Dining under palm trees on a patio at Mar-a-Lago in December, President-elect Donald Trump reassured chief executives at pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Pfizer that anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wouldn’t be a radical choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

“I think he’s going to be much less radical than you would think,” Trump said later that month during a news conference at his Palm Beach, Fla., resort.

Eight months have passed, and Kennedy is intensifying his attacks on the vaccine system.

High on his list of targets: a federal vaccine compensation program that settles injury claims. His strategy could bankrupt or diminish the fund, some legal scholars and public health leaders say, saddling pharmaceutical companies with liability risks and cost

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