Yesterday, US Senate hearings began for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—a massive agency of more than 80,000 federal employees responsible for safeguarding public health. UCS has been clear since his nomination: RFK Jr. is a dangerous and irresponsible choice to lead HHS.
RFK Jr.—a lawyer, not a scientist—has a long history of promoting fringe conspiracy theories, peddling misinformation, and sidelining science. He has actively tried to sabotage public health campaigns, including rollout of the life-saving COVID-19 vaccine, and led a reckless campaign that helped worsen a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa. His harmful anti-science claims on public health issues are well documented and have inspired letters from thousands of health care workers opposing his nomination.
This dangerous rhetoric was on full display at yesterday’s hearing with the Senate Finance Committee. While RFK Jr. attempted to distance himself from his long history of anti-science positions, senators pressed him on countless false or conflicting claims he has made on topics ranging from vaccines to reproductive care, which, if implemented as HHS policy, could have life and death consequences. Senator Warnock of Georgia also asked RFK Jr. about his previous troubling characterizations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and his suggesting that some federal scientists should be jailed.
His nomination hearings are also happening on the heels of chaos within federal health agencies, as I shared in a previous blog post. With agencies like the CDC temporarily barred from publishing external communications like scientific reports without review from political appointees, I remain concerned that RFK Jr. and his band of anti-science phonies will, if confirmed, interfere with the work of public health scientists and experts at these agencies. As we saw during President Trump’s first term, there were several instances of political appointees suppressing and tampering with the work of CDC scientists in particular.
A 2023 survey found that the American public largely trusts federal health agency recommendations. Public trust in guidance from these agencies can literally save lives, and, as detailed above, RFK Jr. has made a career of eroding the public’s trust in scientific agencies. Federal scientists must be free to conduct their research and issue public health alerts and recommendations based on their expertise and understanding of the best available science—not his distorted interpretation of it. As a parent of a young child, I do not want to see HHS led by someone who thinks that chicken soup is a cure for measles, an untreatable virus that infected nearly all children in the US before life-saving vaccines were rolled out. Our kids deserve better. All of us deserve better.
Today RFK Jr. takes the stand again for another hearing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. I will be joining Ken Cook, President of the Environmental Working Group at a livestream of the hearing, which you can catch at 11:30 am ET here. And you can tell your US Senators to oppose anti-science nominees like RFK Jr. here.