Backlash to Trump’s vaccine order on Monday has been swift and sharp, with various public health and medical organizations and independent experts calling it “dangerous,” “unscientific,” “false and misleading,” “so wrong,” and saying it is “putting children’s health at risk.”
The responses are unsurprising; the medical and health communities have consistently fought against the anti-vaccine, anti-science agendas pushed by Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has no background in science, medicine, or public health. The American Academy of Pediatrics—which called the order “not only disheartening but dangerous”—is leading a lawsuit against previous changes to federal childhood vaccine recommendations under Trump and Kennedy. In March, the organization, along with other medical groups, won a temporary injunction reversing most of the changes.
However, less expected among the scorn for Trump’s order is the immediate pushback from the pharmaceutical industry.
Trump’s executive order for his so-called “gold standard” vaccine policy focuses on reducing the number of vaccines children get. But contrary to that goal, it also called for splitting the combination measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate shots. The MMR vaccine is given in two doses, so the change would mean six shots for children instead of two.
More impractical, individual vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella do not exist in the US. For Trump’s order to be realized, pharmaceutical companies would need to make hefty investments in developing, testing, and bringing to market entirely new vaccines—and they would have to do all of that based on no scientific reasoning whatsoever. The current MMR combination vaccine has proven extremely safe, effective, and convenient based on data from decades of use.
Within hours of Trump signing the order, PhRMA—the leading pharmaceutical industry group representing big players, such as GSK, Sanofi, Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and Novo Nordisk—put out a statement saying the order debases America’s vaccine policy.
