Wendy Parmet

“Should we start having some outbreaks in the United States, it could be deeply problematic,” says Wendy Parmet, a public health law professor at Northeastern University.

“The writing is on the wall,” said Wendy Parmet, who co-directs Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Law and has advised vaccine mandate supporters in the West Virginia Supreme Court case.

“That might have been an example of a particularly stupid, dangerous, unfounded, statement but it’s still, I think, less subject to review than what’s at issue here,” said Wendy Parmet, a law professor at Northeastern University who was involved in submitting an amicus brief in the case. 

Wendy Parmet studies health care policy at Northeastern University and joins NPR’s All Things Considered.

Public health law has long tilted toward the states. “If there was a public health issue, we’d say it’s for the states,” Wendy Parmet of Northeastern University explained.

While attacks on vaccines at the state level and in litigation have been ongoing, the growing federal attacks led by Kennedy have made this a “multipronged attack” on vaccine infrastructure, said Wendy Parmet, co-director of Northeastern University law school’s Center for Health Policy and Law.

First, says Wendy Parmet, a health policy professor at Northeastern University, governors can scale up clinic systems to make it easier for people to get vaccines, should Trump’s government keep making that harder.

Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern University law school’s Center for Health Policy and Law, said that if the vaccine manufacturers contested a license revocation, she expected they would have a strong case, given the reams of vaccine safety data and post-market studies of COVID-19 vaccine use around the world.

The doctrine “almost invites the kind of decision that Judge Kacsmaryk made,” said Wendy Parmet, faculty director of Northeastern University School of Law’s Center for Health Policy and Law.

“This is yet another one among many actions that have been taken that are undermining both the present and the potential future of vaccine infrastructure and availability,” said Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern University School of Law’s Center for Health Policy and Law. “We’re playing with fire.”