During his Senate confirmation hearings, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested he wouldn't undermine vaccines.
"I am not going to go into HHS and impose my preordained opinions on anybody at HHS," he said. "I'm going to empower the scientists at HHS to do their job and make sure that we have good science that is evidence based."
He also said he wouldn't halt congressionally mandated funding for vaccination programs, nor impose conditions that would force local, state or global entities to limit access to vaccines or vaccine promotion.
"I'm not going to substitute my judgment for science," he said.
Yet the Department of Health and Human Services under Kennedy has taken unprecedented steps to change how vaccines are evaluated, approved and recommended - sometimes in ways that run counter to established scientific consensus.