Health experts criticize anti-vaccination Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., urge colleagues to unite in fight
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who serves as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration, is a known conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccination advocate. Health experts have sharply criticized Kennedy's first few weeks as secretary and are calling on their colleagues to step up to combat the misinformation and distrust he is spreading, news site Ars Technica reports.
Revolt brews against RFK Jr. as experts pen rally cries in top medical journal - Ars Technica
Experts' complaints about Kennedy range from undermining federal health agencies, cutting back critical local public health programs, postponing key vaccine advisory councils, appointing discredited anti-vaxxers to conduct vaccine research, removing the nation's top vaccine regulator and obstructing the response to the measles outbreak in Texas.
Catherine Edwards, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, posted an article about the measles outbreak in Texas in the online edition of the American Medical Association, which publishes The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) , one of the world's top five medical journals. She pointed out that at the beginning of the outbreak, Kennedy claimed, 'There have already been four measles outbreaks in 2025 and 16 in 2024, so this is not unusual,' but refused to acknowledge that a child had died of measles for the first time since 2003.
Approaches for MMR Vaccination During a Measles Outbreak and Evolving Domestic Attitudes | Public Health | JAMA | JAMA Network
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2832729
In addition, Edwards said that Kennedy had explained that the hospitalized children were 'hospitalized for isolation,' but in fact they were hospitalized because they were experiencing respiratory distress, and some of the children were on ventilators. Edwards also criticized Kennedy, who served as Secretary of Health, for downplaying the measles epidemic and delaying the recommendation to vaccinate unvaccinated people.
Jeremy Jacobs and Garrett Booth, also of Vanderbilt University, criticized Kennedy for appointing notorious anti-vaccination advocate David Geyer to lead a federal study on vaccinations and neurodevelopmental outcomes.
Unreliable Vaccine Information and the Erosion of Science | Vaccination | JAMA | JAMA Network
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2832728
Geyer and his father, Mark Geyer, were named top science deniers by the academic journal Nature in 2010, and along with Kennedy, they continue to promote the now-debunked hoax that vaccines cause autism.
Jacobs and Booth argued that hiring Geyer would undermine the integrity of the scientific process, erode public trust and provide a platform for unreliable information, calling it a 'dangerous concession to pseudoscience.'
All three are calling on researchers and medical professionals to stand up for evidence-based medicine.
In response to the Trump administration's cuts to scientific research funding, members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, including several Nobel Prize laureates, have issued warnings that 'the Trump administration's attacks could harm the nation.'
Scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, warn in an open letter that the Trump administration's cuts to scientific research funding will deal a devastating blow to America's accumulated scientific and technological achievements - GIGAZINE
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