President Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer with no formal medical or public well being experience, as secretary of Well being and Human Sciences. Two Senate committees will query Kennedy this week on how his disproven views of science and medication qualify him to run the $1.7 trillion, 80,000-employee federal well being system.
Listed here are 4 concerns for lawmakers on the Senate Finance and Senate Well being, Training, Labor, and Pensions committees, which can host Kennedy for questioning on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively:
1) Kennedy’s unconventional well being claims.
For many years, Kennedy has advocated for health-related concepts which are scientifically disproven or controversial. He created and was paid a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} by Kids’s Well being Protection, a bunch that champions the false concept that vaccines trigger autism and different persistent ailments and has sued to take vaccines off the market. Kennedy has mentioned covid vaccines are the deadliest in historical past, antidepressants lead youngsters to commit mass shootings, environmental contaminants could trigger individuals to turn into trans, and HIV is not the one trigger of AIDS. He additionally pushes using merchandise that regulators think about harmful, reminiscent of uncooked milk, and for broader use of some medicines, reminiscent of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, to deal with situations with out FDA approval. He says public well being companies oppose their use solely due to regulatory seize by large drug and meals pursuits.
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“He believes you may keep away from illness you probably have a wholesome immune system. He sees vaccines and antibiotics as toxins,” mentioned Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Training Heart at Kids’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Prime Trump well being nominees — Kennedy, Marty Makary for FDA commissioner, Jay Bhattacharya for Nationwide Institutes of Well being director, and former U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon for Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention director — are usually disdainful of the companies they’ll be main, Offit mentioned.
“They suppose they’re going to go into workplace, pull again the curtain, discover all this unhealthy stuff, and reveal it to the American public,” he mentioned.
Throughout a measles epidemic in 2019 and 2020 that killed 83 individuals, principally youngsters, in Samoa, Kennedy, as chairman of Kids’s Well being Protection, warned the nation’s prime minister in opposition to measles vaccination. This habits alone “is disqualifying” for an HHS nominee, mentioned Georges Benjamin, govt director of the American Public Well being Affiliation.
Equally problematic, in Benjamin’s view, was Kennedy’s authorized effort in 2021 to get the covid vaccine pulled from the market. “He can’t say he’s not anti-vax,” Benjamin mentioned. “He wasn’t following the proof.”
A Kennedy spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark.
2) Kennedy’s possibilities seem good, regardless of opposition.
Kennedy’s nomination has emerged in a second when Trump is on a roll and distrust of public well being and medical authority within the wake of the pandemic has created a gap for individuals with unorthodox views of science to grab the reins of the nation’s well being system.
After former Fox Information character Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Protection secretary final week regardless of his controversial {qualifications} for the job and stark warnings from former high navy brass, many Washington observers suppose RFK Jr. goes to be arduous to defeat. In a gathering on the Hill with Democratic senators and their aides final week, Offit mentioned, “the sensation was that he would doubtless be confirmed.”
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Trump has demanded that Republican senators line up behind his nominees and has up to now succeeded. It’s thought that Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine might oppose Kennedy, primarily based on their opposition to Hegseth. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the opposite Hegseth “nay” vote, is a polio survivor who has not spoken publicly about Kennedy however mentioned in December that opposing “confirmed cures” was harmful. Different senators whose Kennedy votes are mentioned to be in query embody Sen. Invoice Cassidy (R-La.), the HELP Committee chair, a doctor who gave a lukewarm response after assembly Kennedy.
Others have reported that Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who shares Kennedy’s concern with the unfold of weight problems and persistent sickness, and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who attended regulation faculty with Kennedy, would possibly vote for him. Neither senator’s workplace responded to a request for remark. Advancing American Freedom, a conservative advocacy group based by former Vice President Mike Pence, has fought Kennedy’s nomination with a serious advert purchase.
3) The hearings are going to be heated.
Democratic senators are coming with loads of ammunition. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) despatched Kennedy a 34-page letter containing 175 questions on every thing from his anti-vaccine statements and actions to his waffling positions on abortion to his stances on Medicare, drug costs, and the reason for AIDS.
Whereas public well being and medical teams didn’t coordinate with Pence’s conservative group, questions on Kennedy’s earlier stance in help of abortion rights might elevate hackles on the GOP aspect of the aisle. Though his group is much from Pence on reproductive rights, Benjamin mentioned, “if it helps derail him, I hope some senators are listening to Pence. Any shelter in a storm.”
“The hearings are going to be very troublesome for him as a result of he’s instructed an online of untruths as he’s marched throughout the workplaces,” mentioned Leslie Dach, govt chair of Shield Our Care, a Democratic-aligned advocacy group.
Public opinion displays leeriness of Kennedy on well being, although not excessively. In a ballot launched Tuesday by KFF, 43% of respondents mentioned they trusted him to make the best well being suggestions. About 81% of Republicans within the ballot mentioned they trusted Kennedy — virtually as many as belief their very own physician.
4) What occurs if Kennedy takes workplace.
On the NIH, FDA, and different federal well being companies, nervous scientists converse of early retirement or leaping to business ought to Kennedy and his company heads take workplace.
The pharmaceutical business has stored quiet on the nomination, as has the American Medical Affiliation. Many affected person advocacy teams are apprehensive, however cautious of making friction with an administration they’ll’t ignore or defeat.
Kennedy’s feedback on AIDS — suggesting that homosexual males’s use of stimulants, relatively than the HIV virus, had been its trigger — are troubling to Carl Schmid, govt director of the HIV+Hepatitis Coverage Institute. However “I don’t know if he’s going to get confirmed or not,” he mentioned. “If he does, we stay up for working with him and educating him.”
On the J.P. Morgan Healthcare convention earlier this month, Emma Walmsley, CEO of GSK, a number one vaccine maker, mentioned she’d “wait and see what the details are” earlier than predicting what Kennedy would do. Vaccines, she famous, are “not our greatest enterprise.”
GSK is certainly one of a handful of vaccine makers remaining on the U.S. market. That quantity might shrink additional if the Trump administration and Congress undo a 1986 regulation that supplied authorized safety for vaccine makers — as Kennedy has advocated.
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