RFK Jr.: anti-health, anti-human
[a guest rant by Suzanne, RN]
Note: This guest rant was written by : mad gardener, mother and teacher of our seven children, and the most amazing person I know. Suzanne began her nursing career in the cardiac ICU at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). She is now a school nurse at Montclair Kimberley Academy. —SDG
This is by no means an exhaustive complaint against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This is just in reference to his unfortunate-for-the-world position as Secretary for U.S. Health and Human Services. I keep an eye on him in this capacity because health is what interests me as a nurse. For anyone wanting a deep dive into the myriad of reasons why he should not be in charge of absolutely anything but brushing his own teeth, there has been much written already.
Of all of President Trump’s uber-incompetent appointees, RFK Jr. may be the worst, at least domestically. The non-stop lies and utter nonsense that he spews got people killed even before he became HHS secretary, and, with him in this position of power, many more people will die. Not merely because some believe and follow the lies and ignorant nonsense he is spreading, but because he is changing things that will take many years to fix: removing good people who were doing good work for public health, and replacing them with people who will parrot his misinformation, changing policies, etc.
In the current measles outbreak, we have thousands of cases, hundreds of hospitalizations, and three confirmed deaths—all entirely preventable. While the vast majority of those who contract measles survive, they do so at the cost of lasting harm to their immune systems, with some going on to die from complications years down the road.
RFK Jr.’s response to the outbreak is continued encouragement to refuse vaccines, making them out to be dangerous and unnecessary. He champions the idea that getting measles is better than getting vaccinated. This is dangerously wrong. Measles wipes out the immune system’s “memory” of illnesses it has fought off, making people who survive the infection more vulnerable to other illnesses. Studies from countries in the developing world have shown that when kids are vaccinated against measles, deaths from other illnesses also drop dramatically. There is also a deadly measles complication, SSPE, that can hit measles survivors many years later—and there’s no cure. This complication affects about 1 in 1,000 measles survivors, so chances are that more than one of those who contracted measles this year will die within 10 years from SSPE. So tragic and unnecessary. Imagine thinking your baby survived measles, only to have them die as an adolescent from a complication from that infection.
Leave it to Trump, not merely to find the absolute worst people for their job in terms of qualifications—no, he goes above and beyond and finds the person most qualified to do the most damage to the department that they are supposed to be leading, and who will do the most harm to the American people.
During his confirmation hearings RFK Jr. tried to sound as normal as he could. He tried to distance himself from some of his crazy beliefs, and from the anti-vaccine nonprofit he started, the so-called “Children’s Health Defense.” He promised to leave the CDC advisory panel alone—then promptly broke that promise, firing all of them. The FDA’s top vaccine regulator Dr Peter Marks was forced out, and wrote in his letter of resignation:
It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.
RFK Jr. promised to leave the accurate information regarding vaccines not causing autism on the CDC website, and broke that promise as well. He got congresspeople to vote for his confirmation based on these lies. Now the American Academy of Pediatrics is boycotting the recommendations from the new CDC advisory committee, (the AAP are making their own recommendations). Despite attempting to distance himself from his antivax Children’s Health Defense, the CDC has hired the antivax former head of that group, retired nurse Lyn Redwood, to work in the vaccine safety office.
RFK’s first official report was clearly written by AI (ChatGPT or some other Large Language Model [LLM])—which, as is AI’s wont, fabricated studies providing nonexistent evidence supporting the claims it was asked to substantiate. There were seven made-up studies in that report, and one of the real studies actually demonstrated the opposite of what the report claimed. After people pointed out these problems, the White House had to pull the report, claiming it was due to “formatting” issues. Here is a man who talks a lot about “what science supports,” yet he ignores actual science done by scientists, while using cherry-picked data as well as outright fake studies and statistics, in order to pretend that there is science supporting his ideas.
His most damaging offense is his long-standing anti-vaccine propaganda. His position is like someone arguing that we don’t need farms because food comes from the supermarket. The ignorance is actually astounding. We have done such a good job of fighting childhood diseases in this country that people don’t seem to even realize that we could go back to a time where lots of kids (and adults) died or were permanently disabled from diseases that we no longer typically see in this country. It’s the accepted norm that most kids live through childhood, but that didn’t just happen on its own. We did that. Go science! Have you ever watched a movie with someone dying of some disease that we can now prevent and think, “Wow, those were the good old days, at least that person didn’t have to get a shot”? Have you ever read about the terror that polio once caused, and the great rejoicing when the vaccine was first rolled out? RFK Jr. has speculated that his spasmodic dysphonia (the condition giving him his odd, Dalek-sounding voice) was caused by flu vaccines. I hope I don’t need to tell you that there is zero evidence behind this idea.
It’s not just ignorance he is spreading: It’s also constant fear-mongering. He continually brings up the “dangers” of thimerosal, a preservative once widely used in vaccines, which, despite no evidence of ill effects, was removed from most vaccines over 20 years ago because of unfounded fears that it was somehow related to autism. The connection was suspected because thimerosal contains ethylmercury, which sounds dangerous because it contains the word “mercury.” Ethylmercury, though, is not the same type of environmental mercury known for its toxic effects (methylmercury). Ethylmercury is broken down and excreted by the body far more quickly than methylmercury. There is no evidence that the kind of mercury in thimerosal in the quantities used in vaccinations accumulates in the body the way that methylmercury does, or that it causes harm in those quantities.
