text: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved forward on Wednesday with his latest attempt to garner attention for widely condemned anti-vaccine arguments — ones that have earned him a meeting with President Donald Trump — by announcing a $100,000 “challenge” to prove the safety of vaccines. 
   
   “We need a debate,” Kennedy declared at the news conference, claiming he has also spoken with White House staff several times in the last month to discuss the creation of a Trump administration panel to examine vaccine safety. 
   
   Kennedy, the son of the late US Attorney General, is a longtime environmental activist. He gained notoriety with a 2014 book arguing that a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal, used only in some flu vaccines since 1999, was linked to autism. 
   
   His claims have been denounced repeatedly by medical organizations and physicians. 
   
   “I’m a vaccine scientist. I’m also the father of an adult daughter with autism,” Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, told BuzzFeed News. 
   
   “Not only is there an abundance of evidence showing that vaccines are safe, there’s not even any plausibility of an association [with autism].” 
   
   Last week, amidst growing attention to the issue, 350 medical organizations led by the American Academy of Pediatrics signed a 28-page letter to President Trump expressing "unequivocal support" for the safety of vaccines. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention clearly states that there is “no link between vaccines and autism.” 
   
   It’s an issue that Trump has raised several times however, both on the campaign trail and as president. On Tuesday, in a conversation with educators and Betsy DeVos, Trump noted the rising autism rate, saying, “Well, maybe we can do something.” 
   
   In January, Kennedy met with Trump at Trump Tower in New York and afterwards claimed they had discussed him leading a so-called vaccine safety commission. The Trump administration later walked back Kennedy’s claims to say that the discussions to have a so-called “committee on autism” were only tentative. 
   
   On Wednesday, Kennedy said that he’s been contacted by the Trump administration three times since their original meeting in January. “They tell me that they’re still going forward with a commission,” Kennedy said, adding that he “can’t tell” whether it will happen. BuzzFeed News has asked the administration for comment on these claims. 
   
   But in a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on Wednesday that included the actor Robert De Niro, Kennedy argued that the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, in cahoots with journalists, have been denying the dangers of vaccines, fueled largely by money pumped in by a powerful pharmaceutical industry. He called the public health agency a “cesspool of corruption” and “a vaccine company,” that hid science from the public. To that end, Kennedy announced the "World Mercury Project Challenge,” offering $100,000 to anyone who could find a scientific study that demonstrated the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines in children and pregnant women. 
   
   “What we’ve been told is not science. It’s more akin to religion. It’s orthodoxy,” Kennedy told an audience of perhaps two dozen journalists, and several thousand people watching the livestream on his group’s Facebook page. “We need to break this impasse.” 
   
   De Niro, who has a son with autism, came under fire last year before pulling an anti-vaccine documentary to be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival. “Trump I don’t care about,” he said during the Q&A following Wednesday's event. “If he does the right thing, he does the right thing. It’s about this, period.” 
   
   Kennedy’s claims, as well as his motivations with the newly announced challenge, were immediately denounced by scientists as incorrect, and as a dangerous ploy. 
   
   “Press conferences like this become a distraction from the really important and hard work that needs to be done,” Hotez said. ||||| 
   
   Actor Robert De Niro talks to reporters and film professionals at the 22nd Sarajevo Film Festival in Sarajevo, Bosnia, last August. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters) 
   
   Cause: Vaccine safety. Specifically the debunked link between mercury found in early childhood vaccines and autism, a claim the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has unequivocally refuted. 
   
   Celeb: Legendary actor Robert De Niro, who’s got a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Kennedy Center Honor medallion to add to his stack of Hollywood trophies. 
   
   What’s he doing on the panel? The 73-year-old Oscar winner was maligned last March when he initially defended the inclusion of “Vaxxed,” a documentary about the alleged danger of vaccines, at the venerable Tribeca Film Festival. After an outcry from the scientific and cinematic communities, De Niro, a founder of the festival who also has a son on the autism spectrum, pulled the film. 
   
   [7 things about vaccines and autism that the movie ‘Vaxxed’ won’t tell you] 
   
   Scene: It was a fiery panel at the National Press Club on Wednesday morning. Led by Robert Kennedy Jr., chairman of the World Mercury Project, the stage was stuffed with men who believed journalists had dropped the ball. 
   
   Kennedy spoke for 20 minutes, pointing to a leaning tower of 240 studies, three charts and several binders threatening to burst that all, according to him, proved that certain vaccines were unsafe to a certain population of children. So certain was he in the science that Kennedy announced a $100,000 reward for any journalist (or anybody) who could produce “a single study that says it’s safe to inject mothers with the levels of mercury we are currently injecting them with.” 
   
