More headlines are rolling in that make it clear that RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine beliefs are particularly dangerous as the world faces serious health threats, including the emergence of bird flu (H5N1) and the rise of whooping cough and measles. Vaccines have eradicated diseases from measles and smallpox to polio and will be essential to combatting other infectious disease threats. In addition to RFK Jr. endorsing dangerous anti-vaccination beliefs, he has spread baseless lies and conspiracy theories about fluoride in the water supply, school shootings and antidepressants, and HIV/AIDS, and he promised to stop research on drug development and infectious diseases.
RFK Jr. is not a public health official fit for office but, instead, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who embraces fringe ideas and won’t follow the science or trust the experts. His proposals threaten to raise costs and jeopardize jobs across the nation. The American people deserve a leader at HHS who believes in science, who believes in vaccines, and who is committed to lowering costs and protecting health care for families. If RFK Jr. is confirmed, health care for millions is at risk.
HEADLINES
Stat: Former Trump FDA Chief Is Seeking to Undermine RFK Jr.’s Senate Confirmation.
- “‘I’ve had conversations, and I’ve raised my concerns and I will continue to raise my concerns,’ Gottlieb said on CNBC in response to a question about whether he’s spoken with individual senators about the prospect of confirming RFK Jr. Gottlieb’s remarks reflect an effort to undermine RFK Jr.’s. nomination before the Senate reconvenes after its Thanksgiving break, when RFK Jr. could begin meeting with senators to discuss his confirmation.”
- “Beyond his criticism of RFK Jr., Gottlieb also called David Weldon, Trump’s pick to lead the CDC, a ‘very committed anti-vaxxer.’”
HuffPost: Ex-FDA Commissioner Says RFK Jr. ‘Will Cost Lives’ As Head Of Health Department.
- “‘If RFK follows through on his intentions — and I believe he will, and I believe he can — it will cost lives in this country,’ Gottlieb said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” ‘You’re going to see measles, mumps and rubella vaccination rates go down,” he said, citing research that suggests just a 5% drop in measles vaccinations would likely have an outsized impact and lead to ‘large measles outbreaks.’”
- “‘I’m not sure how people really understand how Kennedy’s intentions are going to translate into policy, and how serious he is,’ he added on CNBC.
NBC: Trump’s Former FDA Commissioner: ‘It Will Cost Lives in This Country’ if RFK Jr. Follows Through on Intentions.
- “‘I think if RFK follows through on his intentions, and I believe he will, and I believe he can, it will cost lives in this country,” Gottlieb told CNBC, referring to Kennedy, whom President-elect Donald Trump has said he will nominate for health secretary. ‘You’re going to see measles, mumps and rubella vaccination rates go down,’ Gottlieb, who led the FDA under Trump’s first administration, added. ‘And like I said, if we lose another 5%, which could happen the next year or two, we will see large measles outbreaks. For every 1,000 cases of measles that occur in children, there will be one death. And we are not good in this country at diagnosing and treating measles.’”
Washington Post: Trump’s Former FDA Commissioner Warns RFK Jr. Could ‘Cost Lives’ if Confirmed.
- “The nation is approaching a ‘tipping point,’ Gottlieb said, where a continued decline in childhood vaccines could soon lead to measles outbreaks and deaths of children. ‘We’re going to start seeing epidemics of diseases that have long been vanquished, and, God forbid, we see polio reemerge in this country, he said.”
- “He added that Kennedy, who founded one of the country’s most prominent antivaccine groups, had ‘smart people’ around him who could take immediate steps to affect Americans’ access to vaccines, such as changing federal vaccine recommendations. ‘There’s a lot of things that they could do day one, very easily, administratively,’ Gottlieb said.”
NBC: RFK Jr. attacked the CDC’s ‘fascism’ and likened vaccinating children to abuse by the Catholic Church
- “At a 2013 speech for AutismOne, self-described as the largest parent-run autism conference, Kennedy vilified a nebulous group, including vaccine scientists, involved in what he falsely claimed was a conspiracy to hide vaccines as the cause of autism. ‘Is it hyperbole when I say these people should be in jail? They should be in jail and the key should be thrown away,’ Kennedy told the cheering AutismOne crowd before invoking the Bible.”
