Robert F. Kennedy Jr has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the Secretary of HHS. If he is confirmed by the Senate he will be secretary of HHS for four years. He plans to “Make America Healthy Again.” It is true that the current American healthcare system is one of the worst in the developed world as far as health outcomes are concerned. But rather than improving that system, RFK Jr’s plan is not only naive, but very dangerous. In this post I’m going to write about the specifics of what he is advocating and has advocated in the past. He can’t “Make America Healthy Again” but he can do a lot of damage.
Views on Infectious Disease
AIDS
RFK Jr believes that HIV does not cause AIDS. He has argued that the initial signals of AIDS, Kaposi’s sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), were both strongly linked to amyl nitrite — “poppers” — a popular drug among promiscuous gays. He thinks the wasting symptoms of AIDS were all caused by heavy drug use and lifestyle stressors. He believes that the afflictions that tortured and killed those AIDS patients were, in fact, a result of their drug use and “compulsive homosexual behavior.”
He of course ignores the fact that the AIDS epidemic also affected people with hemophilia (through the blood products they had to use), children who were born to mothers with HIV, and health workers who had accidental needle sticks. At the peak of the epidemic in 2004, before we had any treatment other than AZT, AIDS killed 2.1 million people worldwide.
Lyme Disease
RFK Jr. believes that Lyme disease was created as a bioweapon by the American military in a Long Island laboratory in the 1950s.
West Nile Virus and RSV
Kennedy has said West Nile virus was created at Plum Island and that respiratory syncytial virus was purposely spread from apes to humans so pharmaceutical companies could profit off vaccines.
1918 Influenza Pandemic
Kennedy said at an online campaign event in June 2023. “We can go down a whole list of diseases, and there is good evidence that even the Spanish flu came from vaccine research.”
COVID
In an interview on Fox News, Kennedy said that many lives would have been saved if ivermectin and hydroycholoroquine had been more widely used. Well designed studies on both of these medicines showed they were no better than placebos for treating COVID.
Views on Vaccines
Measles Vaccine
During a November 2019 measles epidemic that killed 80 children in Samoa, Kennedy wrote to the country’s prime minister falsely claiming that the measles vaccine was probably causing the deaths
Vaccines and Autism
Kennedy believes that vaccine, particularly the MMR vaccine causes autism in children. As noted above, numerous very large well designed studies have disproven that any vaccines cause autism.
COVID vaccines
Mr. Kennedy filed a petition with the F.D.A. in May 2021 demanding that officials rescind authorization for the COVID vaccine and refrain from approving any Covid vaccine in the future.
Fluoridation of Water Supplies
Kennedy claims that fluoridation of water leads to decreased IQ scores in children. There is some evidence for this at very high fluoride levels that naturally occur at some places in the world. The level of fluoride added to water supplies in the US is far below this threshold. There is no evidence whatever that flouride added to drinking water has any ill effects. It has been shown to markedly decrease dental cavities in children, however. Kennedy says that fluoride in toothpaste is enough. The children most benefited by flouridation are minority and marginalized populations who do not or cannot brush their teeth regularly.
Chronic Disease
Kennedy wants the NIH to focus on chronic diseases. Of course many of the institutes of NIH already focus on chronic disease and fund research on them. This has been going on for many years. These include:
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI): Focuses on research, training, and education to prevent and treat heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders
National Institute on Aging (NIA): Focuses on research related to aging
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK): Focuses on research related to diabetes, digestion, and kidney disease
Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases (KUH):Focuses on research related to kidney disease, urinary tract disorders, and blood disorders
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS):Focuses on research related to chronic disease epidemiology
Fogarty International Center (FIC): Focuses on global health research, including chronic diseases
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD): Focuses on research related to chronic disease disparities
The fact that Kennedy is not aware of the fact that NIH does a great deal of research on chronic diseases is more evidence of his unfitness for running HHS.
Nutrition
Kennedy wants to take on the big food industry and move people to eat less ultra-processed foods and eat more unprocessed foods. He thinks food additives cause cancer and gender dysphoria and wants additives removed from foods. Although there is zero evidence that food additives cause gender dysphoria, by and large these are laudable goals. How he is going to accomplish this remains unclear. Chronic disease is certainly related to food choice, lifestyle and poverty. We have known this for a long time, but it will take major societal change to make this happen. It certainly will not be in the power of the secretary of HHS to accomplish this.
Plans for firing employees
At an event in Arizona, Kennedy said he’d fire and replace 600 people from the National Institutes of Health. Kennedy also promised to eliminate the department of nutrition at the FDA.
Bottom Line
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a conspiracy theorist with no experience in running a large organization like HHS. He is absolutely unqualified for this role and furthermore constitutes a serious risk to the health of the US. I have written a letter to both my senators urging them to vote against his confirmation. I respectfully request that you do the same.