Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy jnr as health secretary. Photo / The Washington Post
Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy jnr as health secretary. Photo / The Washington Post
The ascension of Robert F. Kennedy jnr - a longtime anti-vaccine activist - to the United States’ top health post has alarmed medical experts, who point to his history of trafficking in conspiracy theories as disqualifying to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy, whom US President-elect Donald Trump selected as health secretary this week, will be charged with a massive portfolio overseeing Americans’ insurance, drugs, medical supplies and food if the Senate confirms him.
“He is one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the United States and globally, and he has been at this for 20 years,” said Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine beliefs and advocacy work prompted Hotez to write a book about his autistic daughter titled Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, said Hotez, adding that he has spoken to Kennedy several times in the past about his views on vaccines.
Kennedy’s spokeswoman previously told the Washington Post he is not “anti-vaccine”. When asked to respond yesterday to his history of false health claims, she pointed to Kennedy’s statement on X, thanking Trump for picking him and pledging to “Make America Healthy Again”.
“I will provide Americans with transparency and access to all the data so they can make informed choices for themselves and their families,” Kennedy wrote.
Thank you @realDonaldTrump for your leadership and courage. I'm committed to advancing your vision to Make America Healthy Again.
We have a generational opportunity to bring together the greatest minds in science, medicine, industry, and government to put an end to the chronic…
Here are 10 false health claims he has made publicly over the years:
Kennedy has falsely linked vaccines to autism
Kennedy, who founded a prominent anti-vaccine group, has repeatedly linked the childhood vaccine schedule to autism – a claim that has been debunked by scientists. Kennedy has falsely blamed autism on thimerosal, a compound safely used as a preservative in vaccines, and decried the number of shots on the childhood vaccination schedule.
“I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” he said last summer in an interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters.
In 2015, Kennedy equated vaccination to the Holocaust at a California screening for an anti-vaccination film: “They get the shot, that night they have a fever of 103, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,” he said. “This is a Holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”
Because signs of autism may appear around the same time children receive the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, some parents mistakenly link the two events. Vaccine safety experts, including those at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics, agree that the MMR vaccine is not responsible for recent increases in the number of children with autism.
Kennedy has repeatedly linked the childhood vaccine schedule to autism – a claim that has been debunked by scientists. Photo / Getty Images
A 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine concluded there is no link between autism and vaccination. Dozens of studies published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals have also disproved the notion that the MMR vaccine causes autism.
Hotez and many other public health experts say they worry that Kennedy, as health secretary, will do irreparable harm to already declining confidence in vaccines.
Hotez pointed to the fivefold rise in pertussis, or whooping cough, in the past year; the 16 measles outbreaks reported by the CDC so far this year, compared with four in 2023; and the detection of polio in New York in 2022.
“So our baseline is a fragile vaccine ecosystem that could be on the brink of collapse,” Hotez said. “I worry that now with this appointment, that could actually happen.”
Kennedy falsely called the coronavirus vaccine the ‘deadliest vaccine ever made’
At a 2021 state House hearing on a Louisiana Department of Health proposal to require schoolchildren to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, Kennedy proclaimed the vaccine to be the “deadliest vaccine ever made”. Health officials say the coronavirus vaccines are safe and effective, saving millions of lives.
At the time, Louisiana State Health Officer Joseph Kanter condemned Kennedy’s remarks as “the intentional spread of health disinformation”. Kanter is now chief executive of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which represents public health agencies across the country.
Asked by the Post last year about his previous comments, Kennedy’s spokeswoman stood by his remarks in an email that repeated misleading statements about childhood vaccines.
Robert F. Kennedy jnr has said he would declare a Covid-style public health emergency on his first day in office ahead of his appointment as Donald Trump’s Health Secretary. Photo / AFP
Kennedy promotes raw milk, stem cells and other controversial or debunked medical treatments
There is a reason milk is pasteurised.
Raw milk is unsafe to consume, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the CDC have strongly advised against consuming it because it can contain dangerous bacteria, such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria. It can also contain viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu virus that is causing an outbreak in dairy cattle and has sickened at least 46 people in the United States. Unpasteurised milk from infected cows can contain high levels of infectious H5N1 virus.
Stem cells, which have shown great promise for potential medical treatments, have also spawned a cottage industry of clinics marketing unproven treatments – some of which have blinded patients.
