--- title: "RFK Jr Wants to Waste $5 Billion in the Worst Way Imaginable" description: "Government officials leaked plans to waste $5 billion trying to establish a scientific link between vaccines and autism." date: "2026-07-19" modified: "2026-07-19" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/health-medicine/rfk-jr-billion-hhs-government-autism-vaccines" categories: - "Health & Medicine" - "Medical" - "RX and Medicine" --- # RFK Jr Wants to Waste $5 Billion in the Worst Way Imaginable ![A colorful photo illustration featuring U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images; Shutterstock* Since riding Donald Trump's coattails to power, Robert F. Kennedy Jr has taken his haphazard anti-vaccine views and enshrined them as a core tenet of US health policy. According to 16 current and former health officials who [spoke to *Reuters*](), RFK Jr has taken much more drastic measures to push his anti-vaccine agenda than was previously known. Speaking on condition of anonymity, two officials told the news agency that RFK approached National Institute of Health director Jay Bhattacharya earlier this year with a proposal to spend up to $5 billion in tax dollars to establish links between vaccines and autism. As *Reuters* notes, that kind of spending would encompass ten percent of the NIH's annual budget, a massive waste that would fly in the face of [decades of established science]() showing vaccines definitively *don't* cause autism. "He's an anti-vaccine activist. That's who he is. That's who he's been for 20 years," Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia told *Reuters*. "To expect that as secretary of Health and Human Services he'd be anything other than that is wishful thinking." It certainly wouldn't have been the first time RFK Jr attempted to twist the science to link vaccines with autism. Earlier this year, the US Department of Health and Human Services was caught spending [$1.6 million]() funding a study on hepatitis B vaccines conducted by controversial [Danish researchers]() Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn. Had the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention — the public health arm of the Africa Union — not [stepped in]() to stop the RFK-backed study, researchers would have withheld inoculations from thousands of newborn infants in Guinea-Bissau. The situation drew notable comparisons to the Tuskegee Experiment, a highly unethical medical experiment that used hundreds of Black men as guinea pigs to study the long-term effects of syphilis. Despite the fact that effective treatment was available, nearly 400 men spent decades without treatment, suffering life-long consequences at the hands of manipulative researchers. Though the Tuskegee Experiment may not have produced any medical breakthroughs or scientific discoveries, its cruel legacy seemingly lives on as inspiration for RFK and his HHS cronies. **More on RFK Jr:** *[CDC Report on Vaccines and Autism Caught Citing Hallucinated Study That Does Not Exist]()* ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()