The board that oversees the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center Research Hospital used part of a regular meeting to warn Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that his vaccine injury clinic could tarnish the hospital.
Chair Jack Leslie opened with cheerful introductions, then set the agenda aside for six minutes. His target was a ribbon-cutting ceremony, which Kennedy attended by surprise, to open the clinic, his signature project. The event included a panel of people who say vaccines injured them. They sat behind placards reading "vaccine injured" and spoke with Kennedy and other high-ranking Trump administration officials. Leslie said Kennedy's anti-vaccine activities could damage a hospital often called the "house of hope" for patients with rare conditions or those who have exhausted other options.
Leslie acknowledged that some might prefer he say nothing. Silence, he said, "would be a failing as an advisory board."
Note what he did not say. He has no concerns about studying potential injuries from vaccines. "Serious reactions are rare, but real," he said, and people who believe they were injured should "be taken seriously."
That split is the useful part. The objection is to the staging, not the science. A placard reading "vaccine injured" announces a conclusion at a ceremony, before any study has tested it, and that differs from a clinic built to find out whether a link exists. A board can back the second without endorsing the first.
The hospital's patients often have nowhere else to go, so its credibility is the asset the board is guarding. Whether a six-minute rebuke can steer a cabinet secretary is another matter. Advisory boards, by definition, advise.