Paul Knoepfler, a professor of cell biology and human anatomy at the University of California at Davis who tracks questionable stem cell treatments, told the Post he is concerned Kennedy could become an ally of unproven stem cell clinics that have popped up across the United States, potentially exerting pressure on the FDA to back off enforcement actions and allow therapies that are not ready for clinical trial.
Kennedy argues government employees have an interest in ‘mass poisoning’ the American public
“The agency, the USDA, the FDA have been captured by the industries they’re supposed to regulate, and they all have an interest in subsidies and mass poisoning the American public,” Kennedy told Fox News in August.
Kennedy has repeatedly spoken about wanting to eliminate industry interests from the Government, but public health experts say it is slander to imply government employees are purposefully harming Americans.
“That’s just an inflammatory statement that has no basis in reality,” Hotez said. “I’ve worked with the scientists at the [health] agencies, at CDC and FDA, at the National Institutes of Health, and they are the most dedicated civil servants the nation has ever seen.”
Kennedy has falsely linked antidepressants to mass shootings
Kennedy has suggested mass shootings committed by young people are spurred by antidepressants and video games. Federal scientists need to be studying shootings to “see if there is connections to some of the SSRI [antidepressant] and psychiatric drugs people are taking, whether there is connections to video games”, he told Turkish state-owned TRT World in January.
The suggestion that antidepressants are linked to mass shootings has been amplified by right-wing figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson. But experts caution there is no credible research linking antidepressants to mass shootings. Studies show only a small percentage of mass shooters were taking medications or suffering from serious mental illness when they committed the crimes.
Kennedy incorrectly suggests Aids may not be caused by HIV
Kennedy has repeatedly – and falsely – suggested the human immunodeficiency virus is not the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The discovery of the connection between HIV and Aids garnered a Nobel Prize in 2008 and is established science.
“They were doing phony, crooked studies to develop a cure that killed people without really being able to understand what HIV was, and pumping up fear about it constantly, not really understanding whether it was causing Aids,” Kennedy said in an interview last summer with New York Magazine.
In his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, Kennedy wrote that he takes “no position” on whether HIV causes Aids – then dedicated many pages to casting doubt on the science.
Kennedy falsely argues children’s gender identity can be impacted by water
Kennedy has repeatedly argued that chemicals in the water are changing children’s sexuality and gender identity.
“I want to just pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disrupters because our children now, you know, we’re seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion,” he said on his podcast in 2022, according to CNN.
Experts say there is no scientific evidence to back up Kennedy’s claims, which have also been spread by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
“That’s just leaning into the fear that hormones are going to make our kids gay or transgender. It’s a very old conspiracy theory,” said David Gorski, a Wayne State University professor of surgery and oncology and managing editor of Science-Based Medicine, which debunks misinformation in medicine. “That has no basis in evidence.”
Kennedy has falsely touted ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as effective Covid treatments
Kennedy falsely claimed in a July interview last year with Fox News that fewer people would have died of Covid-19 if the United States had deployed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Multiple studies have concluded that the antiparasitic and antimalarial drugs are ineffective against Covid-19, despite the promotion of the drug by right-wing media.
“We racked up the highest death count in the world. We only have 4.2% of the globe’s population, but we had 16% of the Covid deaths in this country, and that is … that was from bad policy. There’s … countries that did the opposite of what we did – that provided ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, other early treatments to their populations – and had 1/200th of our death rate,” he told Watters, the Fox host.
The FDA has approved ivermectin for treating some parasitic infections, head lice and skin conditions such as rosacea – but not for the coronavirus.
In spring 2020, the FDA authorised the emergency use of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, to treat the coronavirus. But less than three months later, the agency withdrew the drug’s authorisation because the medications “were unlikely to be effective”.
Kennedy argued Covid-19 was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people
“Covid-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said in a video recorded by the New York Post last July. “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
There is no scientific basis to these claims. Scientists and politicians have widely decried Kennedy’s remarks as racist and antisemitic.
Kennedy claims 5G high-speed wireless network is used to ‘control our behaviour’
Kennedy has claimed that 5G high-speed wireless network service is being used to “harvest our data and control our behaviour”. His claims echo long-running conspiracy theories that 5G technology causes harmful effects on health.
During the pandemic, governments in the United Kingdom and the United States issued assurances that the technology was not fuelling the coronavirus. Experts have dismissed fears of detrimental health effects, pointing out the technology is no different from existing networks.
