Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered the lecture “Anthony Fauci and the Public Health Establishment” as part of Hillsdale College’s Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) seminar on “Big Pharma,” held March 5–8, 2023. The talk covered vaccine safety testing, childhood vaccine mandates, mercury in vaccines, and related public-health topics, drawing from his book The Real Anthony Fauci.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s March 5, 2023 lecture at Hillsdale College, titled “Anthony Fauci and the Public Health Establishment,” was delivered as part of the college’s Center for Constructive Alternatives seminar on “Big Pharma.” It mixed personal narrative, criticism of regulatory capture, and specific claims about vaccine safety testing.
Kennedy opened by praising Hillsdale. He said the college felt like a “homecoming” even though he had never visited, because it was “the only college left in the country that really stood up for freedom” during COVID-19. He linked this to the school’s 1844 founding by abolitionists who were widely despised at the time, arguing that Hillsdale had remained faithful to its original commitment to liberty regardless of public opinion or cost. He contrasted this with most universities, which he said teach students to accumulate wealth rather than character.
He then explained how he entered vaccine debates. For 40 years he worked as an environmental attorney representing Hudson River fishermen through Riverkeeper, suing industrial polluters—especially over mercury from coal plants. By 2005 he had dozens of such cases.
After speeches on mercury pollution, groups of mothers of children with intellectual disabilities would approach him. They believed vaccines, particularly those containing thimerosal (an ethylmercury preservative), had injured their children. One psychologist from Minnesota, Sarah Bridges, tracked him down at his Cape Cod home that summer. Kennedy said he initially avoided the issue because his family had a long history of advocating for people with disabilities and he wanted to stay focused on environmental work. He repeatedly stated he is “not anti-vaccine,” though he acknowledged being treated as a “poster child” for the movement.
Using family connections, he contacted senior officials including NIH Director Francis Collins and Institute of Medicine figures. He said they repeated the phrase “safe and effective” but could not discuss the underlying studies and referred him to vaccine developer Paul Offit. Kennedy described this as evidence that the officials were not conversant with the actual science.
A central section of the talk focused on regulatory capture. He claimed the FDA receives more than 50 percent of its budget from pharmaceutical companies and that nearly half of the CDC’s then-$12 billion budget went to purchasing vaccines from those same companies. He portrayed the public-health agencies as captured by industry rather than independent scientific bodies.
The most frequently quoted portion concerned childhood vaccine testing. Kennedy stated that none of the “72 vaccines mandated for children” (his figure for the cumulative doses on the recommended schedule) had ever undergone pre-licensing, placebo-controlled safety trials. He said he had made this claim for years and that Anthony Fauci had publicly called him a liar for eight years.
During a 2016 meeting (arranged after Donald Trump asked Kennedy to serve on a vaccine-safety commission), Kennedy challenged Fauci to produce the studies. According to Kennedy’s account in the Hillsdale lecture, Fauci replied that he did not have them with him, they were “back in Bethesda,” and he would send them. Kennedy said he never received them and sued. After a year of litigation, he claimed HHS lawyers met his team “on the courthouse steps” and acknowledged they had no such studies.
The lecture as a whole framed Fauci and the public-health establishment as part of a larger pattern of industry influence, suppression of dissent, and inadequate safety data—themes Kennedy had developed in his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci. It fit the seminar’s broader examination of pharmaceutical companies’ role in American health, COVID policies, and proposed reforms.
Kennedy presented himself as a critic seeking better science and transparency rather than an opponent of all vaccination.
Full Speech
