Many public health experts said their fears realized Thursday when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy, who has an environmental law experience, is the founder of an outstanding antivacamic activist group that has bought numerous demands against federal health agencies. He has also written several books by questioning the safety and effectiveness of routine vaccines.
Only a republican member of the Senate controlled by the Republican Party, Senator Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, voted with the Democrats to unanimously oppose Kennedy’s confirmation. In a statement, McConnell, a survivor of polyomyelitis, said the “Dangerous Conspiracy Theories Traffic Registry and confidence in public health institutions.”
In the Senate hearings last month, Kennedy said that his priority as secretary of the HHS would be to reverse growing rates of chronic diseases in the United States, such as diabetes, cancer, asthma and obesity.
Public health experts said they agreed with that goal in general, but they felt that having Kennedy at the head of the largest and powerful health agency in the country would do more damage than well.
The HHS secretary supervises an annual budget of $ 1.7 billion and 13 agencies, including national health institutes, disease control and prevention centers and food and medication administration.
To experts worried that Kennedy could name the skeptics of vaccines for key roles within these agencies, establish standards impossible to gather for vaccine approvals and refuse to continue storing H5N1 vaccines that may be necessary in case of a pandemic of pandemic Aviar flu.
Kennedy has also expressed interest in stopping research on infectious diseases such as COVID and measles over the next eight years, which experts said they could prevent scientists from preparing for future pandemics.
“It is a sad day for the children of the United States, and for the health of our nation, when a scientific negialist and antivacamic activist is chosen to direct the HHS,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center of the Vaccine Education of the Vaccines of the Vaccine Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
A Kennedy representative did not respond to a request for comments. The HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comments. Children’s Health Defense, the anti -cacuna group that Kennedy founded, applauded his confirmation on Thursday.
“Bobby deserves this honor, and CHD is confident that he will make great advances towards the objectives he has established for HHS: radical transparency, standard gold science and make the United States again healthy,” said Mary Holland, CEO of the group, in A statement.
Kennedy faced an intense scrutiny of Democratic senators in their confirmation audiences last month for previous statements that link children’s vaccines with autism, referring to Lyme’s disease as a military biowapon and stating that HPV vaccines increase of cervical cancer, all of which are not backed by science. .
Before audiences, hundreds of health scientists and professionals published a public letter that opposes Kennedy’s nomination.
“Their unfounded and marginal beliefs could significantly undermine public health practices throughout the country and worldwide,” they wrote.
After questioning Kennedy about his antivacamic positions during an audience, Senator Bill Cassidy, republican of the action, said he was “struggling” with how to vote. But Cassidy, a doctor, finally voted to confirm Kennedy last week after what he described as “very intense conversations” over the weekend.
Several public health experts said that their concerns were not relieved by Kennedy’s comments at audiences, even after he said he would support the recommended vaccination schedule of the CDC.
“Regardless of what I may have said during their confirmation audiences, I feel much more comfortable looking at his history in his entire career as an antivacious defender, and that is what I imagine he will do as secretary of the HHS,” said Andrew Kelly, professor Public Health Associate at the State University of California, East Bay.
Kelly said he worried particularly about confirmation after the Trump administration, federal funds were temporarily frozen and instituted radical dismissals between federal health agencies.
“The idea of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the HHS is actually more worrying or terrifying what was three weeks ago, particularly because the administration in the short three weeks has been shown that it feels comfortable with violating the Constitution” Said Kelly.
He worried that Kennedy is allowed to retain money from schools that have vaccine requirements or that they could appoint anti -cachamic defenders of the Immunization Advisory Committee on CDC on immunization practices.
Dr. Syra Madad, a member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs of the Harvard Kennedy School, said that, according to previous administrations, career scientists within federal agencies were a safeguard against political influence.
“In the last two weeks in the United States, it seems that we are living in a twilight area, and I no longer understand if we have those railings in their place or how effective they are,” said Madad.
Even with constitutional limits in his authority as secretary of the HHS, Kennedy could still promote the skepticism of vaccines under his new platform, said Matt Motta, an assistant professor of Health and Policy Law at the School of Public Health of the University of Boston.
“The HHS director is one of the most visible faces of public health in the United States,” Motta said. “Having someone skeptical of conventional science in so many important ways sends a sign that these are positions that are conventional, which are acceptable.”
However, Motta pointed out some “silver endings in the dark cloud that hang on public health at this time”, including Kennedy’s emphasis on the investigation of chronic diseases and the will to challenge corporate influence on industries food and pharmaceutical.
Other experts said it was difficult to gather any optimism after Thursday’s vote.
“Its placement at the top of our broader health system only fosters more misinformation, more erroneous information, more vaccine skepticism, more anti-vax defense, and it does so much damage that I can’t even see a silver lining,” Kelly , the associate professor, she said.
