RFK Jr. Asks Journal Editor Why Vaccine Article Was Removed

The Health and Human Services secretary is asking a medical journal for more information on why it removed a published article that suggested a link between vaccines and infant deaths.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has made a career of repeating unsubstantiated allegations that vaccines cause harm, wrote last week to Toxicology Reports editor in chief Lawrence H. Lash, a Wayne State University pharmacology professor, asking about the removal. Kennedy then posted the letter on X this week.

“Americans have a right to know why scientific papers are removed, who made those decisions, what evidence supported them, and whether the same standards are applied consistently,” Kennedy wrote.

Kennedy has previously threatened to bar government-funded scientists from publishing in some well-respected journals, claiming they are controlled by the pharmaceutical industry.

Five years ago, Toxicology Reports published a paper by Neil Miller, a self-employed medical researcher, titled, “Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the VAERS database 1990–2019 and review of the medical literature.” The abstract says, “While the findings in this paper are not proof of an association between infant vaccines and infant deaths, they are highly suggestive of a causal relationship.”

Retraction Watch reported that the journal retracted the study in April. The journal’s removal notice says the editor in chief requested removal after “post-publication concerns raised by readers regarding potential research errors and methodological flaws.” The brief note says the journal investigated, and Miller’s response didn’t satisfy the editor-in-chief.

“Serious methodological flaws were identified in the use of [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] data to infer a correlation between vaccination and sudden infant death syndrome,” the removal note says.

Miller said the article was removed, not retracted, so it cannot still be accessed. (It is still available on a National Institutes of Health website). He said there were “eight specific concerns, all from a single woman. Most of her concerns were either insignificant or plainly incorrect.” He also said “someone on Elsevier’s ethics committee” told him they believed his article contained “methodological flaws,” but “they never specified what the methodological flaws were.”

Kennedy wrote in his letter that the note “had only two sentences explaining the retraction,” calling this “woefully insufficient” given “the high levels of public interest in vaccine safety and a history of both overt and obscure pressure against the study of some of these topics.” He requested more information by June 25, including asking the journal to “identify the experts who conducted this investigation and the conflicts of interest these experts may have.”

Lash didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Wednesday. In an email, a spokesperson for Elsevier, which publishes the journal, said, “We are aware of the letter to the journal, and it is under review.”