President Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer with no formal medical or public well being experience, as secretary of Health and Human Services. 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.
Here are 4 concerns for lawmakers on the Senate Finance and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committees, which can host Kennedy for questioning on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively:
1) Kennedy’s unconventional well being claims.
For decades, Kennedy has advocated for health-related concepts which can be scientifically disproven or controversial. He created and was paid a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} by Children’s Health Defense, a gaggle that champions the false idea that vaccines trigger autism and different persistent ailments and has sued to take vaccines off the market. Kennedy has stated covid vaccines are the deadliest in history, antidepressants lead children to commit mass shootings, environmental contaminants might cause people to become trans, and HIV is not the only cause of AIDS. He additionally pushes the usage of merchandise that regulators contemplate harmful, akin to uncooked milk, and for broader use of some medicines, akin to 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 massive drug and meals pursuits.
“He believes you can avoid disease if you have a healthy immune system. He sees vaccines and antibiotics as toxins,” stated Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Top Trump well being nominees — Kennedy, Marty Makary for FDA commissioner, Jay Bhattacharya for National Institutes of Health director, and former U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director — are usually disdainful of the companies they’ll be main, Offit stated.
“They think they are going to go into office, pull back the curtain, find all this bad stuff, and reveal it to the American public,” he stated.
During a measles epidemic in 2019 and 2020 that killed 83 people, largely youngsters, in Samoa, Kennedy, as chairman of Children’s Health Defense, warned the nation’s prime minister in opposition to measles vaccination. This habits alone “is disqualifying” for an HHS nominee, stated Georges Benjamin, government director of the American Public Health Association.
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 stated. “He wasn’t following the evidence.”
A Kennedy spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark.
2) Kennedy’s probabilities 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 News character Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Defense secretary final week regardless of his controversial {qualifications} for the job and stark warnings from former high army brass, many Washington observers suppose RFK Jr. goes to be onerous to defeat. In a gathering on the Hill with Democratic senators and their aides final week, Offit stated, “the feeling was that he would likely be confirmed.”
Trump has demanded that Republican senators line up behind his nominees and has to this point succeeded. It’s thought that Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine may oppose Kennedy, based mostly 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 stated in December that opposing “proven cures” was harmful. Other senators whose Kennedy votes are stated to be in query embody Sen. Bill 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 legislation college 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 significant 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 little 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.
While public well being and medical teams didn’t coordinate with Pence’s conservative group, questions on Kennedy’s earlier stance in assist of abortion rights may elevate hackles on the GOP facet of the aisle. Although his group is way from Pence on reproductive rights, Benjamin stated, “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 difficult for him because he’s told a web of untruths as he’s marched across the offices,” stated Leslie Dach, government chair of Protect 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 stated they trusted him to make the proper well being suggestions. About 81% of Republicans within the ballot stated they trusted Kennedy — virtually as many as belief their very own physician.
4) What occurs if Kennedy takes workplace.
At 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 saved quiet on the nomination, as has the American Medical Association. Many affected person advocacy teams are nervous, 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, slightly than the HIV virus, have been its trigger — are troubling to Carl Schmid, government director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. But “I don’t know if he’s going to get confirmed or not,” he stated. “If he does, we look forward to working with him and educating him.”
At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare convention earlier this month, Emma Walmsley, CEO of GSK, a number one vaccine maker, stated she’d “wait and see what the facts are” earlier than predicting what Kennedy would do. Vaccines, she famous, are “not our biggest business.”
GSK is one in every of a handful of vaccine makers remaining on the U.S. market. That quantity may shrink additional if the Trump administration and Congress undo a 1986 legislation that supplied authorized safety for vaccine makers — as Kennedy has advocated.
Arthur Allen:
aallen@kff.org,
@ArthurAllen202
Related Topics
src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″>