Robert Kennedy Jr. is trying to convince Americans that vaccines will hurt them.

No matter what superficial throwaway statements he offers the public to the contrary, that’s the obvious goal.

In the newest front in his cause, the secretary of Health and Human Services has canceled $500 million in mRNA research, an effort President Donald Trump once called a “modern-day miracle.”

The HHS head, who in 2023 said no vaccine was “safe and effective,” says he still supports “safe, effective vaccines.”

Yet he has canceled 22 research projects focused not only on COVID vaccines but also on influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and other communicable ailments.

It should be noted that new research often leads scientists to unexpected results and uses, as well.

However, Kennedy contends that “mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses.”

How does he know?

Maybe the technology that uses fragments of the genetic code to manipulate the body to defend itself against infection and disease won’t produce any significant breakthroughs.

But RFK Jr. wants Americans to believe that RNA, a molecule in every living cell, isn’t just ineffective but dangerous. 

Of course, the real purpose of the cancellation is to preemptively undermine the credibility of this vaccine research — which will almost surely continue, if the private sector sees value in it.

In the past, Kennedy argued for the need for greater research to understand vaccines before recommending them — yet in this case, he demands less research.

The pattern is clear.

Example: After visiting Texas children who were needlessly struggling with measles earlier in the year, Kennedy also visited “two extraordinary healers” named Dr. Richard Bartlett and Dr. Ben Edwards, who “have treated and healed some 300 measles-stricken Mennonite children using aerosolized budesonide and clarithromycin.”

The purpose of the juxtaposition was to create the impression that alternative medicine is enough. It’s not.

If you want to use that therapy, go for it, I guess.

As far as I can tell, there’s no evidence that inhaled steroids such as budesonide or oral antibiotics like clarithromycin are effective in treating measles; many doctors think it’s junk science.

Bartlett was disciplined by the Texas Medical Board in 2003 for “unusual use of risk-filled medications” of this variety.

But RFK Jr., you’ll notice, didn’t bother to wait for the research to praise those doctors or their methods.

A quack who once claimed that the polio vaccine causes cancer that killed “many, many, many, many, many more people” than polio itself, and lied about the connection between autism and vaccines long after the hoax had been exposed — grossly comparing it to a “holocaust” — doesn’t give one whit about any inquiry that proves or disproves the efficacy of vaccines, live attenuated or inactivated or mRNA.

He’s reflexively against them.

Not long ago, RFK Jr. fired the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced its members with his people, to create the impression that he had more fairly represented the scientific debate over vaccines.

“A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” was Kennedy’s reasoning.

The former committee members, he argued, had too many “conflicts of interest,” a euphemism for working or advising “Big Pharma.”

Imagine creating an advisory board for an industry without including people who understand how it works. 

Granted, I’m a layman. But I don’t believe COVID mRNA vaccines are detrimental (as a lot of people seem to think).

Nor does it seem that they are miraculous, as proponents claim.

My problem with the COVID-vaccine regime was the compulsion — not the efforts to mitigate a pandemic, nor the development of new technology that might head off future ones.

Pharma companies can’t compel you to inject anything. Only the state can do that.

And the Luddite demonization of pharma, which saves and improves millions of lives, is still one of the big mysteries of the modern age.

Now, the same people who claim that public health institutions can’t be trusted believe everything the new head of HHS tells them.

It’s a shame that so many groups like the American Medical Association, which went all-in on the authoritarian COVID regime, have burned the public’s trust and goodwill.

However — and it needs to be stressed whenever possible — RFK Jr. is no better than the hacks who undermined our trust in science under former President Joe Biden.

In some ways, he is worse.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Twitter: @davidharsanyi