- “Del Bigtree, Kennedy’s campaign communications director and leader of the country’s second-best-funded anti-vaccine organization, posted last week that Kennedy, while “strategic,” remains committed to the anti-vaccine cause. ‘Bobby didn’t get dragged through the mud for over a decade just so he could compromise his values once he finally got inside the castle,’ Bigtree said.”
The Independent: RFK Jr Likened CDC to a ‘Nazi Death Camp’ and Vaccinating Children to ‘Sex Abuse in the Catholic Church.’
- “RFK Jr said it was not for him to say ‘why someone else is doing something’ before launching into a conspiracy theory about ‘secret’ vaccine letters and how institutions like the CDC ‘go to the extremes.’ ‘To me, this is like the Nazi death camps,’ he said. ‘What happened to these kids, one in 31 boys in this country, is you know, their minds are being robbed.’”
- “His views on the CDC hadn’t changed by 2019, when he spoke at the conference again and likened the federal agency’s vaccine division to ‘fascism.’”
MSNBC: Gov. Green Is Also a Doctor. Here’s Why He Thinks RFK, Jr. ‘Could Doom Us.’
- “83 children had just died, and over 5000 cases of measles that we diagnosed had been spread through the country. It was a disaster, and it was caused in large part by RFK Jr. So he is a terrible pick for HHS secretary, and if he does become our lead health official in the country, you’re going to see outbreaks like this in rural communities, in cities across America. Children will die or have severe disabilities.”
The Guardian: ‘We Learned the Hard Way’: Samoa Remembers a Deadly Measles Outbreak and a Visit From RFK Jr.
- “‘We cannot and should not stay silent. We know what this appointment means. It means more platforms for anti-vaxxers and less funding for vaccines and health programmes,’ Aiono Prof Alec Ekeroma, Samoa’s director general of health, told the Guardian. ‘It must be treated as a threat to our health security.’”
New York Times Opinion: I’ll Never Forget What Kennedy Did During Samoa’s Measles Outbreak.
- “I was in Samoa during that outbreak as part of my more than 16 years of reporting on the anti-vaccine movement. The cause of the outbreak was not the vaccine, but most likely an infected traveler who brought the virus from New Zealand, which that year had had the biggest measles outbreaks in decades, especially among that country’s Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities.”
- “But, as an editorial in The New Zealand Medical Journal reported, so too was a factor that Mr. Kennedy specializes in: ‘increasing circulation of misinformation leading to distrust and reduced vaccination uptake.’ Samoa’s vaccination rates had fallen to fewer than a third of eligible 1-year-olds.”
Boston Globe Opinion: Rep. Jake Auchincloss: Senate Must Reject Kennedy as Health Secretary.
- “Kennedy is not just unqualified, he is dangerous — particularly for children. The Senate must reject him.”
- “If Kennedy is charged with overseeing the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he will fuse his personal brand with organs of state to pump out quackery and conspiracy.”
- “Healthier school lunches and less ultraprocessed foods were good ideas when former First Lady Michelle Obama promoted them, and they’re good ideas now. There are thousands of respected health experts, though, who could execute that agenda without also bringing back polio.”
MSNBC: How Trump’s Public Health Picks Could Undermine Americans’ Safety.
- “Trump’s choice to lead that critical department is none other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He’s an environmental lawyer by trade, but over the years he has pushed anti-vaccine viewpoints. He said just this year that ‘there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.’”
- “He has pushed flat-out false statements that erode public trust in our top medical institutions, which will likely discourage people from opting to get vaccines that prevent deadly and debilitating diseases.”
- “Public health programs, especially disease prevention, work when enacted on a large scale by the government. When an effort to inoculate a population against a disease works, it’s largely invisible. The absence of an outbreak — or the lack of a crisis — is proof of a successful public health program. No one notices when it works, because that’s the goal. Nothing has gone wrong. When your public health system is strong, you don’t notice that kids don’t get measles, polio or whooping cough.”
