USA: The appointment of Robert F Kennedy has horrified public health experts

The announcement that Donald Trump has appointed Robert F Kennedy as the US secretary of health and human services has sent shock waves through the health and scientific community. 

The main goal Kennedy has trumpeted recently is to “Make America healthy again”. At face value, it’s a noble aim. That’s the essence of public health: how to reduce risk factors for disease and mortality at a population level and improve the quality of health and wellbeing. But behind this slogan comes a darker, conspiracy-laden agenda. 

Kennedy is well known as a prominent anti-vaxxer. He has claimed that vaccines can cause autism, and also said that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective”. He called the Covid-19 vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made”.

None of these claims are true: repeat studies have shown that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism, we have numerous safe and effective vaccines against childhood killers such as whooping cough and measles, and the Covid-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives globally.

Similarly, he has tweeted about the benefits of raw milk. Raw milk consumption is a risk factor for a number of dangerous illnesses from E coli to salmonella, but is even more worrying with the widespread infection of dairy herds in the US. While pasteurisation has been shown to kill the H5N1 virus in milk and prevent its ability to infect, raw milk retains its pathogens. Raw milk demand in the US has gone up, with some vendors claiming that “customers [are] asking for H5N1 milk because they want immunity from it”.

How do you try to engage with those who believe things that are simply not true? It’s hard: a recent Nature study found that the more time you spend on the internet trying to validate what is true and not true, you more you go down the rabbit hole of false information. Those who believe outlandish theories are generally people who think of themselves as more intelligent than the average person, have a lot of time to do their own research on the internet, and are convinced that everyone else is being duped.

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Source: The Guardian,17 November 2024