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American health secretaries, almost as a general rule, have curriculum vitaes handled at a safe point. From time to time, we will attract the scandal to its mandate; See Tom Price’s reported tenderness for chartered jets. But whoever has collected enough cachet to be appointed to lead the Ministry of Health and Social Services tends to arrive in front of the Senate with references as impeccable as the search for everything that could disqualify them of the position is difficult.
Donald Trump’s selection by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed today as the new American secretary of health, was specifically intended to break this mold. Kennedy positioned himself as a telling truth determined to uproot the “corporate capture” and the “tyrannical insensitive bureaucraties” which had seized the country’s public health agencies. Even thus, it is remarkable how unimaginable his confirmation would have been in a political moment other than that of today, when an online reactionary received a high -level position to the Ministry of Justice and a teenager known as “Big balls»Advises the State Department. Kennedy has largely attractive opinions on the fight against corruption and to help Americans overcome chronic diseases. But it is also, at an almost caricatural degree, not impeccably accredited. He has treated countless unproven and dangerous conspiracy theories on vaccines, AIDS, Anthrax, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, COVID-19, Sunlight, Gender Dysphoria and 5G. He has potential Conflicts of financial interests. He spoke of a worm eating part of his brain and roughly Throw a dead bear at Central Park. He was Accused of sexual assault. (During her confirmation hearing, Kennedy denied this allegation and said that she had been “demystified”.)))
Ultimately, none of this was important. While the Democrats of the Senate unanimously opposed Kennedy confirmation, he crossed the Senate’s vote this morning after losing a single republican vote, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a survivor of the polio that seems Having challenged Kennedy’s anti-vaccine activism. Kennedy, however, obtained the support of Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor who, until last week, seemed to be the republican legislator most concerned with the potential damage to the elevation of a theorist of the anti-vaccin plot to the most High pole of the country in public health. Kennedy’s confirmation is a victory for Trump, and a clear message that the Senate Republicans are ready to adopt pseudoscience in their unshakable deference to him. The health of the Americans is in the hands of Kennedy.
So what’s going on? Kennedy spokesperson did not respond to my request to talk with him about his program. Nevertheless, the first weeks of Kennedy will probably be hectic, adding to the chaos constantly stopped executive decrees of Trump and the repression of Elon Musk against many federal agencies. As HHS chief, Kennedy will supervise 13 different agencies, including CDC, FDA and National Institutes of Health. Before being appointed, Kennedy said he was thinking that 600 employees should be dismissed on the NIH and replaced by more aligned employees on Trump’s opinions. (The NIH employs around 20,000 people, so such a cup would be at least minor compared to the more radical movements of the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government.) He also suggested that everyone at the FDA food center could be Retched in pink net. More generally, he said that he “will remove the conflicts of financial interests for our agencies”, but he did not say exactly what he believes to be so conflicting that they should be unemployed.
In NIH in particular, any sudden movement of Kennedy would aggravate the changes which already take place under the auspices of Doge. Musk’s crew has tried to cut radically The amount of administrative financing has generally operated the agency to universities in support of scientific research. The meetings planned for these funds were also suddenly canceled last month. (Funding reductions have been temporarily interrupted by a federal judge, and financing meetings seem to have resumed.) It is easy to assume that Kennedy would support these efforts, given his aspirations to dismiss federal bureaucrats. But Doge’s effort can actually undermine its larger objectives, implementing a certain potential tension between Kennedy and Musk. Research funding is essential to the pursuit of Kennedy to unravel the causes of the crisis of American chronic disease; he has suggested Consecrate more NIH resources to investigate “preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health”.
Politically, both immediate and in the long term, chronic diseases will probably occupy Kennedy’s attention. He called this question an existential threat to the United States, and it is the clearest part of the Kennedy agenda that has bipartite support. However, exactly what he can do on this question is uncertain. Many policies for which he pleaded, such as the elimination of the junk food of lunches, really fall into another agency: The American Department of Agriculture. The only policy linked to the food he has regularly presented that he has the power to promulgate is to prohibit certain chemical additives in the food supply. Despite this, the ban on a food additive is generally a laboriously slow legal process.
