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AAP Sues Secretary Kennedy
On Monday, July 7, a coalition of medical groups led by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) filed a lawsuit in a Massachusetts district court against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Included as co-defendants are Marty Makary, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and Matthew Buzzelli, Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The FDA, NIH, and CDC are subagencies of HHS, which encompasses all the so-called “public health” agencies.
Joining the AAP in its suit against HHS are the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Association, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
Another plaintiff is “Jane Doe”, an anonymous physician who is pregnant and already vaccinated, but who was advised by her doctors to get a “another dose” of the vaccine. The doctors’ advice was ostensibly so she could “better protect herself and her baby from contracting this deadly disease.”
The suit alleges that Kennedy’s directive “creates barriers to access to the vaccine and has left Jane and her husband overwhelmed with stress and uncertainty.”
The lawsuit takes issue with Kennedy’s May 27 announcement on X that the COVID‑19 vaccine “for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedules.”
The AAP’s argument is that Kennedy’s announcement broke the promise he made to Congress during his Senate confirmation to “do nothing as HHS Secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines.”
According to the lawsuit, “The final agency action that he announced on X on May 27 is documented in a ‘Secretarial Directive’ that bears the Secretary’s signature and is dated May 19, 2025 (the ‘Directive’).”
It also states that “The CDC’s immunization schedules were changed after the May 27 announcement, indisputably making the Directive a final agency action.”
According to the lawsuit,
This Directive has put all AAP members (and, indeed, all other physicians in this country) in the untenable position of telling their patients that the country’s top-ranking government health official’s advice and recommendations are wrong and that we are right. This erodes trust, which is the foundation of a healthy physician-patient relationship and vital to the success of AAP members’ medical practices.
The argument presented by the AAP et al., however, is extraordinarily puzzling since the CDC’s policy changes did not result in the COVID‑19 vaccines becoming unavailable to children or pregnant women, “healthy” or otherwise.
The AAP’s Role in the Medical Cartel
To put the lawsuit into perspective, it is important to understand the function of the AAP, which is a medical trade organization that receives funding from the pharmaceutical industry. Its current partners include Merck, Sanofi, CSL Seqirus, and Moderna.
Additionally, through the regime of medical licensing, the AAP has been granted an effective monopoly to determine “standard of care” in pediatric practices throughout the United States.
Under this government-enforced medical cartel, “licensed medical professionals” serve the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry and its various associated trade groups.
Those physicians who choose instead to serve the interests of public health are penalized, as clearly illustrated by the case of Dr. Paul Thomas, a pediatrician in Oregon whose medical license was suspended because he published a study showing that completely unvaccinated children are healthier.
Naturally, the AAP refuses to acknowledge how the COVID‑19 shots were sold to the public on the basis of demonstrable lies, including the claim that two doses of an mRNA COVID‑19 vaccine would confer durable sterilizing immunity, ending the pandemic by stopping infection and transmission and thereby creating “herd immunity”.
HHS’s Conflicts of Interest
That was just one of many deceptions perpetrated upon the American public in furtherance of the policy aim of maximizing uptake of these mRNA products, in which the government was itself heavily invested.
The HHS literally partnered with Moderna to develop its mRNA vaccine under “Operation Warp Speed”, the initiative under President Donald Trump’s first term to rapidly develop, manufacture, and distribute the COVID‑19 vaccines.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under former director Dr. Anthony Fauci provided funding, and the NIH claimed joint ownership of the COVID‑19 vaccine based on patent rights and the role of NIH scientists in inventing the mRNA technology used in the vaccines.
The Secretarial Directive
While the AAP’s lawsuit provides no citation for the Secretarial Directive, it was obtained and published by STAT. The document states:
Based on a review of the recommendation of the FDA and National Institutes of Health (NIH), I have determined that the known risks associated with use of COVID‑19 vaccines in healthy U.S. children ages six months to 17 years do not outweigh the purported benefits of the vaccine. Accordingly, the HHS Secretarial Directives ratifying CDC recommendations for use of COVID‑19 vaccines for children ages six months to 17 years and [sic] are rescinded.
Based on a review of the recommendation of the FDA, I have similarly determined that the lack of high-quality data demonstrating safety of the mRNA vaccines during pregnancy combined with the uncertainty of the benefits of vaccination pose potential risks to the mother and developing baby. Therefore, the CDC recommendation that pregnant women receive the COVID‑19 vaccine is rescinded.
However, the AAP’s complaint fails to acknowledge that the changes actually made by the CDC after receiving this directive do not match the May 27 statement on X by Secretary Kennedy that the COVID‑19 vaccine was no longer being recommended for “healthy” children and pregnant women.
Instructively, the lawsuit also fails to document any inability of “Jane Doe” to get the shot.
In fact, according to Axios, after the CDC updated its recommendations, the AAP itself “expressed relief” that the policy changes didn’t match Kennedy’s statement.
