N.I.H. Hospital Board Criticizes Kennedy Over New Vaccine Injury Clinic

The board in charge of a major U.S. government research hospital voted unanimously to push back against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last Friday. The board oversees the National Institutes of Health, or N.I.H., Clinical Center. Members voted to support a statement saying Kennedy had hurt trust in the hospital's scientific work. It was a rare and public rebuke of a top government official by the people who run one of the country's most important medical research centers.

The board's chairman, Jack Leslie, started the quarterly meeting by reading a six-minute statement out loud. He said he was 'troubled' by Kennedy's recent unannounced visit to the N.I.H. hospital. During that visit, Kennedy held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new clinic meant to study vaccine injuries. He also led a roundtable discussion with patients who said they had been hurt by vaccines.

Kennedy announced the new clinic on social media the week before the board meeting. He posted a video of the roundtable that showed signs in the background reading 'Vaccine Injured.' Leslie said he became worried when he saw those signs. He felt the signs suggested the clinic had already decided what its research would find, even before any studies were done.

Leslie said that serious vaccine injuries do happen, calling them 'rare but real,' and agreed that careful research on the topic is important. But he pointed out that Kennedy has long been a public critic of vaccines. Because of that, Leslie argued, the new clinic's results might not be trusted by the public no matter what they show. If the clinic finds harm, critics will say Kennedy set it up to get that answer. If it finds no harm, patients may feel the whole thing was a trick.

Leslie summed up the problem in plain terms. 'The clinical center's standing rests on one thing: the confidence of patients, physicians and the public that the research done here is designed to find the truth, not to confirm a conclusion reached in advance,' he said. He added, 'Trust is slow to build and quick to lose.' The board's unanimous vote showed that every member agreed the clinic, as announced, was a threat to the hospital's hard-earned reputation.