Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pushing back hard against Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), accusing the governor of “gaslighting” the public over vaccines developed with aborted fetal tissue.
In an Aug. 25 statement, Kennedy responded to Shapiro’s press conference claims that objecting to the MMR vaccine on grounds of aborted fetal tissue use amounts to a conspiracy theory. Kennedy said he had already provided evidence directly to the governor in a private phone conversation.
Plotkin Deposition Cited
Kennedy pointed to a videotaped deposition of Stanley Plotkin, the inventor of the MMR vaccine. According to Kennedy, Plotkin “admits to butchering 76 aborted normally developing fetuses, all over three months old, in just one of the many studies that led to the development of his vaccine.”
Kennedy detailed that the rubella virus in MMR-II is grown on a cultured cell line made from lung tissue of an aborted three-month-old female embryo, listed as “WI-38 human diploid lung fibroblasts.” He noted that portions of those cells end up in each vial of the vaccine.
Kennedy quoted attorney Aaron Siri, who asked Plotkin during the deposition whether MMR-II contains approximately 150 nanograms of cell substrate DNA per dose, “purposefully fragmented to approximately 215 base pairs in length.” Plotkin replied, “Yeah, that’s probably correct, yes.”
That translates to roughly 646 billion pieces of human DNA from an aborted fetal cell line in each vial, according to Kennedy, plus an unspecified amount of human cellular debris.
Shapiro’s ‘Misinformation’ Charge
Kennedy said Shapiro accused him of promoting vaccine misinformation during their phone call — but when Kennedy asked for an example, Shapiro could not provide one. Shapiro repeated the accusation publicly anyway.
Kennedy countered that HHS does not tolerate misinformation from employees and offered to list “hundreds of instances of vaccine misinformation by the Biden administration” that Shapiro had never complained about.
The dispute comes as Shapiro faces a declining vaccination rate in Pennsylvania, which dropped from 97% to 93.2%. Shapiro conceded the drop largely occurred under the Biden administration. Kennedy attributed it to the loss of credibility the medical industry suffered during COVID.
Kennedy, who is Catholic, said he respects Christians who reject certain vaccines on moral grounds because of their ties to aborted fetal tissue research. This year, he ended the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortion in agency-funded research.
Shapiro, a strong supporter of abortion rights, has bristled at that move. Kennedy said the governor was mocking legitimate ethical, scientific, and religious concerns.
“As I told him, HHS does not tolerate misinformation by any employee,” Kennedy said, adding that Shapiro was simply “gaslighting” Pennsylvanians.
Source: pjmedia.com — https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2026/08/26/rfk-slams-gaslighting-from-gov-shapiro-on-vaccines-and-aborted-tissues-n4956560
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