NIH Board Chair Devotes 6 Minutes to Clinic, No New Funding Is Attached

The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center Research Hospital has long served patients with rare conditions, and its board chair used a recent meeting to question whether a new clinic fits that setting.

Jack Leslie set aside the agenda at a regularly scheduled session and spoke for about six minutes about Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a vaccine injury clinic opened at the hospital. Leslie said Kennedy's anti-vaccine activities could tarnish an institution known as the "house of hope." He said he had considered staying silent. "But I think that that would be a failing as an advisory board if we were silent," Leslie said.

Kennedy attended a ribbon-cutting for the clinic, where a panel of people who say vaccines harmed them sat behind placards reading "vaccine injured" and spoke with him and other Trump administration officials.

Leslie said his concern was not with examining vaccine injuries. He said he has no objections to studying potential harms. "Serious reactions are rare, but real," Leslie said, and added that people who believe they were injured should "be taken seriously." The clinic comes with no additional funding and no extra clinic space, and the NIH already operates a center that studies vaccine injuries.

Jonathan Green, the hospital's CEO, sat beside Leslie and said the NIH has researched vaccine safety and efficacy for decades, and that work continues. Green described the new clinic as one more individual "protocol" at the hospital.

The launch event and the clinic's operating footing differ. Leslie framed the matter as one of reputation for a hospital serving vulnerable patients, while Green described a limited addition to research already underway.