At a recent meeting of the board that oversees the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center Research Hospital, chair Jack Leslie opened with cheerful introductions and gregarious chatter—then diverted from the agenda of the regularly scheduled meeting. He spent the next six minutes delivering a pointed rebuke of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, warning that his anti-vaccine activities could tarnish the venerable hospital, often called the “house of hope” for patients with rare conditions or those who have exhausted all other options.
Leslie took issue with a recent stunt Kennedy had pulled at the hospital, which involved making a surprise appearance for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open his signature vaccine injury clinic . The ceremony included a panel with people claiming to have been injured by vaccines. They sat behind placards reading “vaccine injured” and spoke with Kennedy and other high-ranking Trump administration officials.
Leslie prefaced his comments by noting that some might prefer he not speak out against Kennedy’s efforts. “But I think that that would be a failing as an advisory board if we were silent,” he said. Leslie also noted that he has no concerns about studying potential injuries from vaccines. “Serious reactions are rare, but real,” he said, and people who believe they’ve been injured should “be taken seriously.”
In fact, the NIH already has a center that studies vaccine injuries, and Kennedy’s splashy new clinic does not come with more funding or clinic space. The hospital’s CEO, Jonathan Green , who sat next to Leslie at the meeting, chimed in to confirm that “the NIH has conducted research on the safety and efficacy of vaccines for decades in the past, and it ongoes.” Green described Kennedy’s vaccine injury clinic as merely a new, individual “protocol” for the hospital.
