Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks at a Trump campaign event in Walker, Mich., on Sept. 27.Carlos Osorio/The Associated Press
“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines.”
Those are the words president-elect Donald Trump used to describe the mandate he plans to give Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Mr. Kennedy, a long-time environmental and anti-vaccine activist, has been selected to head the massive U.S. government Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS, which has a US$1.7-trillion annual budget, oversees more than two dozen federal health agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Mr. Kennedy has been tapped to be secretary of a department that accounts for 25 per cent of all federal spending in the U.S., yet he has no government experience and no compelling qualifications for the job other than, it appears, a deep antagonism toward both the CDC and NIH. (His views on Medicare and Medicaid are unclear.)
“The FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on the social-media platform X in late October, accusing the agency of “aggressive suppression” of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, sunshine and some of his other favourite things.
He has also vowed to fire hundreds of NIH employees and radically alter its research funding priorities, with at least half of its US$47.1-billion budget going to “preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health.”
RFK Jr., as Mr. Kennedy is commonly known, has become the over-tanned face of “Make America Healthy Again.” MAHA is an offshoot of MAGA, tapping into Americans’ simmering post-pandemic anger over everything health-related.
How does Mr. Kennedy plan to make America healthy again?
Not by addressing issues like poverty, obesity, gun violence, climate change and infectious diseases like COVID and bird flu. But by rolling back some of the greatest public health successes in history, like childhood vaccination, fluoridation and food safety regulation while improving access to unproven therapies.
This is what Elaine Godfrey, a journalist with The Atlantic, accurately described as “woo-woo meets MAGA.”
Mr. Kennedy’s ideas aren’t all bad. It would be great if Americans, some of the unhealthiest people on Earth, were healthier. It would be great if toxins would be removed from the environment. No one is against virtue.
There is also no doubt that the food system is broken and that prescription drug prices are exorbitant.
But will a Trump government really roll back massive subsidies to corn growers – most of whom are in the Republican heartland – because they produce unhealthy corn syrup? Is the way to tackle drug prices by slashing research budgets, or by actually regulating prices, like most countries do?
And that’s without mentioning the incongruity of the nominee for HHS Secretary railing against ultra-processed foods while his boss, the President, chows down routinely on Big Macs, fries and Coke. Or the fact that both men spend inordinate amounts of time getting suntans while claiming the FDA is depriving Americans of sunshine.
Mr. Kennedy’s embrace of deranged, anti-science conspiracy theories is troubling. The list of his eyebrow-raising (and debunked) claims is a long one: mercury in vaccines causes autism; fluoridation of drinking water causes brain damage; raw milk is healthier than pasteurized milk; allowing children to eat processed foods such as Froot Loops amounts to “mass poisoning;” the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is the “deadliest ever made;” antidepressant use is the underlying cause of mass shootings; sunscreen is dangerous; autism can be treated with chelation (a treatment for heavy metal exposure); ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (two discredited treatments) can prevent and treat COVID-19; the coronavirus was created in a lab and targets people based on their ethnicity; 5G cellular networks are being used to control human behaviour; and much more.
This is conspiratorial quackery on steroids. It’s unhinged.
Yet it’s not the worst of it. The way Mr. Kennedy could undermine vaccination, especially for children, is far more troubling.
He said recently that, despite decades of anti-vax activism, he would not take away anyone’s vaccines. But the nominee for HHS Secretary will use his position to cast doubt, spread lies and undermine vaccination efforts.
The result will be, without a doubt, outbreaks of preventable illnesses like measles, mumps and more. Children will die, as they did decades ago.
Sadly, this is what passes for leadership these days: Shaking up the status quo, rejecting expertise and established science, and embracing conspiracies for political gain, regardless of the cost.