New York Times: How Kennedy Has Worked Abroad to Weaken Global Public Health Policy
- “[Kennedy] also spent years working abroad to undermine policies that have been pillars of global health policy for a half-century, records show…by lending his celebrity, and the name of his nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, to a network of overseas chapters that sow distrust in vaccine safety and spread misinformation far and wide.”
- “Mr. Kennedy has partnered with, financed or promoted fringe figures — people who claim that 5G cellphone towers cause cancer, that homosexuality and contraceptive education are part of a global conspiracy to reduce African fertility and that the World Health Organization is trying to steal countries’ sovereignty.”
CNN: ‘Drastic and Terrible Impact’: What Kennedy’s Confirmation as HHS Secretary Could Mean for Global Health.
- “Health experts fear that he could undercut decades of work to control the spread of infectious diseases such as measles, polio and HIV; hamper international research collaborations; and scuttle current efforts to increase global coordination and cooperation ahead of future pandemics.”
- “‘Ultimately, the secretary is the CEO of the largest health, medical and scientific enterprise in the world,’ said Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as US surgeon general under President George W. Bush. ‘The world depends on us, for our science, for our emergency capabilities, for our ability to surge and help others.’”
Axios: How RFK Jr. Could Use Levers of HHS to Shape Vaccine and Drug Outcomes.
- “Experts say RFK Jr.’s public calls for more transparency and vows to shore up the trustworthiness of federal health agencies may translate into more requests for vaccine safety data and into appointing like-minded individuals to advisory panels that could influence coverage of drugs, services and devices. They also say it could result in shifting public health funding to chronic disease or environmental health and away from infectious disease, or a diversion of federal investment to study unproven health issues instead of known risks. And they’re expecting attempts to remove job protections from career federal employees who work in policymaking roles and reduce the ranks of officials who don’t align with RFK Jr.’s goals.”
Salon: Bird Flu Is Getting Worse. Disease Experts Worry Trump and RFK Jr. Will Mangle Response Like COVID.
- “Dr. Rajendram Rajnarayanan, of the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Arkansas, told Salon he’s concerned about proposed cuts to staff at various government agencies and how that will affect the future of bird flu monitoring. ‘Cuts to these agencies could severely diminish their capacity to monitor and respond to emerging infectious diseases,’ Rajnarayanan said.”
HuffPost: The Biden Administration Made A Big Decision On Ozempic, But RFK Jr. Could Tank It.
- “But the process of changing federal regulations can take months, or sometimes years. That means the fate of this proposal will be in the hands of Becerra’s successor, which means it could be in the hands of Kennedy. And Kennedy has made his opposition to the drugs clear.”
New York Times: Kennedy’s Inheritance: How Addiction and Trauma Shaped a Turbulent Life.
- “As an anti-vaccine advocate, Mr. Kennedy has plunged into dark and conspiratorial views of government, the press, scientific institutions and especially the drug industry. He has promoted wild and debunked theories, suggesting AIDS could be caused by ‘poppers,’ an inhaled drug popularized by gay men in the 1970s, rather than H.I.V. He backed a documentary asserting that the 2020 pandemic was a ‘plandemic’ — an event orchestrated by the government as part of an effort to undermine American liberties.”
Axios: RFK Jr.’s Past Could Haunt Nomination Process.
- “News stories published over the past few days highlight Kennedy’s key vulnerabilities, including the wildcard presented by his colorful past. A deeply reported piece by the New York Times discusses his ‘drug addiction, compulsive sexual behavior and deep dives into conspiracy theories,’ including his arrest and conviction for heroin possession and a journal he kept documenting sexual encounters with more than three dozen women in one year. Kennedy was accused of sexual assault in the late 1990s by a woman who interned at his law clinic and babysat for his family. The woman has said she’s willing to testify before the Senate, the Wall Street Journal reports.”
Mother Jones: A Super-PAC Backing RFK Offers Paid Access to Him at Mar-a-Lago.
- “The price of enjoying Kennedy’s company at the fundraiser, set to take place on the Trump-owned club’s Lakeview Terrace, is $25,000 each, or $40,000 for a couple. Experts on federal election law say that such a bald exchange—a large donation in exchange for access to a powerful incoming government official—is technically legal, but ethically ill-advised.”