Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in The Bulwark, in “RFK Jr. Could Blow Up the Vaccine Industry with One Simple Move,” by Jonathan Cohn.

Following is an excerpt:

… But it’s also easy to imagine major manufacturers giving up on vaccines—or, at least, giving that line of business a lot less attention. That’s especially true when Kennedy is simultaneously taking so many other steps to limit vaccine availability and development, whether it’s purging advisory boards of well-respected mainstream scientists to make room for fringe critics of vaccination or canceling Biden-era grants to fund the development of next-generation mRNA vaccines.

“My concern is that if they’re trying to . . . essentially dissolve the liability protections for manufacturers, I worry that this would open the floodgates to lawsuits,” Richard Hughes, a Washington-based attorney with a long career of advising vaccine manufacturers and serving on government boards, told me.

“At that point,” added Hughes, who during the COVID pandemic worked for the mRNA vaccine manufacturer Moderna, “why would this be an attractive market to stay in, with that kind of liability threat?”

Jump to Page

Privacy Preference Center

When you visit any website, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences or your device and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.

Performance Cookies

These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.