The Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of America’s most notorious vaccine skeptics, to run the country’s leading health agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), on Thursday, sparking outrage among public health experts who worry that Kennedy will harm public health and further erode trust in science and medicine.
“I think it’s a sad day for America’s children. I think it’s a sad day for public health when someone who is a science denialist, conspiracy theorist, and virulent anti-vaccine activist is [leading] the biggest public health agency in the United States,” says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who has served on vaccine advisory committees for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “I think every Senator who voted for his confirmation should be ashamed of themselves for their unwillingness to stand up for the health of the American public.”
Kennedy, 71, was one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominees. For years, Kennedy has spread medical disinformation, enraging experts in the field. He’s repeated the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism—even though research overwhelmingly proves that vaccines are both safe and effective—and has made controversial statements about raw milk and fluoride in water. During his confirmation hearings, he faced heated questioning by Senators over his anti-vaccine views, flip-flopping stance on abortion, and previous support for some conspiracy theories, such as his assertions that Lyme Disease and COVID-19 were engineered bioweapons. He appeared unfamiliar with certain issues he would oversee as the head of HHS, at times seemingly confusing Medicaid and Medicare. All the same, Kennedy was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48, with Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—a polio survivor—the only Republican who voted against his confirmation.
Public health experts first sounded the alarm when Trump announced Kennedy as his nominee to lead HHS back in November. As head of HHS, Kennedy will oversee health agencies like the CDC and the FDA.
At the forefront of experts’ concern is the influence Kennedy would have over vaccines. Kennedy tried to distance himself from his previous anti-vaccine statements during his confirmation hearings, saying that he’s not “anti-vaccine” but “pro-safety,” and he has said that he and the Trump Administration wouldn’t take vaccines off the market. But experts cast doubt on whether the Administration would hold true to that statement, and many worry that Kennedy could appoint people to agencies like the FDA and CDC who could impede or revoke vaccine approvals, not only limiting access to but also sowing distrust in a powerful public health tool.
Dr. Rob Davidson is an emergency physician in Michigan and executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, which had circulated a petition garnering more than 22,000 signatures from physicians calling on the Senate to reject Kennedy. Davidson says he worries about how Kennedy will respond to emerging diseases, such as H5N1, more commonly known as bird flu. In addition to his anti-vaccine rhetoric, Kennedy has previously suggested putting a pause on infectious disease research, sparking backlash from many public health experts.
“He’s just a dangerous individual when it comes to public health,” Davidson says. “It’s dangerous to have a guy who’s led [the vaccine skepticism] movement being the head of this agency, the mouthpiece of the U.S. government when it comes to public health. So that is truly terrifying.”
“I think a lot of lives are at risk potentially because of this person running this agency,” Davidson continues.
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Experts are also concerned about the actions Kennedy could take on abortion. Kennedy, who had previously expressed support for people’s right to choose, has since shared anti-abortion statements, saying during his confirmation hearings that he agrees with Trump “that every abortion is a tragedy” and abortion policy should be left up to individual states.
During the hearings, Kennedy was asked about the abortion medication mifepristone, which was approved by the FDA for abortion purposes more than twenty years ago but has recently been unsuccessfully challenged in court by a group of anti-abortion doctors and organizations. Kennedy gave vague answers when asked about the drug, saying that Trump asked him “to study the safety of mifepristone” and that the President “has not yet taken a stand on how to regulate it.” Davidson worries that, under Kennedy’s leadership, HHS and the FDA could make mifepristone less available or accessible.
Read More: The Powers Trump’s Nominees Will Have Over Abortion
The one area in which Kennedy has garnered some favor among health experts is his stance on food and nutrition. Kennedy has shared a plan to “Make America Healthy Again,” in which he vows to “ban the hundreds of food additives and chemicals that other countries have already prohibited” and “change regulations, research topics, and subsidies to reduce the dominance of ultra-processed food.”
Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, says he thinks Kennedy and the Trump Administration “have a chance to really coalesce around the top crisis facing our country, which is food-related chronic conditions.” While he hopes that Kennedy will focus on addressing this issue and turn away from his more controversial statements on vaccines, Mozaffarian says he was disappointed by Kennedy’s responses to questions over his anti-vaccine rhetoric during his confirmation hearings. “I think he had a chance there to put that controversy to rest and show he’s going to really focus on where the consensus is, which is that our food system is broken,” Mozaffarian says.
Many health experts are skeptical that Kennedy will actually take meaningful steps on food and nutrition. “It is absolutely eclipsed by his other controversial views,” Davidson says of Kennedy’s stance on food. “The danger of him is so much greater than any potential benefit of those views.”
Experts worry that Kennedy could exacerbate public distrust in science and medicine, and many say that his confirmation and the support he’s received is already a concerning sign of that.
“I think today really is a marker in the road, marking growing mistrust in institutions, marking power of changing information landscape, but most prominently, the marker that the lines between truth and falsehoods are blurred and how we navigate this new world is going to require a different approach,” says Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and founder of the newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist. “What I’m most concerned about is the rhetoric and the sowing of doubt and the confusion … that we’re all going to be facing.”
This article was originally published by a time.com . Read the Original article here. .