According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration has “terminated seven grants totaling millions of dollars to the American Academy of Pediatrics, including for initiatives on reducing sudden infant deaths, improving adolescent health, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome and identifying autism early.” The Department of Health and Human Services is trying to justify these cuts based on AAP’s use of “identity-based language.”
This week, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) sent a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expressing concern over the grant terminations and requesting answers from the Department.
KAYLA HANCOCK; contact [email protected]
Hancock is the Director of Public Health Watch at Protect Our Care.
Advocates at Protect Our Care write that RFK Jr. “has had a political axe to grind against the nation’s pediatricians for months due to their outspoken concerns about the administration’s objectively harmful attacks on long-proven safe and effective vaccines, including treatment against COVID-19 and hepatitis B. The American Academy of Pediatrics was among the trusted medical groups Kennedy ‘kicked out’ of CDC vaccine workgroups in August.
“Secretary Kennedy doesn’t even have the guts to admit what these harmful grant terminations are really about. He simply doesn’t like that the medical professionals who know what’s best for children’s health have pushed back on his baseless anti-vaccine claims and policies with actual peer-reviewed data that affirms vaccine safety.”
Hancock told the Institute for Public Accuracy that these grant terminations are part of the administration’s larger agenda of undermining children’s health as well as political revenge against the AAP. She said that terminating grants that work to help detect autism represents the “height of hypocrisy.”