Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is seeking access to Americans' medical records as part of an effort to find links between vaccines and autism, according to a report by KOTA Territory News. The plan would involve pulling together federal health databases to look for patterns that researchers and public health officials say have already been studied extensively without finding a causal connection.
The proposal comes as Kennedy leads the Department of Health and Human Services. His longstanding skepticism of vaccine safety has shaped much of his public profile, and his position now gives him access to federal tools and agencies that could be used to pursue those questions at a large scale.
Linking medical records across federal databases would allow researchers to track health outcomes in large populations over time. That kind of data infrastructure exists and has been used for legitimate public health research. The question raised by critics is whether the specific goal Kennedy has described is supported by the existing body of scientific evidence, which has consistently found no link between vaccines and autism.
The plan has drawn concern from privacy advocates and public health researchers. Medical records contain some of the most sensitive personal information people generate, and proposals to access them at a federal level raise questions about how data would be stored, who would have access, and how it would be protected from misuse.
Kennedy has not provided a detailed public description of the methodology his team intends to use. Scientists and researchers who study autism have said the causes of the condition are complex and involve a combination of genetic and environmental factors identified during fetal development, well before any vaccine would be administered.
The proposal is part of a broader initiative Kennedy has described as investigating chronic disease in America. Whether the medical records effort moves forward depends in part on legal authority, agency cooperation, and the response from Congress and outside health institutions.
