In the weeks following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, he has begun rolling out his Cabinet nominees, many of whom are political allies whose proposed policies would threaten quality of life for many Americans. Among the most perturbing of his nominations is that of former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — whose views on public health have been deemed “dangerous” — as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has tried to paint himself as a champion of health, running with the slogan “Make America Healthy Again.” However, for someone who may soon gain control of the United States’ public health agencies, he knows surprisingly little about the sector.
If the U.S. Senate confirms Kennedy as the next health secretary, he would have oversight of institutions including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the National Institutes of Health. This type of power over public health should not be given to a fringe medical conspiracy theorist notorious for spreading medical misinformation. Kennedy’s political debut was rife with such distortion, suggesting there was a potential connection between antidepressants and school shootings, that chemicals in the water are to blame for children being transgender, that HIV is not a cause for AIDS — the list goes on.
In spite of an intense scramble over the last few weeks to redefine Kennedy’s public image, there’s no covering up the anti-vaccine rhetoric spewed throughout his yearlong campaign. In an attempt to appear more down to earth and relatable, Kennedy has often portrayed himself on the campaign trail as a man of reason, capable of changing his mind when presented with information that proves his original position wrong. As nice as it would be to qualify his recent shift in platform as just that, doing so would overlook a plethora of red flags, ranging from his outspoken ties to the anti-vaccine community to his blatantly bigoted portrayal of people with autism.
Many public health leaders have expressed concern that federal health agencies will be threatened under Kennedy, including Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The catalyst for mudslinging between the two was Fauci’s time as a spokesperson for the White House Coronavirus Task Force during the COVID-19 pandemic. By stepping up to serve as the face of the government’s response, he garnered significant criticism from Trump — and by proxy, his supporters within the Republican Party — in the newly found spotlight.
Among them was Kennedy who, dissatisfied with the handling of the pandemic, published a book titled “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.” In it, he vocalizes the baseless claim that Fauci weaponized the COVID-19 pandemic against the American public, utilizing “rigged scientific research, allowing him to dictate the subject, content, and outcome of scientific health research across the globe … in an authoritarian manner.”
While the media has mostly reported on his comments about removing fluoride from tap water and looking closer at our vaccine practices, most of Kennedy’s policy concerns come down to nutrition. These amount to changing dietary guidelines and government spending to disincentivize ultra-processed foods, as well as banning chemicals like pesticides from the food production process to ensure they don’t adversely affect us. Trump’s first term saw unhealthier school lunches, as well as a broader rollout of pesticides in farming practices, so it’s anyone’s guess as to which of Kennedy’s policies the former president will actually care to implement. If the picture of Kennedy being forced to eat McDonald’s with Trump and company is anything to go off of, the prospective HHS director’s priorities come second to that of the president-elect.
With political polarization at an all-time high following the election, it’s frightening to see more and more health policies split along partisan lines. Abortion already dominates the discussion, and it is entirely possible that under the discretion of Trump and Kennedy, vaccines and other staples of public health may be undermined by the federal government.
The rampant cronyism of the Trump administration will have serious consequences down the line as the health of the American people falls into Kennedy’s inexperienced hands. The unfortunate truth of the Republican trifecta in all branches of government is that it’s not a question of if this will occur, but when. The administration has already set its sights on adjacent issues within the field of education, such as plans to defund schools with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. It’s only a matter of time until public health issues are on the chopping block.
WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are solely the views of the writer.
Contact Grayson Stotz at [email protected].