Robert F Kennedy (RFK) Jr. wants to “Make America Healthy Again” in the upcoming Trump administration. I hoped that Trump would lose so that I could delete this article, but that didn’t happen. RFK Jr wants to control all health-related administrations, including Health and Human Services, the FDA, and the CDC. The thought of a Trump administration again is bad enough (and it’s awful), but the thought of RFK Jr. in control of the CDC or FDA is worse than I can imagine.

His vision of what makes America healthy is not even close to reality-based thinking. In fact, I would argue that he wants to take America back to the 1800s when most children died before they turned five because nearly extinct diseases of today killed them back then.

In case you think I’m exaggerating RFK Jr.’s potential role in the next Trump administration, Trump proclaimed during his rally at Madison Square Garden that he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on health, medicine, and food. That’s scary to those of us who care about America’s public health.

Kennedy has made no secret of his disdain for the agencies under the HHS Secretary’s purview. In a video for the Make America Health Again (MAHA) initiative that he leads, Kennedy said his “big priority will be to clean up the public health agencies like CDC, NIH, FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture.” Clean up? He has no clue how they work, so all he’ll do is damage them.

But it’s worse. Here’s what RFK Jr posted on X about the FDA: “FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma. If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

If RFK Jr did want to “Make America Healthy Again,” he’d support efforts to reduce the human impact on climate change. But we all know where Trump stands on climate change — he’s a climate change denier.

But, RFK Jr is a grifter and liar. He believes in pseudoscience, and would not understand science if we gave him a third-grade science book. He lies about vaccines. He lies about chemicals. To be fair, he is right on human-caused climate change.

This post will examine a few areas where RFK Jr will try to make America healthy or unhealthy again.

RFK Jr and the CDC

Despite the claims of the right-wing and RFK Jr, the CDC is one of the most respected public health agencies in the world. They have one overarching goal to make and keep Americans (and many others across the world) healthy. The CDC is staffed by a legion of MDs, PhDs, and other well-trained and educated healthcare experts to do all they can, using science, to keep diseases under control.

We know that the CDC has a group called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), made up of leading vaccine and public health scientists along with other experts, that carefully examines the science behind all vaccines and makes recommendations for their use in children and adults. And we know that vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of lives of children over the past few decades.

Usually, the director of the CDC is an MD or PhD with extensive experience, knowledge, and education in public health. They are among the top experts in keeping America healthy. And they usually do a great job.

Until Trump politicized and undermined the CDC during the COVID pandemic, the CDC did its job in protecting Americans from diseases. CDC staffers were often frontline healthcare workers at disease outbreaks across the world.

RFK Jr has approximately zero knowledge of the science of public health, given his comments on vaccines and other healthcare issues. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

Essentially, he will push his anti-vaccine nonsense on the agency through the appointment of a director who has the same vision as he does. That alone will destroy whatever independent scientific goals that the agency has, and it will lead to making America unhealthy again.

RFK Jr and vaccines

If you’ve been reading anything I’ve written over the past few years, you know I have called out RFK Jr and his unscientific nonsense about vaccines. But let’s just review a few of the more outlandish ones:

• He thinks that vaccines cause autism. There is absolutely no robust and repeated scientific evidence that supports that claim. There isn’t even a hint of evidence supporting that claim. It has been debunked.
• He thinks that vaccines have not been tested. That is just a lie, since vaccine safety and effectiveness have been studied over and over in clinical trials along with large epidemiological studies. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines are settled science.
• He thinks that the HPV vaccine is dangerous and useless. That is not supported by real science which shows us that the vaccine is extremely safe and prevents cancer.

Although RFK Jr has claimed in the past that he’s not anti-vaccine, rather he is anti-unsafe vaccines, he has recently stated that he won’t “take away anyone’s vaccines,” his past comments don’t support that. Plus, his long history of misinformation about vaccines makes it clear that he would not show much favorability towards vaccines.

For example, there are several vaccines on the way for cancer, Lyme disease, norovirus, and other diseases, many of which are based on mRNA technology, that might not be approved if RFK Jr has any control over the regulatory process. Even though vaccines are reviewed carefully by the FDA and CDC through a long and complicated process, it is clear that RFK Jr is suspicious of the process and is highly critical of the FDA and CDC, especially of the COVID vaccine regulatory process.

From my perspective, I would not want RFK Jr anywhere near the vaccine regulations — that process has given us a wealth of safe and effective vaccines that have protected children and adults from dangerous and deadly diseases. RFK Jr does not see that, but those of us who are invested in public health do.

Fluoride

Alarmingly, RFK Jr is also opposed to the fluoridation of our water. Based on a recent report from the National Toxicology Program (which I reviewed here), which seemed to link very high levels of fluoride in water to lower IQ in children, a lot of people are pushing a narrative that fluoride is dangerous.

However, the level of fluoride examined in the study was nearly twice the level found in drinking water. Now, you could say that it might mean that even half the level is still dangerous, but that’s not how toxicology works. Water fluoridation is endorsed by nearly every public health organization in the world — American Dental Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, World Health Organization, and CDC. This represents a scientific consensus on the safety and effectiveness of fluoride in water.

Furthermore, we have another large systematic review that provides powerful evidence that not only is water fluoridation at levels standard for US water supplies safe, but it also prevents cavities.

If we suddenly remove fluoride from our water supplies, the rate of cavities will skyrocket. Most public health officials would be troubled by the future of our children’s teeth. I guess wants “Give America Cavities Again,” not “Make America Healthy Again.”

Summary — RFK Jr is not making us healthy again

There seems to be a lot of conflicting information on whether RFK Jr will get any type of significant role in the Trump administration. He may get some sort of consulting role where he has an office and some staff so he can push out press releases, but he would not have any power. Or he may be appointed some sort of health czar with control over key agencies like Health and Human Services, the CDC, the FDA, and the Department of Agriculture. There is a high level of uncertainty about what he may or may not be able to do

Even if he has some sort of advisory role, he could put his anti-vaccine campaign at a higher level which may have the impact of reducing vaccine uptake as more people listen to his nonsense about vaccines. Although vaccine uptake is still high in 2024, it is right on the edge of allowing diseases that we thought were long gone to return with a vengeance. If his new bully pulpit allows more people to hear his message about vaccines, it could mean lower vaccine uptake and more diseases.

Of course, many of you will say this is the least of our worries in the upcoming Trump administration. And many of you will be right. But I focus on medicine, and for me, this is just another issue that will devastate America. Instead of “Make America Healthy Again,” RFK Jr is going to “Make America Sick Again.”

RFK Jr thinks that our current public health environment makes us less healthy than the rest of the world. It doesn’t. There are issues with our public health, like endemic racism, lack of healthcare access for the poor, and the lack of health insurance for millions of people that make us sick. It’s not vaccines, fluoride, or anything else in the propaganda from Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Anyway, it’s just one more issue that will make us rue the day we elected Trump again.