The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the health secretary of Donald Trump was hampered by his long file of anti-vaccine and anti-scientific declarations. Even if the Republicans kiss him like an iconoclast, Democrats and other criticisms castigated Kennedy Like know-how without scientific or bureaucratic experience to do the work effectively.
But by painting Kennedy as a clown, these criticisms lack something important. Kennedy not only won an audience for his bizarre claims, but he also made a lot of money by broadcasting them. And he could bear to do more of his anti-vaccine crusade as the highest health official of the United States-the kind of cheeky self-feeding that has become almost normalized in Trump America.
Like the New York Times reported Last week, Kennedy referred to potential complainants – people who say they were injured by vaccines – in the law firm Wisner Baum, who continues Merck on alleged damage linked to the HPV vaccine. (He was also involved in other cases for the company.) Wisner Baum pays Kennedy for these references, in the vaccination case and other cases: he won more than 2.5 million dollars during the Last two years, Times reported. When the trial ends, if the vaccine manufacturer lost, Kennedy will obtain a financial award.
During the hearing of the Senate finance committee on Wednesday on the appointment of Kennedy, Kennedy refused to say that he would end the relationship with Wisner Baum during a questioning line of senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma ).
After stating that Kennedy would not accept the money of the pharmaceutical company as a health secretary, Warren asked if Kennedy would also be committed not to take money from prosecution against Pharmaceutical companies, under his arrangement with Wisner Baum.
“You make me look like a shill,” replied Kennedy, before diverting Warren’s question with an excuse he has repeated more than once: “You ask me not to continue the pharmaceutical companies.”
Warren then crossed the various ways in which Kennedy could influence the result of these prosecution while being secretary of the American department of health and social services. He could publish theories of the anti-Vaccin conspiracy, she said: “This time on the header of the US government.” He could appoint anti-vaccine scientists in federal vaccine panels and withdraw vaccines from the calendar recommended by the federal government of infant vaccines. He could even provide FDA data, Warren told the law firm who was pursuing pharmaceutical companies and the compensation for their victories.
Given another opportunity from Warren, Kennedy again refused to undertake to remove his financial contribution from the anti-vaccine dispute. Instead, a few minutes later, he said he was unjustly offset as a conspiracy theorist because he opposed conflicts of interest.
“No one should be fooled here,” said Warren. “As HHS secretary, Robert Kennedy will have the power to undermine vaccines and the manufacture of vaccines across our country … Kennedy can kill access to vaccines and make millions. Children could die, but Kennedy can continue to collect. »»
Despite all this, the Senate appears on the right track to approve its appointment, at least so far. Kennedy will testify to the Senate health committee Thursday.
The second term Trump promises to be even less constrained by the old standards of good governance, which give the avoidance of any perception that a civil servant could take advantage of his role. In this regard, Kennedy looks very much like Trump himself: his laughable public statements, designed to draw a show, can distract from all old-fashioned corruption that occurs behind the scenes.
Over the past 30 years, Vaccines have saved life more than 1.1 million children in the United States alone. During the same period, they also have Saved the Americans $ 540 billion in direct health costs And billions of social costs by preventing diseases such as polio and measles.
Kennedy spent decades Propagation of anti-vaccination pseudoscienceand the organization he directs, the defense of children’s health, was one of the Anti-vaccination advocacy groups above all In the United States and abroad. As part of his disclosure as a candidate of the cabinet, Kennedy said millions of dollars In the income of book offers and speeches that resulted from his public profile, in addition to his income from Wisner Baum.
There have also been serious consequences on the health of the Kennedy anti-vaccine campaign. His support for an anti-Vaccin group at the American Samoa has helped feed a wave of vaccination hesitation in the island nation; A Dnslement epidemic 2019 Killed 83 people there, most children.
During the hearing on Wednesday, when he criticized his involvement by senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Kennedy insisted that he did not play any role in the epidemic and even alleged that many people n ‘had not really been died of measles. (Deaths were reported by WHO as linked to measlesAnd Measles continue to kill 100,000 people worldwide Each year.) He also refused to answer a question from Wyden to find out if measles was a deadly disease.
Kennedy has married other ideas responsible for conspiracy on health: he says that fluorine is “industrial waste” linked to a range of diseases, and suggested that it should be deleted of all American water systems. He has speculated that gender dysphoria Can result from exposure to herbicides and implicit mass fire is linked to antidepressants.
These opinions have made scientists angry, but they also helped feed the booming movement. There is now an ecosystem of influencers and businesses trying to make money by launching, like Kennedy, as an alternative to conventional pharmaceutical and well-being industries.
In one of the most remarkable moments of the hearing, Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) questioned Kennedy about his baseless beliefs in a series of fast-firing questions. Bennet has pressed Kennedy of his past says Lyme disease It was “very likely” to have been designed by the army. “I probably said that,” he admitted Kennedy.
Despite the long history of Kennedy’s anti-vaccin rhetoric, he declared before the elections and again at the hearing that he did not intend to withdraw the vaccines from anyone. “I support the polio vaccine. I support the measles vaccine, “he said in his exchange with Warren. It is despite its long Record of disparaging public statementsIncluding the doubt of casting on the need for measles shooting, suggesting that the disease could be healed by chicken soup instead.
However, a co -president of the Trump transition team had declared a week earlier that Kennedy hoped to access federal health data in order to prove that vaccines were dangerous and dangerous and draw them from the American market.
And if, under Kennedy, the federal government is starting to say that vaccines are not safe, this could provide the basis of more prosecution against vaccines – and potentially more income for Kennedy. His refusal to say that he will withdraw from this conflict of interest is revealing and increases these fears: Warren facilitated him to engage in good principles of the government. He refused to take it.
In addition to the possibilities that Warren has launched, there are different ways of which Kennedy could sow doubts about the safety of vaccines: he could revive the office of the HHS national vaccination program, which monitored the safety of vaccines with a particular rigor but was Closed at the first Trump presidency.
As a Secretary of Health, he would also supervise the centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is hosted by HHS. This agency has two important roles in the promotion of vaccines in the United States: it convenes an advisory committee on vaccination practices to provide expert recommendations on which should obtain vaccines and what age, and it administers the Vaccine program for childrenwhich provides free vaccines for millions of children in low -income families.
The advisory committee is not mandated by federal law – it is only summoned because the CDC historically wanted it. A vaccination skeptic named to manage the CDC could either endow the committee with anti-vaccination activists or dissolve it entirely, further eroding the faith of the public in vaccines and potentially provide more fuel to anti-vaccine litigation.
The HHS president and secretary are so openly hostile to the American public health establishment is unprecedented. Already, as National vaccination ratethe United States see more Epidemics of measles and other diseases This had been switched off before vaccines. Normally, we would expect the highest head of health care in the country to master the resources necessary to prevent such epidemics. But Kennedy has a financial and ideological interest in the refusal of the efficiency and safety of vaccines. We are in an unprecedented territory.