Critics believe he is a danger to public health while supporters are hopeful for far-reaching improvements to Americans’ well-being.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to “make America healthy again” through his platform as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The possibility of that happening has drawn praise from many Republican lawmakers and vaccine and food safety advocates. Multiple Democratic legislators and public health officials have criticized President-Elect Donald Trump’s nomination, calling Kennedy a “danger” to public health.
Fighting chronic disease, improving children’s health, and addressing corporate influence on government agencies were vital parts of Kennedy’s campaign platform when he ran for president as a Democrat and then an independent.
Kennedy suspended his presidential campaign and backed Trump in August. He previously told The Epoch Times that it was a “heart-wrenching decision” and a necessary step toward achieving his mission of saving Americans from the chronic disease epidemic.
Under the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, Kennedy aims to curtail what he calls the chronic disease epidemic by addressing the so-called “corporate capture” of federal health agencies and removing toxic chemicals from the nation’s food supply, among other objectives.
Trump’s naming Kennedy as his HHS secretary has drawn strong reactions.
Donna Shalala, who was HHS secretary under former President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001, said Kennedy is not qualified for the position.
“The nomination of RFK Jr. for HHS by President-elect Trump is shocking. … He is dangerous to the health and well being of every American,” Shalala wrote on X.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on X that Kennedy would be the person to “detox the place after the Fauci era,” in reference to former NIH director Dr. Anthony Fauci. Kennedy and Paul have both been outspoken critics of Fauci’s policies related to vaccines and the public health response to COVID-19.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a medical doctor, recently told reporters that Kennedy has “championed issues like healthy foods and the need for greater transparency in our public health infrastructure.”
“I look forward to learning more about his other policy positions and how they will support a conservative, pro-American agenda,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy, the ranking member of the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is expected to chair the committee in the next Congress.
Awaiting Senate Scrutiny
Kennedy must receive majority support from the Senate to gain confirmation and officially take the lead of HHS, which manages 13 separate agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Kennedy will face confirmation hearings with the Senate Finance Committee, which is scheduled to be led by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).
The full Senate will vote on his nomination if he is approved by that panel.
When the Senate convenes in January, Republicans will hold at least 52 seats compared to 48 by the Democrats. The number could increase to 53 if David McCormick defeats incumbent Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. That race is currently in the midst of a recount.
Kennedy has said that he will urge Trump on day one to declare a national emergency for chronic disease.
Kennedy said he believes little will change until the influence of giant or private corporations on the FDA, the CDC, and the Department of Agriculture is addressed.
At a roundtable organized by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in September, Kennedy said these agencies “advance the mercantile and commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry that has transformed them and the food industry into sock puppets for the industry they’re supposed to regulate.”
Kennedy has vowed to dismiss the officials who lead those agencies and appoint replacements.
“FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” he wrote on X on Oct. 25, adding his support for raw milk, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, foods with healing properties, and natural remedies such as sunshine.
In September, Kennedy told The Epoch Times that he would revamp the NIH to focus on the causes of autism, autoimmune diseases, and neurodevelopment diseases instead of developing drugs and serving as an incubator for pharmaceutical products.
He has also vowed to lead efforts to address the issue of chemicals in ultra-processed foods.
He told Fox News he would “get processed food out of school lunch immediately” and said federal food assistance such as food stamps should not go toward junk food.
“These agencies, the FDA, the USDA, the CDC, all of them are controlled by giant for-profit corporations,” Kennedy said.
“With President Trump’s backing, I am going to change that. We are going to staff these agencies with honest scientists and doctors free from industry funding. We will make sure that the decisions of consumers, doctors, and patients are informed by unbiased science,” he said.
Earlier this week, Trump announced that Dr. Mehmet Oz was selected to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is managed by HHS.
Kennedy is an outspoken opponent of Medicare or Medicaid covering weight-loss drugs like Ozempic or Zepbound. There has been some bipartisan support for that to happen.
In September, Kennedy told a congressional roundtable that it could cost the U.S. government trillions of dollars if it supported Medicare or Medicaid paying for weight-loss drugs.
“For half the price of Ozempic, we could purchase regeneratively raised, organic food for every American, three meals a day and a gym membership, for every obese American,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy has also called for a review of advertising rules for pharmaceutical companies and has also urged Trump to ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV. He also believes in eliminating liability protections for drug companies.
As for vaccines, he has advocated for safety and informed consent.
“I’ve never been anti-vaccine. People should have choice, and that choice should be informed by the best information possible,“ he said. ”I’m going to ensure that there are science-based safety studies available and people can make their own assessments about whether a vaccine is good for them.”
