RFK Jr. Selected to Lead HHS

Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the president-elect announced.

The move is expected to send a jolt through the medical and public health community, which has long criticized Kennedy’s anti-vaccine activism.

During a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City in October, Trump talked about letting Kennedy “go wild” on health, medicine, and food.

“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to public health,” Trump said in a social media post announcing his pick of Kennedy.

“The safety and health of all Americans is the most important role of any administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis in this country,” Trump said.

Think-tank experts interviewed by MedPage Today in the run-up to the election essentially said it was unlikely Kennedy would pull off that kind of demolition job, but that they also said they’ve come to expect the unexpected from a Trump administration.

Kennedy has made no secret of his disdain for the agencies under the HHS Secretary’s purview. In a video for the Make America Health Again (MAHA) initiative that he leads, Kennedy said his “big priority will be to clean up the public health agencies like CDC, NIH, FDA, and U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

“Those agencies have become sock puppets for the industries they’re supposed to regulate,” Kennedy said in the video. “President Trump and I are going to replace the corrupt industry-captured officials with honest public servants.”

Late last month, Kennedy lashed out at the FDA in a post on X: “FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals, and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma. If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

Having a vaccine skeptic like Kennedy run a department that’s in charge of public health among other things “is not a good choice,” said Wendell Primus, PhD, visiting fellow at the Brookings Schaeffer Initiative on Health Policy in Washington, D.C. Conversely, “to the Trump administration’s credit the first time around, one thing they did right was they got a COVID vaccine very quickly.”

“And we have no idea where he stands on health insurance. Is he going to protect the Affordable Care Act?” said Primus, who previously served as an advisor to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“The main thing I’m worried about is where the department goes on Medicaid waivers, work requirements, and all the ‘justice items’ that are implied” in those programs, Primus said in a phone interview. Although Trump has pushed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Kennedy’s family, including his father, always worked “to make sure low-income people have access to health insurance … that’s clearly not what Trump appears to be about.”

Joyce Frieden contributed reporting to this story.

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