Anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist: What is Robert Kennedy, the Senate's choice for health secretary, known for?

One of the two relevant committees of the US Senate voted by a narrow margin to recommend that the chamber approve the appointment of Robert Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health. What is this politician known for, says Air force

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A member of a prominent Democratic political family, Kennedy has been one of the most controversial members of Trump's team, even raising questions about his candidacy among some Republican senators. Kennedy's views on health care are far from conventional. He is an anti-vaxxer, an HIV dissident, and a medical conspiracy theorist.

In addition, it became clear at the Senate hearings that he does not have a very good understanding of the work of the minister and the country's health policy.

Kennedy's nomination was considered by two committees: Finance and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. On February 4, the Finance Committee voted to recommend Kennedy for confirmation. All 14 Republican members voted in favor; all 13 Democrats voted against.

On the subject: Anti-Vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr. to Run Trump's Healthcare

What is Kennedy Jr. known for?

The decision on Kennedy Jr.'s nomination was preceded by two days of hearings. The Finance Committee held hearings on January 29, and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held hearings on January 30.

Even though Republicans now hold a 53-seat majority in the Senate, the position of every senator mattered, including Republicans. At least three Republicans — including doctors by training — had not ruled out voting against Kennedy Jr., meaning he might fall short of the 50 votes needed to confirm him (Vice President J.D. Vance could add one more vote if the Senate votes were tied).

On the Finance Committee, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy was such a waver. In the end, he did not go against the party line.

Senators did not miss the opportunity to give candidate Trump a thorough check and ask him several dozen pointed questions.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is the nephew of the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy and the son of his younger brother, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, who was shot in 1968. He is known for his controversial, unproven, and sometimes simply false claims on medical topics. At various times, he has expressed his opinion or supported the claims of others that vaccines cause autism, Wi-Fi and 5G cause cancer, and that AIDS is not related to HIV.

The hearings lasted more than seven hours in total.

Members of both committees focused on three topics: Kennedy Jr.'s views on vaccinations, his adherence to various conspiracy theories, and the candidate's understanding of U.S. health care policy.

Kennedy Jr. is one of the most prominent anti-vaccinationists in the United States. For many years, he headed an organization called Children's Health Defense, which advocated against vaccinations on the grounds that a preservative in them allegedly causes autism and other severe congenital diseases in children.

Kennedy Jr. also called Covid vaccines "the deadliest ever created." In 2022, Children's Health Defense pages were removed from Facebook and Instagram for spreading misinformation.

In 2005, he wrote an article suggesting that the government was covering up the link between vaccines and autism that it knew about. The article was eventually retracted entirely.

In 2023, Kennedy Jr. appeared on Lex Friedman's podcast and said that "there is no safe and effective vaccine."

Now, even before the hearings began, Robert Kennedy Jr. has assured the Senate in writing that he is not opposed to vaccines, believes they play a critical role in preventing certain diseases, and that his own children (he has six) are vaccinated.

But at least some senators were skeptical of the claim. Democrat Ron Wyden, for example, said Kennedy was lying when he called himself a pro-vaccine advocate, and recalled that he had signed a petition against Covid-19 vaccines. Kennedy countered that the petition came after several experts called the vaccines unsuitable for young children, and called Wyden dishonest.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis asked Kennedy if he was a conspiracy theorist, to which he responded that it was a slur used by his rivals in retaliation for his asking tough questions that touched on powerful interests, including vaccine makers. Shares of many pharmaceutical companies, including Covid vaccines, have fallen since Kennedy’s nomination.

Kennedy was also asked whether he had said he believed Lyme disease was a man-made biological weapon (he did), that AIDS in Africa was different from AIDS in the United States (he did not deny it), and that pesticides were causing children to become transgender (he said he had not).

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a nonpartisan senator, asked Kennedy about the upcoming Medicaid budget, which Republicans are proposing to significantly cut. It is one of two large government health insurance programs for those who cannot afford insurance. As secretary, Kennedy will oversee Medicaid, among other things. But Kennedy gave general statements about Trump instructing him to “improve” the program.

Kennedy's vaccine dissidence was continued the next day by senators on the Health Committee. However, Kennedy preferred to resort to a rhetorical device he had used many times before. He said that he would support claims about the benefits of vaccination if he was shown "scientific evidence" of their safety. But when senators referred to such scientific studies, he said that he was not familiar with them.