His public statements provide other more vague advice on the problems he will probably face during his mandate. In abortion, he said that he would order the FDA and NIH to examine the security of the abortion pill. (Trump previously suggested that his administration would protect access to abortion pills, although the president’s position is Best disturbance.) On the price of drugs, Kennedy said he wanted to repress the intermediaries who negotiate them for insurance companies. But overall, Kennedy said little about how he tackles the complex regulatory problems that are traditionally at the center of the Secretary of Health. He could simply not have so much to say. Kennedy hinted that he cares much less about these subjects than food and chronic diseases. During his confirmation hearing, he told senators to focus on issues such as insurance payments without reducing the chronic sickness rate would amount to “moving bridge chairs on the Titanic”.
The most important and most consecutive question mark is how Kennedy will address vaccines. If he had to escape the Americans’ access to fire, or even simply the preparation of the Americans to receive them, he could degrade the nation’s protections against A range of diseases And, in the end, be the cause of people ‘death. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine advocacy has been the subject of some of the most intense exams during his confirmation hearings. “If you go out unequivocally”, vaccines are safe; This does not cause autism, “it would have an incredible impact. It’s your power. So what’s going to be? Asked Cassidy. Kennedy has promised not to depreciate or delay the approval of new vaccines and not to enlighten the standards for the approval of government vaccines. Throughout the process, he tried to distance himself from his positions in vaccine against the ancient affirmation That federal officials supporting the American Childhood-Vaccin program were similar to leaders of the Catholic Church covering pedophilia among the priests. But his answers to the senators’ questions on his past remarks and whether the vaccines cause autism were still elusive. And some of his plans play in the hands of the anti-vaccine camp. He promised, for example, to advance the publication of studies funded by the government with their complete raw data – a decision that will probably appeal to defenders of transparency, but also would act like a branch of olive tree to anti -vaccine activists who had to continue federal agencies in recent years for certain vaccination data.
Last week, after Cassidy expressed a decisive vote which enabled Kennedy’s appointment to switch to full consideration in the Senate, he declared in a speech on the Senate soil that he had tested Kennedy enough to feel confident that he could rebuild confidence in public health. (Cassidy did not mention that the advancement of Kennedy was also in his political interest. A spokesperson for Cassidy refused my interview requests.) Kennedy holds an almost biblical status among his supporters, and a large part of These people are wary of federal health agencies. Kennedy’s professed belief in Cassidy’s leadership offers a soothing vision: imagine the Americans whose views on the establishment of public health have been deeply eroded over time, all with their faith restored in one The most rigorous scientific institutions in the world thanks to a radical foreigner.
But consider the logic here. By voting to confirm Kennedy, the American Senate bet the future of our public health system on a prayer that a conspiracy theorist can take over the agencies that he and his supporters have spent years breaking. A more realistic result may be that Kennedy leaves public health more broken than ever. Although many Americans are skeptical of the government’s scientific institutions, polls show that relatively few have the kind of contempt deeply assisted for the public health agencies that Kennedy has adopted. By rushing to this fraction of voters, Kennedy risks alienating the much broader part of Americans who may not agree with everything that the CDC has done in recent years, but does not think that the Agency’s vaccine program is comparable to a Nazi death camp, as Kennedy said.
If Kennedy went so far as to disavow any link between autism and vaccines, it could cause trouble. Jennifer Reich, professor at the University of Colorado de Denver, who studied skepticism of vaccines, told me that the question of autism is only part of a much more diffuse concern shared by Parents who return to their children’s vaccine. For RFK to disavow all of his vaccination antagonism, he should essentially abandon his primary skepticism towards science in general. Such apologies would probably do more to return some of his most ardent supporters against him than to change their opinions, argues that Aison Buttenheim, an expert in vaccination skepticism at the University of Pennsylvania. “People will jump and wheels of incredible carts so as not to have their beliefs and their behavior in conflict,” she told me.
If Kennedy really wants to restore faith in public health, he will have to win his conspiratorial colleagues while retaining the confidence of the many people who already thought that agencies were doing good work before his arrival. Maybe he will try. But proclaiming, as he did in October, that the “FDA war against public health is about to end” is not a great way to start.