By Zeynep Tufekci
Amid the tumult created by Donald Trump’s latest Cabinet selections, one appointment stands out for its potential to cause widespread suffering and enduring damage to institutions: his selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Health and Human Services Department.
Contemporary public health represents one of humanity’s significant triumphs. In 1900, as many as 30% of infants in certain U.S. cities never reached their first birthday. Since then, advancements such as vaccines, improved sanitation, and effective treatments have eradicated numerous once-common diseases and rendered others exceedingly rare. While it may be easy to overlook these achievements, especially as those times fade from living memory, they remain delicate and can be lost.
The primary concern isn’t solely that Kennedy, with scant government experience and a sometimes alarmingly tenuous grasp of the truth, would be unqualified or deceptive. As the leader of a department comprising over 80,000 personnel and managing a $3 trillion budget — supervising crucial entities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health — he would wield authority over the country’s medicines, food safety, vaccinations, and medical research. With such influence, he could inflict considerable damage to the public health infrastructure and undermine the public confidence necessary for its restoration after his tenure.
Though Kennedy has highlighted some important public health issues, such as the drawbacks of ultraprocessed foods and the importance of physical activity, he has also inundated media with perspectives on vaccines, food safety, medications, and supplements that are characterized by serious misrepresentations and implausible conspiracies.
His criticisms of vaccines have gained significant attention. He states not just that they require closer examination, as some “vaccine skeptics” suggest. Last year, he informed a podcaster that “there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” When it became politically convenient, he later retracted that statement. The reality is he has long advanced the false narrative that vaccines lead to autism, and the absurd claim that “researchers have conducted very little investigation into the health” of children post-vaccination for once-common illnesses.
Outside of the medical field, many remain unaware of the various diseases for which safe and effective vaccines exist. One such disease is diphtheria, once infamously termed “the strangling angel of children,” which causes its young victims to suffocate slowly and painfully, turning blue as a thick membrane fills their throat. They endure agonizing days of suffering. While diphtheria has been largely eradicated, it recently claimed the life of an unvaccinated 6-year-old boy in Spain, prompting his devastated anti-vaccine parents to vaccinate their remaining child.
Kennedy neglects mentioning these disturbing realities. His approach relies on misleading and confusing information through selective citations that ignore critical, often overwhelming evidence. He has inaccurately implied that AIDS is not caused by HIV. Without any proof, he once speculated that COVID was intentionally created to target Black and Caucasian individuals while protecting “the most immune,” namely Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. When confronted about propagating racist, antisemitic ideas, he slightly retracted this assertion but not entirely.
As the head of Health and Human Services, a role that one former secretary, Alex Azar, described as having “an astonishing amount of power by the stroke of a pen,” Kennedy could execute actions beyond merely spreading false information. For instance, he could seek to halt NIH research on infectious diseases, as he has previously promised, or implement measures to decrease vaccine availability and uptake.
The repercussions wouldn’t be limited to children from families that choose not to vaccinate. Many vaccines cannot be administered to children prior to 6 months old, and completing the vaccination schedule to achieve strong immunity can take years. Consequently, infants, young children, as well as immunocompromised individuals, cancer patients, and the elderly would be at heightened risk. Worldwide, rates of childhood vaccination have already plateaued, and any further decline could lead to widespread outbreaks.
Such risks are concerning in any context, but they become more acute in the event of another pandemic. Regarding COVID vaccines, which are considered one of the significant accomplishments of Trump’s first term, Kennedy claims that a “powerful vaccine cartel,” led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates, aimed “to prolong the pandemic and amplify its mortal effects” and executed efforts to deliberately obstruct Americans’ access to lifesaving drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in favor of their questionable vaccine agenda. In reality, both medications underwent stringent research and were found ineffective against COVID.
While pandemics might seem like a past concern, the ongoing H5N1 outbreak in the U.S. dairy cattle and the avian flu affecting birds persist, with strong indications that many human infections remain undetected.
Despite this, Kennedy has ardently supported raw milk, which, unlike pasteurized milk, has been shown to harbor exceptionally high levels of the virus.
Regarding the valid public health matters he has brought to light, Republican senators could surely dismiss Kennedy and urge Trump to consider another candidate who can appropriately address these issues without wreaking havoc on the essential public health system safeguarding the nation’s children. Moreover, an individual who dismisses scientific evidence and cannot distinguish between legitimate concerns and quackery is unlikely to provide meaningful support on these topics.
