It’s difficult to understate the deleterious impact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has had on America’s public health policy. In a little over a year, the nephew of one of the most prodigious leaders in U.S. history transformed from an unserious third-party presidential candidate that not even his family supported, to the nation’s buck-wild authority on disease management. He did so having never previously worked in medicine, public health, or the government, guided only by a pocketful of conspiracies that America’s foremost health experts have thoroughly debunked.
The consequences of Kennedy’s appointment atop the Department of Health and Human Services have been tangible and severe: Historically eradicated diseases have reemerged, killing children; Medicaid recipients have lost their health coverage; and Kennedy has slashed some 20,000 staffers in a massive restructuring of the entire agency. His error-riddled, AI-generated plan for America—called “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA—also pledged to strip fluoride (a well-researched dental aid) from America’s water supply, take aim at ultra-processed foods, and eliminate the prevalence of pesticides.
Yet prior to his shocking ascent to the highest echelons of government, Kennedy was little more than a joke for purveyors and participants in the national political arena, mocked as a brain worm–addled nepo baby with no legitimate prospects in Washington.
Kennedy’s disturbing behavior fueled the doubt. Reports from the campaign trail revealed that the 71-year-old fondly maintained a “freezer full of” roadkill and, in 2010, staged the slashed corpse of a bear cub in Central Park as a practical joke. Other graver allegations against Kennedy surfaced, as well. In July 2024, a babysitter that Kennedy had employed to mind his children some two decades ago accused him of sexually abusing her. In response, Kennedy hit send on a late-night apology text message, asking to see her face-to-face. (It was not received well.)
But all of Kennedy’s past indiscretions apparently became bygones when, after his Democratic-turned-independent bid for the presidency failed, he turned to Donald Trump, groveling for a job.
Kennedy’s family was fully aware of the impending disaster. In a January letter to Congress, Caroline Kennedy—the only surviving child of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and the former U.S. ambassador to Australia and Japan—argued that her cousin lacked any relevant or pertinent experience to run HHS, other than a predatory ambition for power.
She pointed to the work of one of his nonprofits in Samoa in 2019, in which Kennedy’s influence in spreading misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines tanked the country’s vaccination rate. In Kennedy’s wake, thousands of Samoans were left susceptible to measles cases that resulted in dozens of deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of five.
She also claimed that Kennedy didn’t believe his own virulent views on vaccines, writing that he “preys on the desperation of parents of sick children—vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.”
Her concern was well-directed. Kennedy has become the de facto leader of a growing movement of anti-vaxx parents who refuse to provide their children with the same public health advantages that they received in their youth, mostly in fear of thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories that, at one point, linked autism to the jab.
The researcher who sparked that myth with a fraudulent paper lost his medical license and eventually rescinded his opinion. Since then, dozens of studies have proven there’s no correlation between autism and vaccines, including one study that surveyed more than 660,000 children over the course of 11 years.
A frequent target of Kennedy’s vaccine fearmongering is the immunization for Covid-19, which was developed with mRNA technology. Just a few years ago, mRNA was viewed as a cutting-edge medical development, as the coronavirus response was the first mRNA vaccine to debut on the U.S. market, though the technology had actually been developed decades prior.
The difference between mRNA and traditional methods of developing vaccines boils down to less need for time and money. Traditional vaccines inject a weakened or dead version of a virus, triggering the body’s immune response and the development of antibodies. Researching and developing these vaccines is a “lengthy and costly” process that becomes further complicated when researchers have to respond to mutations in the virus, according to Penn Medicine.
Meanwhile, mRNA technology employs a synthetic genetic code that instructs the body to produce proteins akin to the viral protein, training the body’s immune system without ever actually exposing the individual to the disease. Once the response is initiated, the synthetic genetic sequence breaks down in the body, according to Medline Plus. The result is a “plug-and-play” vaccine technology that offers rapid development times at a lower cost to traditional vaccines.
But Kennedy has been less than wowed by the initiative, which Trump approved during his first term. Instead, Kennedy has referred to the 2020 outbreak as a “plan-demic” that he believes was “planned from the outset” and “part of a sinister scheme.” Kennedy also likened 2020 vaccination efforts to the Nazi testing on “Gypsies and Jews,” claiming that the jab was “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare.”
His newfound power, however, has morphed Kennedy’s controversial comments into destructive public health positions. In less than a year, the conspiracist replaced independent medical experts on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with vaccine skeptics. He ended vital vaccine recommendations, such as the immunization for Hepatitis B, for newborns. He cut $500 million from mRNA development funds. The “abortion pill,” which assists tens of millions of Americans in dire situations, has been placed under review.
Overall, Kennedy has shifted the focus of America’s premiere health agency away from evidence-backed science and thrust it into a new era dominated by fear, anxiety, and potential financial gain for himself and his accomplices. The more doubt and division that Kennedy sows, the more money he’ll make. In the year leading up to his appointment, Kennedy disclosed that he made roughly $10 million in 2024 from speaking fees and dividends from his vaccine lawsuits.
When it came time to sit in front of the Senate for his confirmation hearings in January, Kennedy refused to pledge that he wouldn’t keep the business going, skirting efforts by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to get him to swear that he would not take financial stakes in vaccine- and medication-related lawsuits during his time as health secretary.
“No one should be fooled here,” Warren said at the time. “As secretary of HHS, Robert Kennedy will have the power to undercut vaccines and vaccine manufacturing across our country.... The bottom line is the same: Kennedy can kill off access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it. Kids might die, but Robert Kennedy can keep cashing in.”
