The Republican-controlled US Senate approved Robert F. Kennedy Jnr as health secretary on Thursday, disregarding alarm from the medical community over his history of promoting vaccine misinformation and denying scientific facts.
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Known widely as “RFK Jnr”, the 71-year-old nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy secured the nomination by a vote of 52-48, becoming the latest contentious addition to US President Donald Trump’s cabinet.
Former Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell voted no, standing as the sole Republican dissenter.
Kennedy now leads a department overseeing more than 80,000 employees and a US$1.7 trillion budget, just as scientists warn of the growing threat of bird flu triggering a human pandemic, while declining vaccination rates mean once vanquished childhood diseases are re-emerging.
He was previously an environmental lawyer who sued chemical giant Monsanto and accused climate-change deniers of being traitors.
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But he has spent much of the past two decades touting conspiracy theories from linking childhood vaccines to autism and suggesting the Covid-19 virus spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, to casting doubt on whether germs cause infectious diseases.