In a CDC meeting last week, Redwood claimed in prepared slides, “Removing a known neurotoxin from being injected into our most vulnerable populations is a good place to start with Making America Healthy Again.” This ignorant new CDC panel put on a show of voting against flu shots containing thimerosal, despite most flu shots not using it and the lack of evidence that it is actually harmful. The idea that this preservative caused neurodevelopmental problems has been thoroughly studied, and no evidence to support that idea has been found whatsoever. Not being able to use thimerosal does increases costs, and so reduces the number of vaccines that can be made available. It was removed partly because the fear campaign was so effective, that parents were afraid of getting their children vaccinated. In the 20+ years that it was removed, autism diagnoses have not gone down.
Another aspect of the fear-mongering is his constant drumbeat about the sheer number of vaccines children receive today: “between 69 and 92 vaccines,” as contrasted with about 11 in the 1980s. The truth is that from birth to age 18 the number of required vaccines is in the teens (typically about 15 or 16). Because some vaccines require more than one shot, the total number of required shots may be in the 30s. Optional flu shots or Covid shots could raise that figure slightly—but nothing like 69 to 92. The vast majority of kids suffer minor soreness at the injection site, a small price to pay for immunity to deadly diseases.
And while it is of course true that the 15 or 16 required vaccines that children receive today are more than the 11 or so they received in the 1980s, that’s obviously because we have developed more vaccines for more illnesses that were causing hospitalizations and death. We have more protection now, which is what good science does: It gets better. When I started high school in the early 80s, there was no protection against meningitis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, pneumococcus, chicken pox, influenza or HPV. As time goes on, some of these shots are combined, so that multiple vaccines are delivered in one shot, like MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis). Just like medical treatments for conditions improve, and greatly expand life expectancy and quality of life, so do vaccines grow in number and improve in quality. Does anyone long for a time before we had all the many drugs and treatments that we now have?
His accusations that scientists and doctors are raking in big bucks by pushing vaccines is not just scandalous slander, but also ridiculously inaccurate. Vaccines are expensive to store and can often expire before getting used up, which of course costs money. It’s true, of course, that pharmaceutical companies pay for studies that favor their product—but the best way to combat that is to fund studies through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which RFK Jr. is out to cut. This would significantly diminish our ability to make new drug treatments available, because slashing funding for research has the effect of (brace yourself for a shock) reducing research. Guess who will keep doing research? Pharmaceutical companies with a monetary interest in the outcome. A federal court has issued a restraining order blocking the cuts, but RFK Jr.’s agenda to slash funding for government-backed drug research remains in place. Complaining about biased research while slashing funding for the source of unbiased research is really not helpful.
One of his more egregious lies is about vaccines not being rigorously tested. This is utter nonsense. Even when vaccines are combined, they have to go through rigorous testing all over again, just to ensure that they are just as safe as they were when they were alone. It is true that “placebo” testing is generally not done once the vaccine is proven effective, because well—ethics. Letting people die when we could stop them from dying is not something we generally do in civilized societies (as opposed to, like, Nazi medical experiments).
RFK Jr. also perpetuates the racist notion that Black people don’t need the same vaccine schedule as White people because “their immune system is better than ours.” Students of health and history can give many examples of such racist nonsense from the past (Black women don’t need pain relief, etc.). You would think we would have moved beyond this sort of thing, yet here we are.
Do we even have to address the lie he continues to push that vaccines cause autism? If you believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary, then you probably also believe that the 2020 election was stolen, and nothing I can say will make a difference.
At the beginning of this rant, I said that RFK Jr. was perhaps the most dangerous appointee domestically. I take it back: He is also the most dangerous appointee globally. Last week he announced that he was pulling the US out of supporting Gavi, the organization that helps half the world’s children get vaccinated against deadly diseases. This will adversely affect billions of children. If you think it’s only going to kill people in developing countries, think again. We help ourselves avoid disease when we reduce it in the world. Look at the speed that Covid spread from China to the whole world. We are all connected. So even if you don’t care that millions of children around the world will die, don’t think lots of deadly diseases won’t spread here. Especially with vaccinations also going down in this country. Maybe you think that at least you and your family are vaccinated, but you don’t know if your immunity has worn off, even if you and your family are vaccinated. That’s why herd immunity is so key—not just in your community or in your country, but worldwide. This is part of the whole reason we help other countries combat their diseases, it’s not just humanitarian, it makes sense because it is self-serving in a good way.
As I sit writing this, I am looking over paperwork for the new school year, and I see that there is a little girl starting kindergarten in the fall who is undergoing treatment for the most common of childhood cancers: acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Thanks to science (research, new drugs, all the kinds of things we are cutting funding for), the successful cure of this type of cancer has become common. This child cannot receive any vaccines until her treatment is complete. One more reason that anyone eligible needs to be immune, to protect those whose bodies cannot protect themselves. Love thy neighbor.
The best thing that RFK Jr. ever said was that people shouldn’t take medical advice from him. If only he would take his own advice and stop talking altogether about anything health related. While he yaks endlessly about saving people from the dangers of vaccines, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” being debated in Congress is set to kick millions of people off of their healthcare, including people in my family. You have to hand it to Trump: Could there possibly be a worse person to be given power over the health of the world? Do not fool yourself by thinking you are pro-life in any meaningful sense if you support the policies of this administration.
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