Is Kennedy Anti-Vaccine?
Some critics opposed the nomination of Kennedy because they considered him to be anti-vaccine or anti-science.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) called Kennedy a conspiracy theorist and suggested that “he will destroy our public health infrastructure and our vaccine distribution systems.”
“This is going to cost lives,” Garcia wrote.
Peter G. Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a statement that the center “opposes this nomination and any other nominees who are a direct threat to science and evidence-based solutions.”
“Nominating an anti-vaxxer like Kennedy to HHS is like putting a Flat Earther at the head of NASA,” he wrote.
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement that Kennedy “is a clear and present danger to the nation’s health” and should not be “placed in charge of the nation’s public health agency.”
Others think Kennedy has been misunderstood or misrepresented.
Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the first Trump administration, told NewsNation on Nov. 17 that “Kennedy is not antivaccine.”
“I’m probably one of the biggest advocates for vaccines,” Redfield said, adding that vaccines are “the greatest gift of science to modern medicine.”
“Kennedy is about transparency about vaccines, honest discussion about vaccines, asking for the data to show that these vaccines are safe and they’re efficacious,” Redfield said.
Anna Matson served as a volunteer for Kennedy’s presidential campaign and runs a website called Kennedy Debunked. She believes that the public perception of Kennedy is “not remotely accurate” and is formed by “widespread lies and misrepresentations from mainstream media and Democratic Party organizations.”
“Kennedy is not loyal to big pharma, and as an attorney who has successfully sued government agencies and big corporations like Monsanto, he knows how to address the issues he talks about. He’s a man of actions, and we need that in whoever leads the HHS,” Matson told The Epoch Times.
Matson has spent the last year debunking the “myths” about Kennedy.
“Anyone who calls him a conspiracy theorist and an anti-vaxxer has never taken the time to listen to him uninterrupted for more than a 30-second clip on mainstream media,” Matson said. “When people take the time to listen to him, more often than not they realize what the mainstream media and the DNC (Democratic National Committee) say about him is just not true.”
Lauren Lee is a strategist for American Values 2024, a PAC aligned with Kennedy. She praised Trump’s decision to task Kennedy with heading the HHS.
“It’s a huge sigh of relief for all the independents who took a chance on Trump when Kennedy backed him. Many of us were nervous. We didn’t know if Trump was going to keep his promise and stay true to his word. We now feel like our vote didn’t go to waste,” Lee told The Epoch Times, referring to Kennedy supporters who voted for Trump in the November election.
Lee said if Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate, there will be “a massive change in the way that Americans eat, and the way that Americans are educated about nutrition and health.”
“Hopefully, we will see a ripple down effect to the poor communities and the less fortunate who are suffering because they’re not able to get access to organic foods, or they live in a food desert,” Lee said. “And hopefully, this spurs corporations to take accountability and remove that poison out of their foods, and government incentives for companies to poison their food is removed.”
Dr. James Lyons-Weiler is an advisor to Kennedy who is assisting in finding candidates to “take part in helping shape policies” for the MAHA movement.
“I think that any topic in medicine that you might care to pick, manufacturers of medical products are represented [in health agencies], but consumers and the physicians are underrepresented,” Lyons-Weiler told The Epoch Times. “A shift I think we will see is a fair representation of the interests of society’s true stakeholders, the safety and efficacy of medicines, and an emphasis on informed consent.”
Lyons-Weiler told The Epoch Times that so many people believe Kennedy is a risk to public health because of “mischaracterization” from the press.
“He’s not anti-pharma. He’s anti-fraud. He’s not anti-vaccine. He’s anti-vaccine injury,” Lyons-Weiler said. “I believe we’re going to see the most substantial positive increase in overall health among Americans that we’ve ever seen, and we will see the end of narrative-based science.
“Science will be done for the sake of knowing, so scientists will be free to be scientists. Medicine will be done for the sake of healing, so doctors will be allowed to become healers,” he said.
Scott Shoemaker, the president of Health Freedom Ohio, told The Epoch Times that he is “ecstatic” that Kennedy brought the subjects of medical freedom, vaccine safety, and informed consent to a national audience in a presidential election.
“I never thought I would see these become political issues that a candidate would carry and truly care about,” Shoemaker said.
A father of vaccine-injured children, Shoemaker said many parents like him “have been gaslighted and made to feel like the reason for their children’s conditions are not because of vaccines.”
“[Kennedy] believes in presenting fact-based science and in-depth study of vaccines and results. It’s shocking that anyone would stand up against that,” Shoemaker said.