包括使报告系统能够在移动设备上使用——以便医生可以随时随地报告疫苗伤害——并为研究疫苗伤害的研究人员增加更多工具。CDC已经向一家位于弗吉尼亚州的基督教科技公司SPN Solutions Inc.授予了一份价值近100万美元的合同。

Lastly, Kennedy’s initiative will also require electronic health records to include information about vaccine injuries. This requirement will be carried out through the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, which oversees federal health information technology standards. HHS said that by adding vaccine injuries to electronic medical records, healthcare providers will have a “more complete picture of a patient’s medical history.”

最后，肯尼迪的倡议还将要求电子健康记录中包含有关疫苗伤害的信息。这一要求将通过HHS下属的负责监督联邦健康信息技术标准的国家健康信息技术协调办公室来执行。HHS表示，通过将疫苗伤害添加到电子病历中，医疗保健提供者将获得“更完整的患者病史图景”。

“We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries—not dismiss or gaslight them,” Kennedy said in a statement. “President Trump and I are building a health system that takes them seriously, follows the evidence, and uses what we learn to make vaccines safer. This is how we earn back trust in our public health institutions.”

“我们必须倾听报告疫苗伤害的患者和家庭的声音，而不是忽视或欺骗他们，”肯尼迪在一份声明中说。“特朗普总统和我正在建立一个认真对待他们、遵循证据并利用我们所学知识使疫苗更安全的卫生系统。这就是我们重新赢得公众对公共卫生机构信任的方式。”

Health and medical experts agree that monitoring post-market vaccine safety events is vital—VAERS has been acting as a sensitive early warning system since 1990, and the federal government has several other overlapping safety surveillance systems in place as well. Boosting research on uncommon adverse reactions to vaccines is also welcomed. But experts expect that Kennedy’s goals are not to improve safety or advance research, but instead to continue attacking lifesaving vaccines by inflating risks and overemphasizing rare outcomes. He and his anti-vaccine allies have long done this using VAERS in its current form.

健康和医学专家一致认为，监测疫苗上市后的安全性事件至关重要——VAERS自1990年以来一直作为敏感的早期预警系统发挥作用，联邦政府还拥有其他几个重叠的安全监测系统。加强对疫苗罕见不良反应的研究也受到欢迎。但专家们预计，肯尼迪的目标并非提高安全性或推进研究，而是通过夸大风险和过度强调罕见结果来继续攻击挽救生命的疫苗。他和他的反疫苗盟友长期以来一直利用当前形式的VAERS来这样做。

“Somehow the Trump-RFK Jr. anti-vax agenda keeps getting more corrupt and dangerous,” Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, said in a statement Thursday. “Now Secretary Kennedy wants to bribe doctors to claim they see vaccine harm without proof, which is just asking for higher insurance costs and a rash of waste, fraud and abuse.”

“不知何故，特朗普与小肯尼迪的反疫苗议程变得越来越腐败和危险，”Protect Our Care组织主席布拉德·伍德豪斯（Brad Woodhouse）在周四的一份声明中表示。“现在肯尼迪部长想要贿赂医生，让他们在没有证据的情况下声称看到了疫苗伤害，这只会导致更高的保险成本以及大量的浪费、欺诈和滥用行为。”