Maryland Democratic Senator Angela Alsobrooks reminded Kennedy of his words about white and dark-skinned people needing different vaccines because of their supposedly different immune responses. “What vaccines would you recommend for me?” Alsobrooks, who is dark-skinned, asked, not without sarcasm.

Hawaii Democrat Maggie Hassan countered Kennedy's claims that the U.S. government is hiding a link between congenital diseases and vaccines by telling the story of her son, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. She said she has struggled with the question of what caused cerebral palsy all her life, and she believes that the idea that "the government is hiding" or not interested in the causes of such serious diseases is cynical. She said the country's rejection of scientifically proven facts and evidence is setting it back.

As a result, even the chairman of the Health Committee, Louisiana Republican and physician Bill Cassidy, said after the hearing that he was unsure whether he should support Kennedy's candidacy.

“Could a 71-year-old man who has spent decades criticizing vaccines and who has a financial interest in finding fault with them change his tune now that he is in the most important job influencing vaccine policy in the United States?” Cassidy asked rhetorically.

By interest, Cassidy apparently meant the lawsuit against the vaccine manufacturer, in which Kennedy Jr. is seeking 10% of the possible compensation amount.

Not just vaccinations

Kennedy Jr. is running to head the agency that oversees health care, social services and the Food and Drug Administration. He has already promised to fire 600 employees of the National Institutes of Health responsible for biomedical research.

Although Kennedy has toned down his anti-vaccine rhetoric in recent months, he has spent two decades pushing unproven claims about various areas of medicine. In addition to the vaccine-autism theory, Kennedy has also promoted the unsubstantiated hypothesis that fluoride, which is added to water supplies around the world to protect against tooth decay, causes cancer and other diseases. Kennedy also blames wireless internet for cancer.

The politician said that he drinks only raw milk, despite the fact that several dozen cases of human infection with bird flu have recently been registered in the United States, and it can also be contracted by drinking unpasteurized milk from sick cows.

At the same time, Kennedy Jr. has an agenda that many health experts endorse: fighting fast food and soda. He led the Trump campaign’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, a variation on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. When Trump announced Kennedy’s nomination for Surgeon General, he promised that he would “end the epidemic of chronic disease and make America great and healthy again.”

Kennedy vs Kennedy

Nobel laureates, doctors and health experts, and public organizations have spoken out against Kennedy's appointment as health secretary. They believe that appointing a man who has done so much to spread anti-vaccination sentiment to this position would pose a threat to American society.

Even Kennedy's relatives, members of one of the most famous families in the US political world, were against appointing him to the post of Health Minister. Kennedy is a clan of Democratic politicians. Until recently, he himself was a Democrat and even tried to run for president from the Democratic Party, but later left it and ran as an independent candidate, and then left the race and supported Donald Trump.

That decision alone drew condemnation from many members of the Kennedy family. And after Trump nominated him for health secretary, his cousin Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President John Kennedy, published a letter to senators calling for her brother, known to the family as Bobby, to be rejected. She called him a “predator” who “preys on the despair of parents of sick children” while vaccinating his own children, hypocritically discouraging others from doing so.

Caroline Kennedy believes her cousin's position on vaccination is dangerous, and he has no experience in government, finance, management or medicine.

But it’s not just his professional background. She says that when Robert Kennedy Jr. was using drugs, he tried to push his siblings, including cousins, into the same habit, and that drugs were freely available in his basement, garage, and dorm room. She also accuses her cousin of outright cruelty, saying he “would grind up chickens and mice in a blender to feed his hawks.”

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Although Kennedy was a well-known environmental activist in his youth, his history of cruel or ethically questionable treatment of animals is not limited to his cousin. His daughter said that about 30 years ago, without permission, he used a chainsaw to cut off the head of a dead whale that had washed up on the beach and brought it home on the roof of his car.

He himself admitted that he once brought the carcass of a dead bear to New York's Central Park and left it there. Vanity Fair magazine published an investigation in which it accused the politician of harassment, posing with a dog skewered on a skewer in Korea (Kennedy responded that it was a goat) and other dubious actions.

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