Whopper of the Week: RFK Spreads Disinformation Again about Vaccines and Food Allergies

THIS WEEK'S WHOPPER:

RFK SPREADS DISINFORMATION AGAIN ABOUT VACCINES AND FOOD ALLERGIES

IN SUMMARY:

In 2024, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) concluded that over 70% of peanut allergies could be prevented through early consumption of peanut allergens by infants and children. Throughout 2025, however, Secretary Kennedy has been trying to cast doubt on the findings from NIAID’s studies. He says that vaccines, in particular aluminum salt adjuvants, might be responsible for food allergies. Kennedy provides no data to support this claim other than saying that when he was a kid he did not know anyone with allergies and now he knows many.

In November, 2025 Secretary Kennedy said:

“A peanut allergy is from a deprivation of peanuts but there are many countries in the world that have just started eating peanuts recently and you don’t see a huge wave of allergies so that doesn’t make a lot of sense. We need to look at aluminum adjuvants in vaccines. It fits the timeline perfectly. We don't have the science to say if this is an effect or not.”

Real scientific data about how children develop peanut allergies and what interventions prevent them contradict Kennedy. 
 

WHY IS THIS A WHOPPER?

Childhood food allergies are serious, sometimes life-threatening chronic conditions that affect around 8% of U.S. children. The most prevalent allergens are peanut (2.2%), milk (1.9%), shellfish (1.3%), and treenut (1.2%). It is true that more people have food allergies now than during Kennedy’s youth, with a rise documented in several countries starting in the 1990s.

Aluminum adjuvants were first used in the 1930s for the diphtheria vaccine to enhance its effectiveness. Aluminum adjuvants have been used safely ever since in numerous vaccines in order to produce a better immune response. After nearly a century of usage, there is no evidence that aluminum salts  in vaccines cause food allergies. According to Dr. Zachary Rubin, these vaccines "have never been shown to drive food allergies in any population." The timelines don’t match; the biological mechanisms don’t match; and children do not exhibit a spike in allergic responses post-vaccination.  

Starting in the 1990s, physicians cautioned parents to avoid feeding peanuts to young children, but that advice did not actually reduce the number of children with food allergies. Some scientists noticed that Israel, where parents introduced peanut allergens early, had lower allergy rates than the U.S. The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease funded a randomized controlled trial of peanut exposure for infants who were at high risk of developing peanut allergies due to severe eczema or egg allergies. The children who consumed peanuts developed much lower rates of peanut allergies than those who did not. Several other studies in multiple countries have confirmed that early peanut introduction leads to risk reduction in allergies. 

In 2017, NIAID updated its guidelines to recommend that parents give babies developmentally appropriate peanut products early in life to reduce the risk of peanut allergy. In 2021 the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, and the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology endorsed consensus guidelines on early introduction of allergenic foods. Recent real-world data from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that children born after the NIAID guidelines have significantly lower rates of peanut and other food allergies. In May 2024, the NIAID Director, Jeanne Marrazzo, M.D., M.P.H. said, “If widely implemented, this safe, simple strategy could prevent tens of thousands of cases of peanut allergy among the 3.6 million children born in the United States each year.”
 

WHY IT MATTERS:

If Secretary Kennedy is allowed to baselessly blame vaccines or aluminum adjuvants for food allergies, he sows disinformation and confuses parents about how best to protect their children.  

Kennedy is primarily interested in restricting the use of vaccines. After the last expert meeting on immunization at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Trump Administration issued a memorandum to align our vaccine schedule with countries that recommend fewer vaccines. Kennedy is searching for stories that people will believe of harm from vaccines. Allergies, like autism, are scary and they are an excuse Kennedy can use to justify his policy priorities. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly contradicts his narrative. Any alleged benefits from restricting aluminum adjuvants in vaccines are far outweighed by the harms caused by public confusion about vaccine safety and preventable illnesses in people who avoid immunizations. 

Aluminum salt adjuvants in vaccines are safe.  Removing these adjuvants, as Kennedy hopes to do, will decrease vaccine effectiveness, leaving our children vulnerable to infectious disease. We cannot let Kennedy's tall tales about allergies become the rationale for banning more vaccines.
 

Contributors to this post are: Benedicte Callan, Ph.D., Kathylynn Saboda, M.S., Aurora Horstkamp, M.D. Jeoffry Gordon, M.D., M.P.H., Erica Bersin, BCPA, Bruce Mirken, B.A.