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Fake Quote

Did Dr. Anthony Fauci ever say that 72 mandatory childhood vaccines were never safety tested? No, that's not true: Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Lead Stories, "This claim is not true." Vaccines are carefully tested in multiple stages of clinical trials to ensure they are safe and effective before being approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published by The People's Voice on December 3, 2024, titled "Fauci Admits None Of The 72 Mandatory Childrens Vaccines Were Ever Safety Tested." The article begins:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recounted how, when threatened with a lawsuit, Dr. Anthony Fauci was forced to admit that none of the 72 vaccines that are currently mandated for children in the US has ever been safety tested.

This is what the post looked like on The People's Voice website at the time of writing:

(Source: The People's Voice screenshot taken on Thu Dec 5 16:25:39 2024 UTC)

The article didn't provide any proof to support its assertion that Fauci said, "72 mandatory childrens vaccines" were never safety tested. It only repeats a story from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's cited in The People's Voice, suggesting Fauci's attorneys said this but not Fauci himself.

In the article, Kennedy, founder of Children's Health Defense -- an organization known for its anti-vaccine or vaccine-hesitant stance -- is quoted from a March 5, 2023, event at Hillsdale College (archived here) called "Anthony Fauci and the Public Health Establishment." The People's Voice reported Kennedy's account of his purported conversations with Fauci from his Hillsdale comments:

'For many years, I was saying that not one of the 72 vaccines mandated for children has ever been safety tested in pre-licensing, placebo-controlled trials......Not one.' ...

Kennedy told Fauci, 'You say I'm lying. For eight years you've been saying I'm lying,' and challenged Fauci to 'show me the study' which shows that the multitude of vaccines America's children are required to receive have been safety-tested.

Fauci claimed that he didn't have it with him. 'It's back in Bethesda. I'll send it to you.'

'I never got it,' said Kennedy, 'so I sued him.'

'After stonewalling us for a year, their lawyers met us on the courthouse steps and said, "Yup, you're right. We never had any study,"' said Kennedy.

An X post and video included in the article highlights the same section of Kennedy's account that was the basis of The People's Voice report. The video portion of that post is below:

Anthony Fauci called RFK Jr. a liar for stating that not one of the 72 vaccines mandated for children has ever been safety tested*.

In response, RFK Jr. took legal action, and after a year of delays, Fauci's lawyers conceded that RFK Jr. had been correct.

"There's no... pic.twitter.com/43EA4QTRa7

-- Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) November 27, 2024

Nowhere in Kennedy's account from the Hillsdale event did he say that Fauci "admitted" that childhood vaccines in the United States weren't tested for safety. Even if Kennedy's account was accurate, the most he said was that Fauci's attorneys stated, "We never had any study."

Anthony Fauci

In a December 5, 2024, email from Lead Stories, Fauci was asked if it was true that Kennedy met with him and he "admitted" that none of the 72 vaccines currently required for children in the U.S. had ever been safety tested. Fauci said:

This claim is not true.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spells out what it takes to get a vaccine approved on its "Vaccines for Your Children" page (archived here).

Vaccine testing is a long process that starts in the lab, where researchers spend years studying a vaccine's ability to protect against a disease. They also test it in small animals to check for immune responses and safety. If results are promising, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows testing in humans through clinical trials.

Clinical trials are conducted in three phases:

• Phase 1: Involves 20-100 volunteers to test safety, immune response, potential side effects and dosage.
• Phase 2: Involves hundreds of volunteers to study common short-term side effects and immune response.
• Phase 3: Involves thousands of volunteers to test vaccine safety, effectiveness and less common side effects.

If the vaccine is successful in all phases, the FDA reviews the data and approves it if it's safe, effective and meets all regulations.

Food and Drug Administration

The FDA is the agency responsible for overseeing the safety, effectiveness and quality of vaccines used in the United States. An FDA spokesperson provided this response to the claim in The People's Voice:

All vaccines for children and adults that are licensed in the United States are supported by well-controlled clinical trials that have established their safety and effectiveness, and the FDA continues to monitor their safety using different surveillance systems after they are marketed. In addition, the FDA helps to ensure that vaccines are produced with high quality in inspected facilities that meet rigorous standards.

All U.S. FDA-approved and authorized vaccines have undergone the FDA's thorough review process and have met the agency's rigorous standards for safety, effectiveness, and quality. It should be noted that vaccines are one of the most highly effective public health interventions, responsible for saving millions of lives each year.

The FDA's "Vaccine Development - 101" page (archived here) says the following about the process:

Vaccines to prevent infectious diseases are given to millions of babies, children, adolescents and adults and it is critical that they are demonstrated to be safe and effective. Vaccines have prevented countless cases of disease and disability and have saved millions of lives. Ensuring the safety and effectiveness of vaccines is one of FDA's top priorities.

FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) ensures that FDA's rigorous scientific and regulatory processes are followed by those who pursue the development of vaccines. Vaccine development is a complex science. FDA's scientific and regulatory advice to vaccine developers, as well as FDA's evaluation to determine the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, are among the most robust in the world.

The People's Voice

The People's Voice is among the most prolific online publishers of fake news. Articles on the site often link to and extensively quote stories from other sites to give an appearance of legitimacy but the main claim in the headline and/or the first paragraph of each article is almost never supported by the sources that are offered. The site routinely makes up quotes from people or misrepresents scientific study results.

It originally started as YourNewsWire in 2014 and rebranded as NewsPunch in 2017. In 2023 it rebranded itself again to The People's Voice. The People's Voice/NewsPunch/YourNewsWire has published numerous fake news articles in the past, so anything that appears on the site should be taken with a large grain of salt. Its Facebook page, "The People's Voice", lost its verification checkmark, according to a 2018 report from Media Matters For America.

Read more

At the time this was written, the Australian Associated Press had reviewed the same claim.

Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about vaccines can be found here.

Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can be found here.