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As the prospect of a viable vaccine for Lyme disease approaches, experts feared that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s previous claim that no one would “fight harder” for a treatment than he might not bear out, CNN reported.
During the January 2025 Senate confirmation hearings before Kennedy’s appointment as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, an exchange pertaining to Lyme disease stood out to many who had long contended with the illness.
Kennedy’s sometimes dissonant positions on public health aside, he asserted that he and two of his children had endured the “devastating effects of Lyme disease” firsthand.
“There is nobody who will fight harder to find a vaccine or a treatment for Lyme disease than me,” Kennedy promised. He convened a roundtable HHS discussion on the illness in December, reiterating his stated commitment to improving treatment for affected Americans.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to make it safe for children to go back in the woods again,” he said at the sit-down.
On the other hand, Kennedy’s unconventional views on vaccines routinely run contrary to scientific consensus, and medical experts have warned that his positions undermine trust in preventive medicine and pose a risk to public health.
On March 23, Pfizer and French vaccine company Valneva announced that they would formally seek approval for the first new Lyme disease vaccine in over 20 years, a four-dose regimen that demonstrated efficacy of over 70% in clinical trials.
In the past, Kennedy repeated a long-circulating conspiracy theory that Lyme disease was an intentionally created bioweapon. Disease ecologist Dr. Richard Ostfeld told CNN that Kennedy’s embrace of that claim suggested a poor understanding of the disease’s etiology.
“The tick bites three times in its life and takes two years to do that. What could be less efficient, less operational, as a weapon than something like a tick-borne bacterium that can be cleared from your system with antibiotics within a couple weeks?” Ostfield explained.
Renowned virologist Dr. Stanley Plotkin concurred more concisely.
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“Using the technical term, [the bioweapon theory] was bulls***,” he remarked.
Questions about Kennedy’s willingness to support the advancing Lyme disease vaccine came amid a trend of rising infection rates linked to rising temperatures, which have introduced longer tick seasons and an increase in the geographical scope of heightened risk.
“Lyme is entering areas where it didn’t occur before,” Ostfield told CNN.
HHS declined to answer CNN’s “multiple questions” about whether Kennedy’s pledge to fight Lyme disease “extends to vaccines,” though again, Kennedy’s quote did have him claim that “there is nobody who will fight harder to find a vaccine or a treatment for Lyme disease than me.” The months ahead will give Kennedy an opportunity to prove if that is true.
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