   But here’s the kicker, “You’re not gonna be able to do it. The study doesn’t exist,” said Kennedy. Also don’t call him an “anti-vaxxer.” 
   
   “That’s a dirty word used to shut down debate,” he added. Kennedy made clear that he wasn’t against vaccines, he was for safe vaccines. Which is probably why President Trump has been batting around the idea of having Kennedy chair a vaccine safety commission. Kennedy has been in contact with the Trump team about the commission since December, but nothing concrete has been announced. 
   
   [Cleveland Clinic doc pens viral screed against vaccines, peers call it ‘post-truth medicine’] 
   
   For his part, De Niro, dressed in a dark suit, sat quietly in the middle of the stage. When it was his turn to testify to the audience of reporters, the actor was blunt: “I’m glad I’m here. I thought what Bobby said was great. It was eloquent. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I agree with him 100 percent. Thank you.” The end. 
   
   Sound bite: But before the morning was through, De Niro was asked point-blank whether he planned on working with Trump, a man the actor once said he’d like to punch in the face, on this issue. 
   
   “I am only concerned about this. Trump I don’t care about,” De Niro said. “If he does the right thing, he does the right thing. I don’t have to be connected with him.” ||||| W 
   
   ASHINGTON — Prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday that he expects the Trump administration to move forward with a vaccine safety commission and that President Trump pledged that he was “not going to back down” if the drug industry objected to the commission. 
   
   Kennedy said he had spoken with presidential aides three times since his January meeting with Trump. His understanding is that a commission is still being developed, he said. 
   
   “Why would anybody not want a vaccine safety commission?” he said at an event with actor Robert De Niro at the National Press Club in Washington. 
   
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   De Niro, whose son is autistic, said he was “only concerned” about safety issues, not politics. 
   
   “Trump I don’t care about. If he does the right thing, he does the right thing,” De Niro said. 
   
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   Kennedy said Trump’s transition team first called him in December and he first spoke with the president-elect by phone in early January. According to Kennedy, Trump said he knew the pharmaceutical industry would combat any efforts to question vaccine safety. “I’m not going to back down,” Trump said, according to Kennedy. 
   
   Trump, Kennedy recalled, said he had five friends whose children seemed to have changed after receiving vaccines. 
   
   Kennedy’s meeting at Trump Tower sparked outrage from scientists and public health experts, who fear the administration could give legitimacy to skeptics of childhood immunizations despite scientific research demonstrating that vaccines are safe. Many of those skeptics believe vaccines are a cause of autism. 
   
   After the meeting, Kennedy said, Trump’s staff told him to speak with reporters about his discussions with the president. Hours later, however, a spokeswoman for Trump said “no decisions have been made at this time” about a possible vaccine panel. 
   
   On Wednesday, Kennedy told reporters that Trump aides called him after the meeting and said they had “got out over our skis” and the concept still needed to be vetted. 
   
   He added that, although he expected the commission to be established, “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen.” 
   
   He said that if the commission moved forward, he would want members without existing prejudices on the issue. He said he also expected the panel would make “mild recommendations,” particularly regarding alleged conflicts of interest at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
target: – Despite once expressing a desire to punch him, Robert De Niro now says he's open to working President Trump—at least indirectly—on exploring the debunked link between autism and vaccines, the Washington Post reports. "If he does the right thing, he does the right thing," the actor said following a panel Wednesday at the National Press Club. The panel was led by Robert Kennedy Jr., chairman of the World Mercury Project. According to BuzzFeed News, Kennedy believes journalists are working with the CDC to bury the truth about a vaccine ingredient called thimerosal causing autism in children, and he offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who can produce a study that finds vaccines with the ingredient are safe for kids and pregnant women. De Niro, who was mostly quiet during the panel, did speak up to say he agrees with Kennedy "100%." Science, on the other hand, does not. Doctors, medical organizations, and the CDC say Kennedy's beliefs are unequivocally false. The director of a vaccine education center says seven studies published between 2000 and 2007 alone show that. Furthermore, thimerosal hasn't been used in children's vaccines since 1999 and is barely used in flu vaccines anymore, but autism rates are rising anyway, notes BuzzFeed. Kennedy met with Trump in January about heading a commission on vaccine safety. He says he's spoken to aides three times about the commission since then and expects it to happen, Stat reports. With that on the horizon, 350 medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, sent a letter to Trump last week reasserting the safety of vaccines.