Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Capitol Hill after assembly with Sen. Bernie Sanders on Jan. 8.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will seem earlier than two Senate committees this week, the subsequent steps in his bid to steer the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies.
There’s a lot for senators to dig into. HHS secretary is a consequential job that oversees all of America’s well being businesses, together with the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, the Meals and Drug Administration, the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, Medicare, Medicaid and extra. HHS employs about 90,000 individuals and has a funds of $1.7 trillion yearly, which is in regards to the measurement of Australia’s GDP.
Kennedy has been within the public eye his complete life as a member of the Democratic political household that features President John F. Kennedy. For many of his 71 years, he is been a authorities outsider, and he has constructed his fortune and fame disparaging the scientists and establishments he is now in line to steer. He is additionally made wild and unfaithful claims, together with that Wi-Fi causes most cancers and that antidepressants are in charge for varsity shootings.
The opposition to Kennedy’s affirmation has been fierce. An advocacy group known as Shield Our Care is financing an advert marketing campaign in eight Republican Senators’ states, urging them to reject him.
Kennedy’s allies and supporters stay assured he will probably be confirmed. “Bobby Kennedy has met with over 60 United States senators” forward of the affirmation hearings, White Home staffer Katie Miller instructed NPR. “He is ready and excited.”
As Congress prepares to grill him this week, this is a refresher on a few of his acknowledged plans, his file and his troublingly counterfactual concepts.
1. For many years, he is unfold misinformation about childhood vaccines
Kennedy has tried to downplay his anti-vaccine views in current months and years, however he has a file of attacking vaccines, together with routine childhood vaccinations. For a lot of his profession, he was chairman of Youngsters’s Well being Protection, which advocates in opposition to vaccines and spreads deceptive and inaccurate claims about their security, together with the totally debunked declare they trigger autism.
That work has had actual world influence, most strikingly in Samoa, a small island nation within the Pacific. Simply earlier than a measles outbreak in 2019 during which 83 individuals died, Kennedy toured the nation and later wrote to the prime minister falsely blaming the vaccine for the deaths as an alternative of measles.
As the top of HHS, there is a complete host of how that Kennedy may change the panorama of childhood vaccines within the U.S., which infectious illness specialists say may result in a resurgence of infectious illnesses amongst youngsters, together with meningitis and polio.
“It’s a fantasy to suppose we are able to decrease vaccination charges and herd immunity within the U.S. and never undergo recurrence of those illnesses,” Gregory Poland, a vaccine researcher on the Mayo Clinic instructed KFF Well being Information in December. “One in 3,000 youngsters who will get measles goes to die. There is not any remedy for it. They’ll die.” (Kennedy has stated the remedy for measles is rooster soup.)
Kennedy’s obvious incapability to tell apart reality from fable is alarming, says Elizabeth Jacobs, emerita professor of epidemiology from the College of Arizona. “Kennedy has been instructed repeatedly by specialists within the subject that his positions on vaccines are mistaken and never supported by scientific proof, and he refuses to hear,” she says. “I feel that that may be a very harmful place for the Secretary of Well being and Human Companies to have.”
2. Scientists fear he will not put together the U.S. for the danger of chicken flu
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy railed in opposition to the federal authorities’s actions, together with vaccine and masks necessities. He regularly stated pandemic public well being measures had been extra restrictive than Hitler’s Germany, saying as soon as that a minimum of “you possibly can disguise in an attic like Anne Frank did.”
How would Kennedy use his broad energy as secretary if he is confronted with a public well being emergency? Kennedy and his allies have not publicly addressed the difficulty. In the meantime, as there have been a number of critical instances of chicken flu amongst Individuals, together with the primary demise, and there’s proof the virus is spreading broadly amongst poultry and cattle, intensifying considerations about one other pandemic disaster.
Kennedy has already begun to discredit public well being measures to counter chicken flu. In an on-line submit final summer time, he claimed there’s “no proof” the chicken flu vaccines within the nationwide stockpile will work and that they “seem harmful.” He instructed in one other submit that “somebody” would possibly bioengineer a harmful type of the virus to revenue off the vaccine.
The concept is “preposterous,” Dr. Andrew Pekosz, a professor of microbiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg College of Public Well being instructed NPR. The present chicken flu vaccines “have proven a security file,” he says. “They don’t seem to be harmful.”
Though the risk chicken flu poses to people stays small now, “that is like some brush burning round your home — you higher concentrate as a result of it may flip into one thing else,” Dr. Jesse Goodman, an infectious illness doctor at Georgetown College and a former FDA official, instructed NPR.
3. His monetary conflicts are elevating eyebrows
Kennedy has made many thousands and thousands of {dollars} from anti-vaccine authorized actions. New public filings present that, if and when he is confirmed, he may nonetheless financially profit from lawsuits in opposition to Merck’s vaccine that protects in opposition to HPV and cervical most cancers.
In different phrases, Kennedy could be ready to doubtlessly revenue from vaccine litigation whereas regulating drugmakers and overseeing federal vaccine coverage as the top of HHS.
