RFK JR confirmed as American Health Secretary: What his attitude toward vaccines means

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the new US health secretary.
• Kennedy, a vocal critic of vaccines, insisted on his confirmation hearings that he is not an anti-vaccine.
• He promised to be a spokesman for children and mothers and thanked “Maha Moms” for their support.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent opponent of vaccine mandates and the leader of a pure-eating campaign, has been confirmed as the new health secretary for the United States.

In his confirmation hearings, Kennedy promised to advocate “America’s children” and “especially the mothers” as head of the country’s healthcare services. He also thanked “Maha Moms” – a nod to his popular “Make America Healthy Again” movement – before being grilled by the Senate Financial Committee on January 29.

Kennedy was flanked by his wife, actress Cheryl Hines and bigger players in his Maha movement: Former Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly, “Food Babe” Influencer Vani Hari, Brother-Sister Wellness Influencers Calley and Casey Means, and Del Bigtree, The Anti -Vaccine spokesman, who amounts to a trademark “Maha” as a fire.

To get the job, Kennedy was heard about his views on vaccines, controversial statements about race and Lyme disease and gaps in understanding what the role of the health and human service secretary entails.

He was not asked about his passionate views on the weight loss industry that he could influence as the Food and Drug Administration falls under HHS’s purpose.

Here’s what you need to know:

‘I support vaccines’

One of Kennedy’s biggest obstacles in securing the job was to win over Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican, who heads the Senate Health Committee and spent 30 years practicing medicine. Cassidy expressed serious concerns about Kennedy’s view of vaccines and shared that he had seen first hand, how vaccines saved children from preventable diseases.

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When he voted for Kennedy last Tuesday, Cassidy said he had received “serious obligations” from the Trump administration that he and Kennedy wanted an “unprecedented close” cooperation.

“In the end, it’s too important to restore confidence in our public health institutions, and I think Mr. Kennedy can help get it done,” Cassidy said.

Throughout Kennedy’s two days of confirmation hearings, senators on both sides of the hallway questioned Kennedy about his years of advocacy against vaccine mandates. Those mentioned:

• Kennedy’s Presidency of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group. (Kennedy withdrew from the Children’s Health Defense Committee in December.)
• His visit to Samoa in 2019, as chairman of the Children’s Health Defense, as part of an anti-Measles-vaccine movement.
• His ongoing financial involvement in a lawsuit against MerckThe manufacturer of the HPV vaccine that prevents cervical cancer.
• His book from 2021, “The Masling Book: Thirty -five secrets The government and the media do not tell you about measles and the measles vaccine.” Kennedy promotes vitamin A and chicken soup as alternative measles treatments in the book.
• His faith black and white Americans need to have different vaccine regimes.

At the beginning of his testimony in January, Kennedy said his six children had all been vaccinated. “News reports claim that I am an anti-vaccine,” he said. “All my children are vaccinated.”

Senators quoted a 2020 video in which Kennedy said he wanted his children not to be vaccinated. “I wanted to do something for it,” he said in the video to Children’s Health Defense. “I would pay something to be able to do it.”

“I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I don’t want to do anything like HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking one of these vaccines,” Kennedy said during the hearing. “Each medicine has people who are sensitive to them, including vaccines.”

A story of controversial statements

Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, performed several controversial statements Kennedy had made in interviews and asked him to clarify what he meant.

• When asked if he said Lyme disease, it is very likely that a militarily constructed bio-weight — a prolonged and debunked Lyme disease conspiracy theory – Kennedy said, “I probably said that.”
• Kennedy denied to say that exposure to pesticides makes children become transient. Cnn reported That Kennedy said that on a podcast in 2022.
• Bennet read a quote from one of Kennedy’s books that says “African aids” are “completely different” than “Western aids.” Kennedy said he wasn’t sure if he said so.
• When he was asked to confirm that he said Covid-19 was designed to kill black people and Skåne “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” people, Kennedy said he cited a study, not his own faith. (The study published in 2020 does not mention Chinese and does not suggest that the disease was designed to overs or target any group.)

How Kennedy would work with Trump on fast food, abortion and climate change

Kennedy said he agreed with his boss, President Donald Trump, in two major political areas – but they agreed to disagree with someone else.

• Pure dining: Kennedy has received broad support from Democrats and Republicans in his campaign to clean up America’s food system. He has promised to Ban synthetic food dyes And to take on seed oils in our food system and say “it’s time to do rising oil sebum again.”

  During his hearing, Kennedy still said his view of the Food Regulation will not merge with Trumps.

  “If you like a McDonald’s cheeseburger or a dietary cook that my boss loves, you need to be able to get them,” Kennedy said as the room broke out in laughter by his referral to President Donald Trump. “If you want to eat hostess Twinkies, you need to be able to do it, but you need to know what the impact is on your family and on your health.”

  “Something is poisoning of the American people, and we know that the primary culprit (is) our changing food supply, changed to very chemically intensive processed foods,” he added.

• Abortion: Kennedy, once pro election, promised to follow Trump’s lead by abortion. “Whatever he does, I want to implement these policies,” he said.

  Senators in Kennedy’s Confirmation Hearing focused on the so-called abortion pill Mifepristone used for non-invasive abortions up to 10 or 11 weeks.

  Anti-abort activists urge Trump to ban the pill or Limit access to that via the mail. Trump has said he is not yet planning to limit access to the pill.

  Kennedy suggested that the FDA and NIH go through the security of the pill, which was FDA approved in 2000. In response, Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, submitted a stack of security data for the post.

• Climate Change: Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, said he and Trump have “accepted to disagree” about climate change. “I think climate change is existential. My job is to make Americans healthy again,” he said.

Kennedy’s response indicated that he was not familiar with some of his new job assignments

A joint study line in the confirmation hearings was whether Kennedy had experience overseeing the entire US health care system.

During the consultations, Kennedy Medicaid and Medicare mixed and did not know that states partially finance Medicaid. He struggled to explain how Medicare worked when Hassan asked him and he mistakenly said HHS does not have a law enforcement arm – it does.

Meanwhile, Kennedy floated big ideas, such as suggesting that the government should concierge medical treatment to any American.

Kennedy also refused to say that healthcare is a human right. “In the healthcare system, if you smoke cigarettes for 20 years and you get cancer, you now leave the pool,” he said.