During the last week of February, an unvaccinated child died from measles. It was the first such death in the United States in a decade, of a disease that was declared eradicated in this country in 2000. Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump’s chosen Secretary of Health and Human Services, dismissed the ongoing outbreak as “not unusual.”
As Secretary, Kennedy has power over nearly a dozen federal agencies, such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Since his confirmation on Feb. 13, Kennedy has issued a variety of decisions with regards to these agencies. These include a recent move to eliminate public comments on decisions across agencies, a mechanism which has historically been used to promote transparency — a component Kennedy claimed to wish to further in his role as Secretary — democratic participation, and expert review from medical professionals who aren’t on the government’s payroll. Kennedy has, additionally, cancelled the CDC’s influenza vaccine meeting, which would have been used to determine which flu strains will be grown over a six month period for their typical fall rollout and announced an investigation into childhood vaccine schedules for diseases such as polio and measles, despite his promise during his confirmation hearing not to alter said vaccination schedules.
Kennedy has also threatened to cut back on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), decreasing affordable food options for low-income households, COVID-19 vaccination development, including the recent termination of a multimillion dollar vaccine development contract, and overall funding and staffing of Health and Human Services agencies.
In the decades prior to his current position, Kennedy has been responsible for spreading a dizzying array of conspiracy theories relating to public health. He blames the authorized medical use of antidepressants for school shootings and government chemicals for the existence of LGBTQ+ people. He has spent over 10 years lobbying in support of the conspiracy theory that vaccines are responsible for autism, a claim that has been repeatedly scientifically debunked. I can find nothing that is motivating him in his beyond base lunacy.
This man is now in charge of our national health systems.
Between his willful denial of the most basic epidemiological science, the Trump-Musk administration’s rampant destruction of government medical regulation, and their combined intent to strip the Department of Health and Human Services into less than a skeleton of itself, the future of public health in America is bleak. Our top medical authority has been compromised; we cannot rely on the federal government to provide accurate information on health, nor manage any impending epidemic. The measles case might have been the first entirely preventable death to make the news under Kennedy’s callous rule, but I am absolutely certain that it will not be the last.
