This Guy Has Got To Go

    In November of 2024, shortly after President-elect Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), I read an opinion piece titled, “The Case Against RFK Jr.—A man who asserts nonsense about vaccines and HIV should not be at the helm of HHS.” I mumbled to myself…”uh-oh!” Today, over 13 months since he assumed the role, I declare the case closed—his background, views, and actions as Secretary of HHS all offer overwhelming evidence of his frightening unfitness for this crucial job.

    The position of HHS Secretary is important, correct me if I’m wrong here, because of its broad scope and impactful role overseeing health care, biomedical research, drug approval, and public health. My Breakfast Club gang tell me that Kennedy’s predecessors have had professional backgrounds in fields ranging from medicine to public administration, often making significant contributions to those fields. Not so, RFK Jr. Neither his experience, accomplishments, nor prior beliefs provided a rational basis for his selection. On the contrary, they should have immediately disqualified him for this role. But that’s the dice we roll these days, isn’t it?

    He lacks any medical, scientific, public health, or administrative background, and is best known for having produced a continuous stream of demonstrably false statements on issues relevant to the fields he would oversee. In fact, you could make an argument that he was much like the man who nominated him…see what I did there? But I digress. These range from views on vaccine efficacy and safety, the cause of AIDS, the supposed harm caused by electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones, and if that’s not enough…fluoridation! As well as many other topics. Placing a person with this track record atop HHS rewards ignorance of science and health and reflects disdain for the very biomedical community that has led the world for decades in accomplishments and impact. I mean, for the love of Hippocrates, why not just nominate me!

    I write this not as a physician or nurse or one using leeches, or any other type of medical practitioner, but as someone who has been marinated in a lifetime of medical conversation, instruction, and day to day operations by family members, loved ones, and friends. And, most importantly…I can read. And while proud of the many advances made by American biomedicine in recent years, I am also aware, and have been made aware, of the many limitations and failures of ongoing efforts to improve the nation’s health. Many aspects of our medical and research systems could and should be better. I mean, this may sound a little nuts, but the craziness caused by Trump’s election in 2024 could have been leveraged to bring about beneficial changes that would not otherwise have been achievable. But, as predicted by many people frighteningly smarter than me, by choosing RFK as HHS Secretary, Trump squandered that possibility. RFK Jr. has carried out a series of actions that reflect his ignorance, flawed judgment, and dare I say, stupidity. These personal shortcomings, as well as the subsequent decisions, will only make the country sicker, while further diminishing confidence in our science, medicine, and public health, in the eyes of more than a few countries who have, in the past, looked to the United States as a leader in all kinds of medical innovations. 

    A few examples (in my opinion) of RFK’s bad judgement—out of many—will suffice to illustrate this. Maybe you’ll remember some of these: In a move that justified concerns about his irrational approach to vaccines, on June 9, 2025, this guy fired the entire seventeen-member CDC Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), falsely claiming pervasive conflicts of interest among this outstanding group. He replaced them with a smaller group that includes some longstanding vaccine skeptics as well as several people with no qualifications whatsoever for this role…you know…idiots like me! He supported and implemented cancellation of all federal funding for research on mRNA vaccines, an area with tremendous potential for combating diseases, including cancer, without providing any specific scientific justification. Under oath before Congress, he displayed ignorance about the estimated number of COVID-19 deaths in the US and doubted whether the mRNA vaccines rapidly developed under Operation Warp Speed had saved over a million American lives, despite overwhelming evidence that they had. There are many more examples of this kind, but c’mon…do I really need to continue?

    Another area of concern is his promotion of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, which promises easy but unproven answers to very real and difficult problems. As one writer recently opined, “MAHA is a bad answer to a good question.” Though progress against disease has been made on many fronts, we Americans—including our children—are less healthy than we should be, and we should all want to know how best to address this. Chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes have increased in prevalence despite the fact that many new insights into their pathophysiology have been achieved and new treatments have become available. Changes in nutritional and other environmental exposures are certain to be important contributors, but the specific causes are vigorously debated, and new research insights are desperately needed to address these. But there is no chance of reaching the desired outcomes while RFK Jr. takes advice from MAHA health influencers profoundly deficient in scientific knowledge and reasoning—who peddle unproven advice and nutritional supplements—while simultaneously reducing or freezing NIH-funded research by many of the nation’s most accomplished scientists.  

    There are similar concerns with regard to other disorders, including autism, about which RFK Jr. frequently speaks. Autism is a serious disorder that has been diagnosed with increased frequency in recent decades, though the extent to which this results from changing diagnostic criteria rather than increased disease prevalence remains uncertain. RFK Jr. has long supported thoroughly debunked claims that autism is linked to MMR vaccination. We should have been extremely skeptical about both his plans to fund research to identify new causes of autism, and his statement that by the end of September he was going to announce “what has caused the autism epidemic.” As with obesity and diabetes, the problems with autism are real and require new insights; but RFK Jr. is clearly the wrong person to lead the charge. By the way, the plan for that announcement came and went. 

    Another way to judge executive leadership is by the quality of senior appointments, and the ability of these individuals to advance their areas of responsibility while effectively working with the leader who appointed them. The case of Susan Monarez, a PhD microbiologist and longstanding public health professional, raises serious questions in that regard. Monarez was Acting Director of the CDC from January 23, 2025 to March 25, 2025, when Trump nominated her as the organization’s Permanent Director, apparently at RFK’s prompting. On July 29th, she was confirmed in that role by a Senate vote of 51–47. At the time, RFK Jr. commented, “I handpicked Susan for this job because she is a longtime champion of MAHA values, and a caring, compassionate and brilliant microbiologist and a tech wizard who will reorient CDC toward public health and gold-standard science.” Less than a month later, on August 27th, RFK Jr. demanded she be fired—and her dismissal was duly announced by the White House—after she refused “to rubber stamp unscientific directives” related to vaccine policy, a chain of events that triggered the resignations of multiple senior CDC officials. A group of former CDC directors has warned that the organization is in danger of unravelling.

    RFK’s other major appointments to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (Dr. Mehmet Oz), the FDA (Dr Marty Makary), and NIH (Dr Jay Bhattacharya) are professionally qualified for their roles by normal standards, though major questions remain about how they have been leading these critical agencies while reporting to Kennedy. Dr. Monarez’s very public dismissal from the CDC sends a clear message: Any refusal to fulfil the demands of Trump or RFK Jr.—however flawed—could result in removal from office. This is hardly a prescription for effective leadership of those important agencies.

    In addition to these specific issues, the extremely negative views RFK Jr. frequently expresses about the health and science ecosystem that he oversees are highly damaging. He repeatedly blames the poor health of Americans on a corrupt alliance between physicians, scientists, administrators, and the food and pharmaceutical industries, accusing them of conspiring to harm the public in pursuit of power, fame, and profit. This deeply conspiratorial view at the core of his MAHA movement is profoundly mistaken. A head of HHS who holds such a dangerously uninformed perspective will surely not Make America Healthy Again. On the contrary, he threatens to dismantle one of the greatest achievements our society has ever produced.

    There are very real problems facing health and biomedical research in America. To successfully address these using the best talent and strategies at our disposal, RFK Jr. must be replaced as Secretary of HHS…and the sooner the better.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com