Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Escalates His War On Vaccines

In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at the RFK Jr.’s war on vaccines, Abbott’s $21 billion bet on cancer detection, Vivek Ramaswamy’s soaring wealth, and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

The CDC quietly appointed Dr. Ralph Lee Abraham, a promoter of ivermectin for treating COVID-19 and other diseases it’s not approved for and who, as Louisiana’s surgeon general, ordered the state to stop promoting vaccines, as its second-in-command.

News of the appointment, first reported by Inside Medicine, followed the CDC dramatically changing its web page on vaccines last week to promote misinformation about them. Until recently, the agency unequivocally repeated what a multitude of studies have shown–that there’s no evidence to support the fringe claim that vaccines cause autism. Today, the site reads “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said he personally ordered the change, bypassing normal procedures where information is vetted and verified by scientific experts before publishing on the CDC’s website.

Doctors and public health experts decried the change, with the American Medical Association saying that it could “lead to further confusion, distrust, and ultimately, dangerous consequences,” and the American Academy of Pediatrics calling on the CDC to “stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims” about vaccines. Infectious disease expert Angela Rasmussen was even more blunt in her criticism. “People will read this and will choose not to vaccinate. People, mostly children, will get sick and die,” she wrote.

Kennedy has waged a long-running anti-scientific crusade against vaccines, which he’s continued at HHS’s top job. He purged the CDC’s vaccine advisory group last summer and replaced it with people of his own choosing, many of whom have no expertise in vaccines or infectious disease. The Indian Health Services, which is run by HHS, has drastically cut vaccine promotion in the past year, with doctors claiming that vaccine-related advice is being censored. Like Kennedy, Abraham, the CDC’s new number two, backs some restrictions on vaccines, including ending routine immunization for hepatitis B at birth, despite the practice reducing infant hepatitis B infections by 95% since 1991.

Since Kennedy took office, vaccine uptake has declined, along with revenues for vaccine makers, concerning public health officials about the potential for a new pandemic. The country is currently in the midst of a measles outbreak despite having eliminated the disease in 2000–a milestone threatened to be reversed. Since January, 1,753 people in the U.S. have been infected with measles and 211 of them have been hospitalized. Almost all, or 92%, of those infected were unvaccinated, as were all three people who have died from the disease.

Abbott’s $21 Billion Bet On Early Cancer Detection

Abbott Laboratories agreed to buy cancer test maker Exact Sciences, best known for its Cologuard stool-based test for colorectal cancer, for $21 billion last week. The deal is a big bet on the fast-growing cancer diagnostics business and will fill a hole in Abbott’s diagnostics portfolio left by the shrinking of its Covid testing business, which brought in more than $8 billion in 2022.

“Our vision here is really to build the premier cancer diagnostics company in the world,” Abbott Chief Executive Robert Ford told analysts on a conference call. Exact Sciences expects more than $3 billion in revenue this year, pushing Abbott’s total annual diagnostics sales above $12 billion.

Early detection of cancer is a huge deal and companies that include Grail and Guardant Health are competing with Exact for it. Exact launched Cologuard in 2014 as a more convenient alternative to colonoscopy. Earlier this year, it acquired the rights to a blood-based colon cancer test.

Abbott, which reported $42 billion in total sales last year, has been under pressure both from its Covid-19 testing business and President Trump’s dismantling of USAID, which cancelled thousands of contracts for life-saving tests and drugs. Those headwinds have “pushed diagnostics into a 3-5% organic growth range—well below the unit’s long-term trajectory,” analysts at TD Cowen wrote in a recent report. “Acquiring Exact Sciences could provide an immediate solution to the growth deficit.”

The transaction is among the largest in life sciences so far this year. The deal price of $105 a share represents a premium of roughly 50% from its November 18 closing price, before Bloomberg reported that a deal was likely.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Net Worth Soars On Roivant Stock’s Rise

Vivek Ramaswamy bounces back quickly. He may have lost his bid for president in 2024 and been ejected from DOGE in January, but by February the billionaire was in Cincinnati, Ohio to announce a bid for governor. Politics aside, he just keeps getting richer. In March, Forbes estimated his net worth at just about $1 billion, barely making our World Billionaires list. Today, the 40-year-old is worth about $1.8 billion, an 80% increase in just nine months.

The big reason: Roivant Sciences, his old pharmaceutical company. Ramaswamy founded Roivant in 2014 with the goal of buying drugs abandoned by pharma giants and unlocking their value. It had a rollercoaster of a start. But soon its drug pipeline, including therapies for prostate cancer and overactive bladder, began to pay off. Recently, one of its subsidiaries announced positive results from a phase 3 trial for a drug targeting the autoimmune disease dermatomyositis, which causes muscle weakness and skin lesions. The stock? It’s up 95%, to a recent $21, since the end of February.

Read more here.

Deal of the Week

Mer­ck KGaA and startup Valo Health signed a deal worth up to $3 billion to develop potential new treatments for Parkinson’s disease. Valo, a Flagship Pioneering company, will use its AI drug discovery platform to find novel targets against Parkinson’s and then spin up potential drugs to put through preclinical testing. More than 1.1 million people in the U.S. have Parkinson’s, with nearly 90,000 new cases diagnosed each year.

WHAT WE’RE READING

GSK and AnaptysBio are suing each other over a decade-old licensing deal for the cancer drug Jemperli.

Botulism cases in babies rose to 31 in 15 states amid an ongoing recall of ByHeart infant formula, with the FDA receiving reports that the formula is still on store shelves.

Tatiana Schlossberg wrote about her battle with leukemia–and her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—in The New Yorker.

Moderna took out a $1.5 billion, five-year loan from global investor Ares Management to shore up its balance sheet as it announced a new strategy to move beyond shrunken Covid-19 vaccine sales.

Novo Nordisk’s long-shot trial testing semaglutide on Alzheimer’s disease progression failed, sending its shares down to their lowest level since July 2021 on Monday.

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