President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly set to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and a prominent vaccine skeptic, to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, a move with major implications for the federal public health infrastructure. The expected nomination, reported by multiple outlets Thursday, is likely to spur a major confirmation battle in the Senate.
Kennedy had run for president as an independent candidate largely on a public health platform, including remodeling the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, before dropping out and endorsing Trump.
Trump said in October before he won the election that he would let Kennedy “go wild on medicines” and food policy in his administration.
“He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him get to it,” Trump said of Kennedy in his election victory speech. “Go have a good time, Bobby.”
But even before suspending his campaign, Kennedy had a phone conversation with Trump this summer, during which they talked about changing the vaccine schedule for children, with Kennedy wanting to lower the doses of each vaccine to prevent babies from changing “radically.”
Kennedy eventually dropped out of the race to join Trump as an advisor under the banner of “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, specifically targeted at the obesity epidemic, the high chronic disease burden in the US, and vaccines that Kennedy says are unsafe and untested.
At a recent event in Scottsdale, Arizona, Kennedy described bragged that, on day one of the new Trump administration, 600 NIH employees would be fired and immediately replaced.
As the director of the vaccine-skeptical group Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy has long been an advocate of the disproven accusation that vaccines are a leading cause of autism spectrum disorder and other chronic neurological and autoimmune conditions.
One of his most recent lines of attack against vaccines, and one that has gained the most traction among his populist supporters, is that they have not been “tested in pre-licensing, placebo-controlled trials,” a claim that has been rebutted by the federal public health establishment, including the former Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Kennedy also says he is concerned about the financial incentives for large pharmaceutical companies to push unnecessary vaccines on children.
“There’s no downstream liability, there’s no front end safety testing, that saves them a quarter billion dollars,” said Kennedy at a campaign speech at Hillsdale College. “And there’s no marketing and advertising costs. Because the federal government is ordering them to get it, ordering 78 million school kids to take that vaccine every year. What better product could you have?”
Before becoming known as an outspoken vaccine skeptic, Kennedy was a prominent environmental lawyer with an illustrious career in combatting the use of poisonous toxins, including the 2007 DuPont case on behalf of rural West Virginian communities contaminated by zinc.
Most recently, he was involved in the case against Monsanto, the maker of herbicide RoundUp, for the use of the carcinogenic ingredient glyphosate.
Due to his unorthodox stance against vaccines, seed oils, and milk pasteurization, Kennedy is expected to have a difficult time gaining enough votes during the Senate confirmation process, even with a Republican majority in the chamber.
Even if Kennedy does not make it through the confirmation process, he likely will be an advisor on public health matters to the new Trump administration, including whoever is selected to be HHS secretary in his stead.
On Thursday, Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee took time from a hearing overviewing the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to warn that Kennedy would be disastrous for public health, particularly future pandemic preparedness.
“The fact that we’re considering bringing somebody on with no scientific or medical credentials, who’s falsely claimed for decades of vaccines caused autism, who has, quite frankly, said just outrageous comments about science and medicine that this person would come in to gut the NIH, I think is shameful,” said Rep Robert Garcia (D-CA).