The Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., certainly one of America’s most infamous vaccine skeptics, to run the nation’s main well being company, the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers (HHS), on Thursday, sparking outrage amongst public well being specialists who fear that Kennedy will hurt public well being and additional erode belief in science and drugs.
“I feel it’s a tragic day for America’s kids. I feel it’s a tragic day for public well being when somebody who’s a science denialist, conspiracy theorist, and virulent anti-vaccine activist is [leading] the most important public well being company in the USA,” says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Training Heart at Kids’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who has served on vaccine advisory committees for the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) and the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA). “I feel each Senator who voted for his affirmation ought to be ashamed of themselves for his or her unwillingness to face up for the well being of the American public.”
Kennedy, 71, was certainly one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial Cupboard nominees. For years, Kennedy has unfold medical disinformation, enraging specialists within the area. He’s repeated the debunked claim that vaccines trigger autism—although analysis overwhelmingly proves that vaccines are each protected and efficient—and has made controversial statements about raw milk and fluoride in water. Throughout his confirmation hearings, he confronted heated questioning by Senators over his anti-vaccine views, flip-flopping stance on abortion, and former help for some conspiracy theories, equivalent to his assertions that Lyme Illness and COVID-19 have been engineered bioweapons. He appeared unfamiliar with sure points he would oversee as the pinnacle of HHS, at instances seemingly complicated Medicaid and Medicare. All the identical, Kennedy was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48, with Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—a polio survivor—the one Republican who voted in opposition to his affirmation.
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Public well being specialists first sounded the alarm when Trump introduced Kennedy as his nominee to steer HHS again in November. As head of HHS, Kennedy will oversee well being businesses just like the CDC and the FDA.
On the forefront of specialists’ concern is the affect Kennedy would have over vaccines. Kennedy tried to distance himself from his earlier anti-vaccine statements throughout his affirmation hearings, saying that he’s not “anti-vaccine” however “pro-safety,” and he has said that he and the Trump Administration wouldn’t take vaccines off the market. However specialists solid doubt on whether or not the Administration would maintain true to that assertion, and lots of fear that Kennedy might appoint folks to businesses just like the FDA and CDC who might impede or revoke vaccine approvals, not solely limiting entry to but additionally sowing mistrust in a robust public well being instrument.
Dr. Rob Davidson is an emergency doctor in Michigan and govt director of the Committee to Shield Well being Care, which had circulated a petition garnering greater than 22,000 signatures from physicians calling on the Senate to reject Kennedy. Davidson says he worries about how Kennedy will reply to rising ailments, equivalent to H5N1, extra generally often called bird flu. Along with his anti-vaccine rhetoric, Kennedy has previously suggested placing a pause on infectious illness analysis, sparking backlash from many public well being specialists.
“He’s only a harmful particular person with regards to public well being,” Davidson says. “It’s harmful to have a man who’s led [the vaccine skepticism] motion being the pinnacle of this company, the mouthpiece of the U.S. authorities with regards to public well being. So that’s actually terrifying.”
“I feel a variety of lives are in danger doubtlessly due to this individual operating this company,” Davidson continues.
Learn Extra: RFK Jr. Denied He Is Anti-Vaccine During His Confirmation Hearing. Here’s His Record
Specialists are additionally involved concerning the actions Kennedy might tackle abortion. Kennedy, who had beforehand expressed help for folks’s proper to decide on, has since shared anti-abortion statements, saying throughout his affirmation hearings that he agrees with Trump “that each abortion is a tragedy” and abortion coverage ought to be left as much as particular person states.
In the course of the hearings, Kennedy was requested concerning the abortion treatment mifepristone, which was permitted by the FDA for abortion functions greater than twenty years in the past however has lately been unsuccessfully challenged in court by a gaggle of anti-abortion docs and organizations. Kennedy gave imprecise solutions when requested concerning the drug, saying that Trump requested him “to check the security of mifepristone” and that the President “has not but taken a stand on the right way to regulate it.” Davidson worries that, below Kennedy’s management, HHS and the FDA might make mifepristone much less obtainable or accessible.
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The one space through which Kennedy has garnered some favor amongst well being specialists is his stance on food and nutrition. Kennedy has shared a plan to “Make America Wholesome Once more,” through which he vows to “ban the lots of of meals components and chemical substances that different nations have already prohibited” and “change rules, analysis subjects, and subsidies to cut back the dominance of ultra-processed meals.”
Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a heart specialist and director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts College, says he thinks Kennedy and the Trump Administration “have an opportunity to actually coalesce across the prime disaster dealing with our nation, which is food-related continual situations.” Whereas he hopes that Kennedy will deal with addressing this difficulty and switch away from his extra controversial statements on vaccines, Mozaffarian says he was upset by Kennedy’s responses to questions over his anti-vaccine rhetoric throughout his affirmation hearings. “I feel he had an opportunity there to place that controversy to relaxation and present he’s going to actually deal with the place the consensus is, which is that our meals system is damaged,” Mozaffarian says.
Many well being specialists are skeptical that Kennedy will truly take significant steps on meals and diet. “It’s completely eclipsed by his different controversial views,” Davidson says of Kennedy’s stance on meals. “The hazard of him is a lot better than any potential advantage of these views.”
Specialists fear that Kennedy might exacerbate public mistrust in science and drugs, and lots of say that his affirmation and the help he’s acquired is already a regarding signal of that.
“I feel right this moment actually is a marker within the highway, marking rising distrust in establishments, marking energy of adjusting info panorama, however most prominently, the marker that the strains between fact and falsehoods are blurred and the way we navigate this new world goes to require a special method,” says Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and founding father of the publication Your Local Epidemiologist. “What I’m most involved about is the rhetoric and the sowing of doubt and the confusion … that we’re all going to be dealing with.”
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