Once again our ”Jail to the Chief” leader, Donald J. Trump, exposed his ineptness (or malicious intent) in failing to choose the right person for a job in his administration. Just over a week ago, the United States Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
RFK Jr. is an environmental lawyer with no background in the healthcare field. He has spearheaded a number of environmental projects that have done a great deal of good for the country. As senior attorney for the ecology advocate Riverkeeper, he sued municipalities and companies that were polluting the Hudson River and east coast estuaries. He founded the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University School of Law. Along with other environmental activists he co-founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, which is now the umbrella group for the 344 licensed Waterkeeper programs in 44 countries. He also co-founded the environmental law firm Kennedy & Madonna, LLP, to represent private plaintiffs against polluters. He was nominated by the nonprofit legal advocacy organization Public Justice as “Trial Lawyer of the Year” for his role in the $396 million jury verdict against DuPont for contamination from its Spelter, West Virginia, zinc plant. And these are just a few of his many accomplishments in advocating for environmental justice. So a nomination as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency would have been an understandable and maybe even commendable move on Trump’s part. Ironically, President Obama considered Kennedy for the role of EPA chief, but felt his prior conviction for heroin possession as a young adult, and his rampant health conspiracy theories would result in his not getting confirmed by the Senate!
But Trump seems intent on creating a maximum of mayhem and mischief as he seeks to dismantle American democracy piece by piece. So Trump went ahead and nominated Kennedy as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For this role, Kennedy would be one of the last people you’d want to see holding this position. It involves oversite of 13 separate agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Surgeon General’s Office. Thus, he would be in charge of agencies that approve drugs, regulate vaccination campaigns, monitor epidemics, and promote other health measures in the United States. The big problem is that RFK Jr. has a long record of promoting health conspiracies and unscientific theories. Here’s a partial list:
- Since 2005, Kennedy has promoted vaccine misinformation and public-health conspiracy theories, including the scientifically disproved claim of a causal link between vaccines and autism.
- He is the founder and former chairman of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group and proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
- In May 2021, Kennedy petitioned the FDA [an organization he now oversees] to rescind authorization for all current and future COVID vaccines;
- In his 2021 book Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, he devoted over 100 pages quoting HIV denialists such as Peter Duesberg who question the isolation of HIV and the etiology of AIDS;
- Epidemiologist Tara C. Smith even suggests that Kennedy’s book (cited above) “flirts with outright germ theory denial”, quoting from a portion in which Kennedy contrasts the germ theory of disease with terrain theory, a debunked thesis promulgated in the 19th century as an alternative to Louis Pasteur’s now virtually universally accepted theory that infections are caused by germs.
- In July 2023, Kennedy was recorded at a private dinner saying, “There is an argument that [COVID-19] is ethnically targeted”, adding, “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people”;
- In January 2024, Kennedy did a podcast about Lyme disease in which he said it is “highly likely to have been a military weapon” developed at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.
- In August 2024, after he endorsed Trump for president and started to work with Trump’s campaign, Kennedy posted, “We are going to stop this crime” of chemtrails. Belief in chemtrails involves a conspiracy theory that airplane water vapor trails (contrails) are purposely dumped chemicals designed to harm the population.
And these are just a few of RFK Jr’s health-related conspiracy theories and scientifically-unfounded claims regarding a variety of healthcare issues.
Now this man is slated to oversee U.S. vaccination policy, U.S. drug policy, and many other health policies. Though he said in confirmation hearings that he supports vaccinations of children, his previous statements belie that, and the reality is that he now has the power to promote ‘‘vaccine hesitancy” (already one in six parents in the U.S. believe that autism is caused by vaccines). This raises the spectre of outbreaks of measles, rubella, diptheria, and other contagious childhood diseases that up to now have been effectively controlled.
The short message here is that children are going to die because Trump doesn’t seem to care about the health of America, otherwise, why would he appoint a health-conspiracy nut to head our nation’s highest public health agency? In 2000, Trump dragged his feet about COVID. According to a congressional report, the Trump administration engaged in “deliberate efforts” to undermine the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic for political purposes, and as a result, an untold number of American’s got sick and many of them died (in the hundreds of thousands) as a result of his inaction and misinformation.
RFK Jr. is likely to become an even greater menace to our health and safety as he spreads misinformation and enacts unscientific policies. In December 2024, more than 75 Nobel Laureates urged the U.S. Senate in a letter to oppose Kennedy’s nomination, saying he would “put the public’s health in jeopardy.” As of January 9, 2025, over 17,000 doctors who are members of the Committee to Protect Health Care, had signed an open letter urging the Senate to oppose Kennedy’s nomination, arguing that Kennedy had spent decades undermining public confidence in vaccines and spreading false claims and conspiracy theories, and that he was a danger to national healthcare.
There are four medical doctors (MDs) who are part of the U.S. Senate. All are Republicans, and all voted in favor of RFK Jr’s confirmation. Unbelievable. The only Republican who voted against Kennedy was former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was a polio survivor. He issued a statement on the day Kennedy was confirmed that said, in part: ”I’m a survivor of childhood polio. In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world. I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”
I feel that in the absence of legitimate healthcare leadership from the U.S. government, Americans need to get their health information from more reliable sources that are in the private sphere. Some suggestions include:
- The Harvard Health Letter and Healthbeat from Harvard Medical School,
- The BBC News-Health website,
- The Health section of The New York Times,
- Johns Hopkins University Medical School’s E-Newsletters,
- Newsletters from the World Health Organization (WHO), and
- The American Medical Associations’ (AMA) Morning Rounds.
It’s only been a week since RFK Jr. has been in office and already he is showing his true colors. After promising the Senate confirmation committee that he wouldn’t change it, Kennedy says he will investigate the childhood vaccine schedule recommendations given by the CDC, and plans to remove members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which recommends vaccines, if he sees conflicts of interest.
So, strap yourself in, folks, because for at least the next four years, it’s going to be a bumpy ride in the healthcare field in America.