The CDC’s Sleight-of-Hand
The truth is that the COVID‑19 vaccine remains on the CDC’s childhood schedule, recommended for children aged 6 months and up. The change was made to categorize the shot as a “shared clinical decision-making” vaccination, which recognizes the need for an individualized risk-benefit analysis based on a consultation with a health care provider, as opposed to the recommendation being a one-size-fits-all policy.
Of course, an individualized risk-benefit analysis is required for all vaccinations, and the fact that the CDC fails to acknowledge this elementary logical truism demonstrates the sheer perversity and unscientific nature of its policymaking.
With its COVID‑19 vaccine update, the CDC offered no guidance to exclude healthy children from its recommendation. In effect, this translates into a policy of recommending that parents talk to their child’s pediatrician about getting the vaccine, and we can anticipate that most pediatricians will just repeat the belief they’ve been indoctrinated into that it is safe and effective, and everyone should get it.
Indeed, the AAP has maintained as “standard of care” its recommendation for “routine vaccination against COVID‑19”—business as usual.
For pregnant women, the CDC’s updated policy consisted of a change to its COVID‑19 vaccine recommendations specific to medical conditions. The “pregnancy” column was changed from “recommended” to “no guidance”.
This does not translate, however, into a CDC policy of no longer recommending the COVID‑19 vaccine to pregnant women.
First, pregnant women still fall under the recommendation for all adults who haven’t previously been vaccinated or otherwise lack evidence of immunity to get the shot. The CDC did not add pregnancy to its list of contraindications to vaccination.
The truth is further indicated by the June 6 update to the CDC’s webpage “Staying Up to Date with COVID‑19 Vaccines”, which still says that getting a COVID‑19 vaccine “is especially important if you . . . Are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant, or might become pregnant in the future.”
The page also says that vaccination is especially important if you “Are at high risk for severe COVID‑19”—and explicitly included among the conditions that the CDC considers “risk factors” is pregnancy.
The policy changes were, in essence, a sleight of hand. The Trump administration’s aim was evidently to convince health freedom advocates that huge changes were underway, that the COVID‑19 vaccine were no longer being recommended by the CDC for children or pregnant women—or at least by “healthy” children or pregnant women.
The truth is that, regardless of Secretary Kennedy’s intentions, the HHS has dug in its heels on the continued use of the mRNA shots, including in children and pregnant women, whether “healthy” or not.
Mass Uncontrolled Experimentation on Children
Concerningly, for children aged six months through eleven years, the shots are still FDA unapproved. In the absence of licensure, they are being distributed and administered under “Emergency Use Authorization” (EUA) —a status for pharmaceutical products still considered investigational.
Nobody in their right mind would argue that COVID‑19 poses such an “emergency” threat to children that it warrants this mass uncontrolled experimentation on the childhood population.
As HHS Secretary, Kennedy has authority under 42 U.S. Code § 247d to terminate the “emergency” declaration under which the shots were granted EUA status. Were he to do that, it would trigger the process of revoking the EUA status for COVID‑19 vaccines. This would at least protect this vulnerable population from continued mass experimentation with no logical possibility for properly informed consent.
So why hasn’t he?
Mass Uncontrolled Experimentation on Pregnant Women
The AAP’s lawsuit against Kennedy neglects to mention how pregnancy was among the exclusionary criteria for participation in clinical trials.
Nor does the complaint mention how the COVID‑19 vaccine package inserts explicitly state that the available data on the administration of the vaccines to pregnant women “are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy.”
In other words, properly informed consent for vaccination during pregnancy is also a logical impossibility.
A Frivolous Lawsuit
The AAP’s lawsuit purports that Kennedy’s directive threatens access to COVID‑19 vaccines for parents who want their children to receive it. This is untrue.
The CDC, via its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), has legal authority from Congress to provide recommendations for the Vaccines for Children (VCP) program, which makes vaccines available at no cost to Medicaid patients.
ACIP added COVID‑19 vaccines to the VCP in October 2022, for children aged six months through seventeen years, and for the shots to be removed from the program would require another vote from ACIP—which has not occurred.
Nor does the policy change toward COVID‑19 vaccination during pregnancy mean that pregnant women won’t be able to get the shot if they want it.
The American Medical Association (AMA), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and other relevant trade organizations continue to recommend vaccination during pregnancy and have called on insurance companies “to continue making the COVID‑19 vaccine available to pregnant people without undue utilization management or cost-sharing requirements.”
The secretary’s directive does not affect the continued practice of vaccinating pregnant women or make the shots unavailable to women who want it.
So, there are two real curiosities here.
The first is why Secretary Kennedy falsely proclaimed on May 27 that the CDC had stopped recommending COVID‑19 vaccines to “healthy” children and pregnant women even though this did not occur.
The second is why the AAP and other representatives of the government-enforced medical cartel that masquerades as a “health care” system have pretended as though the policy proclaimed by Kennedy on May 27 was implemented.
It seems that the powers that be want us to be intently focused on the left hand tossing bones to members of the health freedom movement who helped Trump win the election while the right hand pulls the strings necessary for the continued injection of mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines into children and pregnant women despite the absence of data from randomized, placebo-controlled trials demonstrating the long-term safety and effectiveness of this practice.
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