Public Health Experts Assail “Out-and-Out Crank” RFK Jr. and “Middle Finger To Science” Dr. Oz
Over the past week, Donald Trump has made two of the most devastating blows to American health care by nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Oz to run the two biggest health institutions in the government. Throughout their careers, they have ignored science to instead promote fake “cures” that put lives at risk. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist with no experience or qualifications for any role in managing our nation’s health care, least of all leading the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Oz made his name by advertising health scams on television. Neither is fit to be in charge of millions of Americans’ health care.
Protect Our Care Executive Director Brad Woodhouse issued a statement:
“Both RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz have one thing in common: they are junk science grifters who are deeply unfit to run America’s health institutions. With the two of them at the helm of American health care, we would be headed down a dark path. The consequences of these reckless nominations will touch nearly every household in the nation and every senator who cares about the health of their constituents should oppose them.”
The Bulwark: Entering Our Crank Era.
- “The first is that Trump’s nomination of an out-and-out crank to run HHS is the strongest proof yet that the president-elect truly learned nothing from his experience quarterbacking the federal pandemic response.”
- “Pandemic or no pandemic, putting Kennedy at the helm of HHS will matter. Such is the case when you entrust a guy to run our health agencies who has organized his entire worldview around the hunch that scientific and medical subject-matter experts can never be trusted.”
- “I spoke with Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and virologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. When it comes to public health, Offit is an American hero: He is the coinventor of the pediatric rotavirus vaccine, and he serves on the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee. He’s also no reflexive Trump hater. But when I asked him about RFK Jr., he didn’t hold back: ‘He’s like the anti-science secretary…I think anybody who hears what he says should realize you shouldn’t have a science denialist heading agencies that are based on science. As HHS secretary, Offit said, Kennedy would be able to do substantial damage very quickly. He could dissolve HHS’s advisory committees, which give the department an enviable reservoir of public health knowledge. He could grind the approval of new state-of-the-art treatments to a standstill and even revoke approvals from treatments and vaccines already on the market. He could work to expose vaccine manufacturers to additional frivolous legislation. Much of this, we should note, Kennedy is on record supporting.”
Alternet: ‘Middle Finger To Science’: Experts Blast Trump’s ‘Single Most Important’ Healthy Policy Pick.
- “KFF chief executive officer Drew Altman wrote: ‘The single most important position in health policy goes to… Dr Oz.’”
- “American Economic Liberties Project researcher Matt Stoller commented: ‘Dr. Oz is not a good pick for a very powerful position in charge of a trillion dollars+ of health care spending. He wants to privatize what’s left of traditional Medicare and owns stock in a bunch of big health platform companies like United and CVS.’”
- “Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch wrote: ‘We are all going to die.’”
- “Lawrence Gostin, O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law at Georgetown Law, added: ‘Dr Oz is unfit to run CMS. He peddles conspiracy theories on vaccines & fake cures. He profits from fringe medical ideas. By nominating RFK Jr & Mehmet Oz, Trump is giving his middle finger to science. Having worked for 40 years in public health, it’s utterly disheartening.’”
Common Dreams: ‘Unfit’: Trump Nominates Dr. Oz to Run Medicare.
- “If confirmed to be the next U.S. secretary of health and human services, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be working ‘closely’ with another official who’s infamous for his questionable health guidance: Dr. Mehmet Oz, who President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.”
- “Oz has spent years peddling health advice, half of which University of Alberta researchers found to be ‘baseless or wrong’ in a 2014 study published in the British Medical Journal.”
- “Oz has also maintained close ties to multi-level marketing companies that promote products like vitamins with false claims about their ability to treat, cure, or prevent diseases.”
Slate (Opinion): You Know RFK Jr. Is Going to Be Bad. It Might Get Even Worse.
- “The most dangerous thing Donald Trump is poised to do in his second administration… is elevate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a messianic, conspiracy-theorist, anti-vaccine menace to society. If Kennedy stands for confirmation as secretary of Health and Human Services, as Trump has announced, we should all march on the Capitol with tetanus-tipped pitchforks (metaphorically, of course) to protect global health and prevent us from going back a hundred years in health time.”
- “It’s a fucking catastrophe. Kennedy can’t ban vaccines, but he can make it harder to get them. Even if you and yours are vaccinated, most vaccines don’t provide perfect immunity, so you are at risk as diseases circulate among unvaccinated people.”
- “[A]s long as Kennedy is in the spotlight and getting respectful coverage, public health is at risk. Brace yourselves. We’re about to be deluged with the most brazen and dangerous lies of our lifetimes.”
The Los Angeles Times (Opinion): Trump’s Anti-Science Backers Go After Water Fluoridation, A Historic Healthcare Success.
- “Kennedy’s tweet about fluoridation exemplifies the anti-vaccine crowd’s method of casting doubt on established public health policies. There are two elements. One is to portray rare adverse health effects — some so rare that their very existence is questionable — as major and acute threats. The second is to downplay the beneficial effects of a policy. That leaves the public believing that the policy has only adverse effects, and that those are immediate and severe.”
- “Kennedy’s mindset is curious: He has promoted treatment of COVID-19 with ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which have been proven to be useless for the purpose, but he campaigns against fluoridation, which has demonstrated a health benefit over nearly eight decades. Is this any way to run a public health agency such as the HHS?”
The New York Times: Dr. Oz, Tapped to Run Medicare, Has a Record of Promoting Health Misinformation.
- “On and off the screen, he has used his influence as one of the nation’s most recognizable doctors to champion healthy habits like a nutritious diet. But he has also sown misinformation — about Covid treatments, weight loss hacks and unproven supplements. He has invested in drug companies, even as he has publicly taken aim at Big Pharma, and has profited from a medical device that he helped invent but that has been subject to several recalls.”
- “His nomination has alarmed some doctors and those who work in public health. ‘I just don’t know what side of Dr. Oz we’re going to see,’ said Dr. Pieter Cohen, a physician and associate professor at Harvard Medical School who studies supplements.”
The Hill: 5 of RFK Jr.’s Most Controversial Views.
- “President-elect Trump’s decision to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary will put some of the former independent presidential candidate’s most controversial views under deep scrutiny.”
- “Kennedy is perhaps best known for his opposition to vaccinations, though he has balked at being labeled ‘anti-vaccine.’ The COVID-19 pandemic launched Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric to new heights.”
- “He vehemently opposed the COVID vaccine and was banned from Instagram in February 2021 for repeatedly spreading vaccine misinformation.”
NBC: Mehmet Oz’s Controversial Health Claims, From the HCG Diet to Green Coffee Extract.
- “Many of those individual actions Oz recommended on his TV show over the years were based on questionable scientific evidence, Besser said. In a BMJ study from 2014, for instance, researchers evaluated health claims made on 40 randomly selected episodes of ‘The Dr. Oz Show,’ a syndicated daytime TV show that ran from 2009 to 2022. They found that about half of the recommendations made on the show were unsupported by scientific evidence.”