President-elect Trump’s decision to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary will put some of the former independent presidential candidate’s most controversial views under deep scrutiny.
Kennedy will need to win 50 Senate votes to get confirmed, and while that’s far from impossible, a series of statements he’s made in the past are likely to cause problems not only with Democrats, but some Republicans.
Here are five issues likely to come up at his confirmation hearings:
Vaccines and autism
Kennedy is perhaps best known for his opposition to vaccinations, though he has balked at being labeled “anti-vaccine.” He founded and led the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense (CHD) before stepping down to launch his presidential campaign in 2023.
Like many vaccine opponents, Kennedy has stated he believes the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal in vaccines causes childhood neurological disorders, autism in particular.
In 2005, he published an article in Rolling Stone and Salon titled “Deadly Immunity,” in which he claimed the federal government was colluding with the pharmaceutical industry to purposely cover up the alleged harms of thimerosal.
The online version of the article was ultimately retracted in response to criticisms, with former Salon editor-in-chief Joan Walsh writing in 2011 that it contained “flaws and even fraud tainting the science behind the connection” between vaccines and autism.
In 2017, during Trump’s first term, Kennedy said he had been asked to chair a commission investigating the link between autism and vaccines. By 2018, it appeared that the Trump administration abandoned those plans, and the commission never materialized.
The majority of childhood of vaccines today no longer contain thimerosal and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said there is no research linking the small amounts of the preservative used in vaccines to autism.
Senate Democrats like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Patty Murray (Wash.) both cited Kennedy’s stance on vaccines as reasons why they believe he is unfit to head HHS.
“RFK Jr. wants to stop parents from protecting their babies from measles and his ideas would welcome the return of polio. He has spread conspiracy theories on everything from COVID to mass shootings,” Warren said in a statement after Kennedy’s nomination was announced.
“Donald Trump’s selection of a notorious anti-vaxxer to lead HHS could not be more dangerous — this is cause for deep concern for every American,” said Murray.
COVID –19 race claims
The COVID-19 pandemic launched Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric to new heights. As the Associated Press reported in 2021, the CHD’s revenue more than doubled in 2020, amounting to $6.8 million.
He vehemently opposed the COVID vaccine and was banned from Instagram in February 2021 for repeatedly spreading vaccine misinformation.
A 2021 study published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Kennedy was among the top 12 spreaders of online anti-vaccine content.
His rhetoris surrounding COVID-19 has at times included racially tinged claims regarding the virus itself.
In 2022, he compared unvaccinated people to Jewish diarist Anne Frank, saying the former had less freedom than Jews hiding from persecution during the Holocaust. He later apologized for those remarks.
The CHD released a film in 2021 titled “Medical Racism: The New Apartheid” that suggested Black people have extremely strong immune systems that become overstimulated by vaccines, and that vitamin D protects against COVID-19 infections.
In 2023, Kennedy reportedly told those at a press event that the virus was a bioengineered weapon “ethnically targeted” to avoid Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
The American Jewish Committee told CNN the “assertion that Covid was genetically engineered to spare Jewish and Chinese people is deeply offensive and incredibly dangerous.”
HIV/AIDS denialism
Kennedy has frequently cast doubt in the past on whether HIV causes AIDS and the effectiveness azidothymidine (AZT), the first ever drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat HIV and AIDS.
The causal relationship between human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has long been established. As both federal health agencies and the World Health Organization have stated, HIV can lead to AIDS when it reaches its most advanced stages and is left untreated.
While Kennedy has at times acknowledged HIV can cause AIDS, he’s also argued the more likely culprit has purposely been obscured by scientists and the pharmaceutical industry in order to profit off AZT.
He told New York Magazine in 2023, “There are much better candidates than HIV for what causes AIDS.”
His intense skepticism of HIV and its treatment are among the reasons Kennedy spoke out against former chief White House medical advisor Anthony Fauci, who led the response to against the HIV epidemic in the 1980s.
He published a book titled “The Real Anthony Fauci” that sought to discredit Fauci’s work in addressing the outbreak and claimed that the government scientist in fact sabotaged effective treatments for AIDS.
Speaking with Megyn Kelly in 2022, Kennedy claimed that Fauci in the 1980s aided Burroughs Wellcome, the developer of AZT and predecessor of GlaxoSmithKline, by using “a number of fraudulent tricks” to get the drug approved.
AZT is still used today in the treatment, management and prevention of HIV infections, though it is no longer used on its own but as part of a combination therapy.
Removing fluoride
The political scion has railed against water fluoridation and said shortly before the election that the Trump administration would advise all water systems to remove the mineral.
While the CDC considers water fluoridation one of the 10 most important public health measures of the 20th century, Kennedy has called it a “toxic pollutant” and “industrial waste.”
Fluoride has added to water systems in the U.S. since 1945. Since then, nearly three quarters of all community water systems in the U.S. have adopted water fluoridation.
The U.S. Public Health Service makes recommendations on fluoridation levels, but there are no federal laws that require the mineral be added to community water systems. The decision to add fluoride to water is left up to local governments in cases where there are no state requirements.
While some studies have suggested a possible link between fluoride exposure and lowered IQs, these studies have been noted to be observational as well as involving cases in which level of water fluoridation exceeds that of U.S. water systems, 0.7 mg/L.
Still, some critics have argued more research is needed into whether low levels of fluoride can have similar impacts.
Touting raw milk
Kennedy has said that he wants to boost access to raw milk, or unpasteurized milk, as part of his wish list for the Food and Drug Administration.
The pasteurization process involves heating milk or other food products for a short time to kill harmful bacteria — making the safe for consumption.
Some people think that raw milk tastes better than pasteurized milk while others believe false claims that it can somehow cure lactose intolerance and allergies and improve gut health. There is no research supporting that raw milk does any of these things.
CDC officials warn that people should not consume unpasteurized dairy product, and doing so poses serious health risk. Raw milk can host numerous pathogens including E. coli, Salmonella, and both Streptococcus and Staphylococcus bacteria.
Health officials are especially concerned about the harms of raw milk after the first case of bird flu was found in the country this past March.
Earlier this year, the Department of Agriculture began testing bulk matches of milk for avian influenza. And during a press conference in May, the CDC, the USDA and the FDA said that recent testing of dairy products found remnants of the H5NI bird flu.
