A few months ago, I wrote in this column about President Trump’s Cabinet nominees, and I singled out Robert F. Kennedy Jr as one of the worst. At the time, I hoped that his nomination would be shot down, but those wishes were unfounded. The scion of the famous and influential Kennedy family was confirmed last week as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in a 52-48 nearly party-line vote.
Why is Kennedy’s confirmation such a problem? The largest issue is his long history of anti-vaccine comments. He has often espoused the idea that vaccines cause autism, citing a debunked 1998 study from a medical journal known as the Lancet. The study was later retracted, but that didn’t stop Kennedy from spreading misinformation. During a podcast interview in 2023, he claimed that “no vaccine is safe and effective,” despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines have been extraordinarily helpful in preventing disease. He also took over the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense (CHD), which advocates for anti-vaccine policies. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy was confronted with images of baby onesies sold by CHD that read, “Unvaxxed, unafraid” and “no vax, no problem”.
Keep in mind that Kennedy is far from a lowly conspiracy theorist, even if his beliefs make him seem as such. He now oversees the health of America, despite having no qualifications to do so. An environmental lawyer by trade, his only experience with health has been trying to endanger it. Kennedy has the power to enact the policies of his MAHA agenda—“Make America Healthy Again.” This movement, backed by influencers and with Kennedy at its head, might endanger the widespread use of vaccines. Vaccines often depend on herd immunity to be most effective; if people are swayed by Kennedy’s anti-vaccination crusade and decide not to get their shots, infectious diseases such as measles, meningitis and polio could spread more easily. The only Republican senator to vote against Kennedy’s confirmation, Mitch McConnell, emphasized his personal battle with surviving childhood polio as his reasoning. We are already seeing the effects of vaccine skepticism within the government; Kennedy recently announced that the childhood vaccine schedule would be reexamined and potentially changed. With Kennedy in charge, the diseases we thought were under control and left in past centuries are in danger of returning in full force, headed for the most vulnerable of our population.
Besides attacking vaccines, Kennedy has several other avenues to change the health policies of America. As secretary of the department, he has ultimate control over several government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
For the CDC, an agency which often puts out guidelines related to public health, Kennedy has advocated for focusing more on chronic diseases. This might seem like a good idea in theory, but it would mean de-emphasizing research on infectious disease, just four years after COVID-19 ravaged the U.S. and the rest of the world. Especially with the H5N1 bird flu, which has recently spread from animals to humans, presenting a danger to American public health, this is not the time for turning a blind eye to infectious diseases.
The NIH might be similarly affected by Kennedy turning away from biomedical research, as well as widespread budget cuts put in place by the Trump administration. Before Kennedy was confirmed, funding for indirect costs of research, which is provided by the government to academic institutions to help offset expenses, was slashed. The action was blocked by a court order, but heavy-handed attempts at cost-cutting are still moving apace. In the past few days, hundreds of federal workers at the NIH, as well as the CDC and FDA, have been fired as the agencies undergo significant downsizing. All of this entails a chilling effect on medical research which would normally further advance our understanding of health. Despite Kennedy’s promises to improve the health of Americans, the cuts to funding and staff threaten the opposite.
The FDA is also threatened as Kennedy looks to change and shake up many long-standing policies. One such policy is the ban on raw milk, which the FDA deems one of the most dangerous foods people can consume due to the high risk of contamination. Instead of following that science, Kennedy has proposed eliminating restrictions on the sale of raw milk. Kennedy has also said that his FDA would recommend removing fluoride, a mineral often found in toothpaste that improves oral health, from drinking water. Despite a lack of evidence, Kennedy has claimed that fluoride is an “industrial waste” connected to several diseases. Once again, science has been subverted by fact-free assertions.
The researchers and scientists who are left after the purge of these three major agencies may continue to do important work and research. Scientific breakthroughs may still happen. But under Kennedy, the umbrella of the HHS will be at the mercy of a conspiracy theorist who would like nothing better than to undermine the health of Americans, from casting doubt on vaccines to ignoring the study of infectious diseases. The virus of MAHA will spread from the US government, infecting and affecting the nation.