“RFK Jr’s ethics settlement is insufficient,” Kathleen Clark, a legislation professor at Washington College in St. Louis, who focuses on authorities ethics, wrote to NPR. “It does not handle the bias created by his persevering with monetary curiosity within the litigation in opposition to Merck.”
4. He needs a serious shakeup in scientific analysis
The COVID-19 pandemic intensified mistrust of federal science analysis and public well being efforts, particularly amongst Republicans. The conservative Heritage Basis and Republican lawmakers have been floating lengthy to-do lists for altering the NIH, together with dramatically reorganizing the facilities and institutes that represent the company.
Kennedy has stated he’d wish to “instantly change” lots of of federal scientists and reorient their work away from infectious illnesses.
Throughout the first weeks of the Trump administration, scientists across the nation sounded alarm bells about scientific conferences that had been canceled with little discover or rationalization. These cancellations have already disrupted analysis funding and delayed scheduled updates to infectious illness dashboards.
Well being company spokespeople issued a press release final week explaining that these had been short-term interruptions designed to permit the Trump crew to rise up and operating. However many scientists fear it is a signal that political appointees intend to exert a brand new stage of management on the federal well being and analysis businesses. Kennedy’s acknowledged plans to reshape the well being businesses and his lifetime of questioning the integrity of federal scientists may intensify these considerations.
5. His long-held abortion views are polar reverse of GOP
In an interview final spring, Kennedy stated on abortion: “My perception is we should always depart it to the lady, we should not have authorities concerned,” he defined. Additional, he stated abortion needs to be authorized at any level in being pregnant. He later tempered that place, saying on Fb that an “rising consensus” was that “abortion needs to be authorized up till a sure variety of weeks and restricted thereafter.”
Republicans are desirous to curtail abortion entry now that they’ve retaken energy in Washington, together with by doubtlessly reviving a Victorian-era obscenity legislation or curbing entry to abortion treatment. A well being secretary who favors abortion entry may intervene with these plans to limit entry. Former Vice President Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom group has launched a six-figure advert marketing campaign opposing Kennedy based mostly on his abortion views, writing on social media, “We want management that defends life and protects essentially the most susceptible—not radical insurance policies that undermine our values.”
Many different anti-abortion rights teams have remained silent on his nomination. And in current conferences with Kennedy, anti-abortion rights senators say they got here away reassured. “He is gonna align himself, by alternative, with President Trump on pro-life insurance policies,” Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina instructed NPR lately.
Teams that assist abortion rights largely oppose Kennedy. “RFK Jr. is an unfit, unqualified extremist who can’t be trusted to guard the well being, security, and reproductive freedom of American households,” Reproductive Freedom for All wrote quickly after he was nominated.
6. He will not settle for the truth that HIV causes AIDS
It’s nicely established science that AIDS is brought on by a virus often known as HIV, but it surely’s a undeniable fact that Kennedy doesn’t settle for. As a substitute, he has claimed AIDS is brought on by leisure drug use and that scientists, together with Dr. Anthony Fauci previously of NIH, conspired to make up an infectious illness accountable for AIDS so they may “take management of it.”
“They had been doing phony, crooked research to develop a remedy that killed individuals with out actually having the ability to perceive what HIV was, and pumping up worry about it continually, probably not understanding whether or not it was inflicting AIDS,” Kennedy instructed New York Journal final 12 months.
This isn’t true, and Kennedy’s insistence on this level has HIV advocates calling his nomination harmful. The federal authorities pays for the remedy of practically half of all HIV-positive Individuals by the Ryan White Program. And through President Trump’s first time period, the federal authorities launched an bold effort to finish the HIV epidemic by 2030. If HHS is led by Kennedy, an HIV denialist, these initiatives may very well be in jeopardy, advocates say.
7. He needs deal with life-style and continual illness, however hasn’t detailed how
Kennedy talks loads about shifting the main focus of the federal well being businesses in the direction of promotion of a wholesome life-style and the basis causes of continual illnesses. That is the uncommon space during which his views garner some bipartisan assist.
Kennedy has stated he’d wish to overhaul dietary tips, reform federal packages that pay for ultra-processed meals, tackle crop subsidies, and different initiatives. It is unclear how he may accomplish these objectives with out new laws on the meals and agriculture industries. “An actual litmus take a look at about whether or not or not they’re critical is whether or not they tackle a few of the financial pursuits which are inflicting our continual illness epidemic,” former CDC director Tom Frieden instructed NPR in November.
Jacobs of the College of Arizona bristles on the means Kennedy talks about continual illness and vitamin as if scientists have been ignoring them. “To faux like these are his concepts alone is outrageous,” she says. “You may see for your self simply by a cursory search of PubMed,” a public database of medical and scientific analysis, she factors out. “These usually are not novel concepts. These usually are not concepts which are unique to Mr. Kennedy. They’re concepts which were the results of 1000’s of hours of scientific analysis.”
Will Stone contributed to this report.
