WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccination activist and environmentalist, has earned a faithful and fierce following for years by his scathing condemnation of the way the nation’s health officials do business.
And that puts him on a direct collision course with some of the 80,000 scientists, researchers, doctors and other officials who work for the Department of Health and Human Services, particularly with President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to appoint him to lead the agency.
If confirmed, Kennedy will control the world’s largest public health agency and its $1.7 trillion budget.
The agency’s reach is enormous. It provides health insurance to nearly half the country – penniless, disabled and older Americans. It oversees research into vaccines, diseases and cures. It regulates the entry of medication into medicine cabinets and controls the food that ends up in cabinets.
A look at Kennedy’s comments about some of the agencies that fall under HHS and how he said he wants to shake them up:
Food and Drug Administration
– “The FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” he wrote on X in tardy October. “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Keep your records up and 2. Pack your bags.”
The FDA’s 18,000 employees include career scientists, researchers and inspectors who are responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, vaccines and other medical products. The agency also has broad oversight of a range of consumer products, including cosmetics, electronic cigarettes and most foods.
HHS has the legal authority to reorganize the agency without congressional approval to ensure the safety of food, drugs, medical devices and other products.
And Kennedy has long railed against the FDA’s work on vaccines. During the COVID-19 epidemic, his nonprofit group Children’s Health Defense petitioned the FDA to halt apply of all COVID vaccines. The group has claimed that the FDA is beholden to “big pharma” because it gets much of its budget from industry fees and some employees who left the agency have moved to drugmakers.
His attacks became increasingly widespread, with Kennedy suggesting he would purge “entire departments” of the FDA, including the agency’s Food and Nutrition Center. The program is responsible for preventing foodborne illnesses, promoting health and wellness, reducing diet-related chronic diseases, and ensuring that chemicals in food are sheltered.
Last month, Kennedy threatened on social media to fire FDA employees for “aggressive suppression” of a variety of unfounded products and therapies, including stem cells, raw milk, psychedelics and discredited COVID-era treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
In the case of hydroxychloroquine, for example, the agency halted emergency apply after determining that it was not effective in treating COVID and increased the risk of potentially fatal cardiac events.
Consuming raw milk has long been considered risky by the FDA because it contains a variety of bacteria that can make people ill and has been linked to hundreds of disease outbreaks.
If confirmed, Kennedy could essentially overturn almost any FDA decision. There have been infrequent cases of such decisions in previous governments. Under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, HHS overrode FDA approval decisions on the availability of emergency contraceptives.
Relaxing FDA regulations or revoking approval of longstanding vaccines and drugs is likely to pose a greater challenge. The FDA has lengthy requirements for removing drugs from the market based on federal laws passed by Congress. If the process is not followed, drug manufacturers could file lawsuits that would have to go to court.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
— “On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote on social media in November.
The CDC’s fluoride guidelines are just one recommendation the agency has made as part of its mission to protect Americans from disease outbreaks and public health threats.
The agency has a core budget of $9.2 billion and employs more than 13,000 people
A few days before Trump’s election victory, Kennedy said he would reverse the agency’s recommendations regarding fluoride in drinking water. The CDC currently recommends a fluoride level of 0.7 milligrams per liter of water.
The recommendations have strengthened teeth and reduced tooth decay by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear. At higher levels of fluoride, stained tooth patterns appeared, prompting the U.S. government to lower its recommendations in 2015 from 1.2 milligrams per liter of water.
Local and state governments control water supplies, with some states requiring fluoride levels by state law.
Kennedy, who has said “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective,” would be responsible for appointing influential experts to the committee to assist set vaccination recommendations for doctors and the general public. These include polio and measles given to infants and teenage children to protect against debilitating diseases, vaccinations for older adults to protect against threats such as shingles and bacterial pneumonia, and vaccinations against more exotic threats for international travelers or laboratory workers.
National Institutes of Health
– “We have to act quickly,” Kennedy reportedly said during an event in Scottsdale, Arizona, over the weekend. “So that on January 21, 600 people will enter the NIH offices, and 600 people will also leave.”
The agency’s $48 billion budget funds medical research on cancer, vaccines and other diseases through competitive grants to researchers at institutions across the country. The agency also conducts its own research with thousands of scientists working in NIH laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland.
Advances supported with NIH funding include a drug for opioid addiction, a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, many novel cancer drugs, and the rapid development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
In the past, Kennedy has criticized the NIH for not doing enough to study the role of vaccines in autism.
Kennedy wants half of the NIH budget to go toward “preventive, alternative and holistic health approaches,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal in September. “In the current system, researchers do not have enough incentive to study generics and causal therapies that address, for example, nutrition.”
Kennedy wants to prevent NIH from funding researchers with financial conflicts of interest, citing a 2019 ProPublica investigation that found more than 8,000 federally funded health researchers had significant conflicts such as taking equity stakes in biotech companies or reported the licensing of patents to drug manufacturers.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
– “If a doctor’s patient has diabetes or obesity, the doctor should be able to say, ‘I’m going to recommend gym memberships, and I’m going to recommend good food, and Medicaid should be able to finance these things.'” the same as at Ozempic,” Kennedy said during a Sept. 30 town hall meeting in Philadelphia.
Kennedy hasn’t focused as much on the agency, which spends more than $1.5 trillion annually to provide health care for more than half the country through Medicaid, Medicare or the Affordable Care Act.
Although Trump and other Republicans have threatened some of this coverage, Kennedy has remained noiseless.
Instead, he is a staunch opponent of Medicare or Medicaid and covers exorbitant weight loss drugs like Ozempic or Zepbound. These drugs are not fully covered by either program, but there is bipartisan support in Congress to change that.
During a congressional roundtable in September, Kennedy urged some to support the effort, noting that it could cost the U.S. government trillions of dollars. An exact price the U.S. government must pay for these drugs has not been established.
Kennedy has said that Medicare and Medicaid should offer gym memberships instead and offer healthier foods to participants.
“For half the price of Ozempic, we could buy regeneratively grown organic food for every American, three meals a day and a gym membership for every obese American,” Kennedy said.
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Associated Press writers Carla K. Johnson in Seattle and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.
