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Pfizer’s chief executive said he was “disappointed” with Robert F Kennedy Jr’s refusal to disavow the debunked link between vaccines and autism, even as he expressed confidence that the Trump administration would avoid stoking a health crisis.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Albert Bourla pointed out that during two days of grilling from US senators last week, Kennedy, Donald Trump’s nominee for US health secretary, “was very careful what he said about vaccines” and “tempered a lot his previous statements”.
But Bourla expressed disappointment that he did not acknowledge the overwhelming evidence showing there was no link between critical childhood vaccines, such as the measles, mumps and rubella shot, and autism.
When pressed by Senate health committee chair Bill Cassidy “to unequivocally and without qualification” state that vaccines were not linked to the neurological disorder, Kennedy said the evidence was mixed and instead pledged that “I will never stick on a point if somebody shows me data that says I’m wrong.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the US Senate finance committee voted along party lines to approve Kennedy’s confirmation as the Health and Human Services secretary, setting the stage for his likely approval in a full Senate vote in the coming days. A vocal vaccine sceptic, Kennedy’s nomination as the top health official has unsettled public health experts and the pharmaceutical industry.
Bourla, who has met Kennedy on several occasions, including most recently in the days before Trump’s January inauguration, said he was “not surprised” that Kennedy passed the important Senate hurdle. The Pfizer chief executive added that Trump had told him that he would not implement policies that risked another health crisis, adding that “he doesn’t want to see outbreaks of polio, measles or any of these things”.
“I would be very happy if [Kennedy] would say he saw the data and like 99.9 per cent scientists these things have been [proven to be safe], [but] he didn’t,” said Bourla. “But what he said compared to what he was saying a few months back are day and night. He didn’t go the extra mile — I was disappointed to hear that.
“[Kennedy] also said multiple times that ‘I will implement the policies of the president and I will tell you that the last thing the president wants to see is a health crisis’,” added Bourla.
As part of an effort to lobby for the industry, Bourla attended Trump’s inauguration and met the president three times in recent months, including hosting a management off-site meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
However, Bourla warned that only a small drop in immunity against measles could lead to outbreaks. He said he thought it was unlikely that Kennedy would try to remove vaccines from the market or undermine uptake. “If he does try to do any of these things . . . I think the entire medical community will rebel, the scientific community will rebel,” said Bourla.
Bourla warned that if “the megaphone” of the US health department started sowing doubt about vaccines “we may lose another 5 per cent of vaccination”. “But guess what: we only need to lose 5 to 8 per cent in measles to have an outbreak. It will boomerang very quickly.”
Bourla’s comments come as Pfizer reported full-year revenues of $63.6bn in 2024 and said it was still on track to achieve sales of between $61bn and $64bn this year, as it rebuilds its pipeline around new cancer drugs purchased as part of its $43bn acquisition of biotech Seagen.
