WASHINGTON, MILLAT+(APP/AFP) – US President-elect
Donald Trump met Tuesday with prominent environmentalist and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr and asked him to head a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity, Kennedy said.
The 62-year-old son of slain senator Bobby Kennedy and nephew of late
president John F. Kennedy has questioned the use of mercury in vaccines and
suggested an apparent link to autism, a notion that the majority of the
scientific community rejects and numerous studies have debunked.
“He asked me to chair a commission on vaccine safety and scientific
integrity,” Kennedy said after the meeting, which he said Trump had called and requested.
“I said I would.”
Kennedy said the job would be to “make sure we have scientific
integrity in the vaccine process for efficacy and safety.”
Both Kennedy and Trump have expressed concerns that childhood
vaccinations could lead to autism.
“Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine policies and he has
questions about it,” Kennedy told reporters.
“His opinion doesn’t matter but the science does matter and we ought
to be reading the science and we ought to be debating the science,” he added.
“Everybody ought to be able to be assured that the vaccines that we
have — he’s very pro-vaccine, as am I — but they’re as safe as they possibly can be.”