RFK Jr. Is a One-Man Plague

Mona Charen on Dec 6, 2024

At a New York rally in October, Donald Trump promised the crowd that if elected, he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "go wild" on health, food and medicines. It delighted the crowd, who imagined they were cheering for better health and better medicine. They're in for a bitter surprise.

Some who should know better are offering cautious approval.

Well, he has a point about fluoride in the water, a Washington Post columnist conceded. American health care has "become too reliant on treating every matter of discomfort with a pill instead of tackling questions about environment, culture and behavior," mused a New York Times contributor.

They seem to think we can take what we like from the Kennedy buffet and leave the rest. Not so. If he is confirmed, we won't get only the 3% of Kennedy ideas that are sane; we will be saddled with the 97% that are deranged. It isn't that Kennedy is merely misinformed -- though he is. It's that he's an active agent of misinformation. That's a character problem. Hiring him to run health policy for this country is like hiring an arsonist to head the fire department.

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases to which human beings are susceptible. It used to kill about 500 in the U.S. every year. In 2019, Samoa was experiencing a spike in measles cases due to a mistake and a lie. The mistake was made in 2018 by two nurses who mixed ingredients for a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine incorrectly, causing the deaths of two infants. (They pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.) The lies came soon after, encouraged by RFK Jr., who has consistently propagated the myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism, peanut allergies and other ailments. Though he now denies that he was ever "anti-vaccine," Kennedy declared as recently as July that "there's no vaccine that is safe and effective," and, in another interview: "I do believe that autism does come from vaccines."

Many Samoans had seen the film "Vaxxed," produced by two of Kennedy's anti-vaccine allies, which alleged that the MMR vaccine was dangerous, which led to an uptick in parents refusing to get their kids vaccinated. After the deaths of the two infants, RFK Jr. threw gasoline on the fire with a visit to the island in 2019, meeting with local vaccine opponents and voicing suspicions that the MMR vaccine had contained a mutant strain and had caused the then-burgeoning epidemic. Eventually, more than 3% of the whole population of the island was infected. For babies aged 6 to 11 months, that figure was closer to 20%. More than 150 of them died.

When you think of RFK Jr., think of rows of tiny coffins.

Anti-vaccine activism has been the hallmark of Kennedy's career, but it by no means exhausts his appetite for crackpottery. He has sworn to end the FDA's "war" on raw milk. Listen, if Kennedy wants to drink the stuff himself, it's a free country and he can afford as many cows as he wants. But how did we reach a point in our history when it became necessary to argue that pasteurizing milk is a sound health measure? Unpasteurized milk and cheese has been implicated in many recent outbreaks of salmonella, E. coli and other foodborne illnesses. It can also transmit bird flu.

RFK Jr. has speculated that Wi-Fi causes cancer and "leaky brain," that antidepressants are responsible for school shootings.

Nor is it just Kennedy's attraction to doltish ideas that should set off alarms. It's his tendency to imagine sinister forces controlling things. He believes the CIA killed his uncle, John F. Kennedy, as well as his father, Robert F. Kennedy.

It wasn't enough for him to claim that the COVID-19 vaccine was the "deadliest vaccine ever made"; he also suggested that the virus itself was somehow "targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese." He is on record supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin instead of vaccines.

As secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr. would have supervisory authority over the FDA, CDC, NIH, the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the Indian Health Service, among other agencies. He has suggested that 600 employees of the NIH, which oversees vaccine development, should be fired immediately and replaced by his own choices.

Some Pollyannas imagine that Kennedy's leadership might mean healthier eating habits. That would be desirable (if unlikely), but it substitutes hope for analysis. Kennedy goes on jags about healthy eating at times. He has inveighed against ultraprocessed foods (which isn't crazy) but then lurches into jeremiads about seed oils "poisoning" our bodies. For the record, canola, sunflower and soybean oils are safe (though fat, like anything else, is best in moderation). If Kennedy wants to fry his potatoes in beef tallow and wash it down with raw milk, more power to him, but under no circumstances should any sane person take his health advice. Nor should any senator consent to give him authority over government agencies that regulate our food and medicines.

He sees himself as a knight errant, but unfortunately, his "cures" involve reversing some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history: pasteurization, vaccines and the scientific method of determining truth.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, "Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism," is available now.