RFK Jr under fire for ‘bullying’ letter to scientific journal

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, is demanding answers from a medical journal that recently removed a paper suggesting a link between vaccines and infant death, saying their decision was “of great interest to me”. Public health advocates immediately criticized the move, and said Kennedy appeared to be trying to intimidate and influence the journal’s editorial process. The journal Toxicology Reports had removed the paper this spring after editors determined it was so seriously flawed it could harm patients and pose a risk to public health. The letter, which Kennedy on Monday posted on X, asked the journal editor to answer several questions about how it arrived at its decision about the paper, which suggested a link between vaccines and sudden infant death syndrome, or Sids, by 25 June. “If he is trying to use his position to bully a journal, he is stepping close to violating their first amendment rights,” Dorit Reiss, an expert in vaccine law at UC Law San Francisco, wrote in reply to his post on X. Dr David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who has written extensively about the antivaccine movement, pointed out in a post that Kennedy has portrayed himself as pro-free speech, but that he was “apparently using the power of his position” to put pressure on an editorial decision by a private publisher. “To antivaxxers, it’s free speech for me, but not for thee,” Gorski wrote on X . …