Fact check his views on health policy

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US health secretary, a post that oversees everything from medical research to food safety and public welfare programs.

Speaks in an NPR interview this week, Kennedy said Trump had given him three “instructions”: to remove “corruption” from health agencies, to return those bodies to “evidence-based science and medicine” and “to end the chronic disease epidemic.”

Some of Kennedy’s own stated goals for government are laced with misinformation — and many medical experts have expressed serious concerns about his nomination, citing his views on vaccines and other health issues.

In other areas he has more support, e.g. with investigating the processing of food and the use of additives.

Kennedy said in his NPR interview that vaccines “wouldn’t be taken away from anybody.”

He says he wants to improve the science of vaccine safety, which he believes has “major deficits,” and that he wants good information so people “can make informed choices.”

But his criticism of the vaccine safety regime has been dismissed by experts.

While Kennedy have refused on several occasions that he is anti-vaccination and said that he and his children are vaccinated, he has repeatedly made widely rejected claims of vaccine injury.

One of his main false claims – repeated in a 2023 interview with Fox Newswas that “autism comes from vaccines”.

This theory was popularized by the discredited British doctor Andrew Wakefield.

But Wakefield’s 1998 study was later retracted by Lancet medical journal. Several studies since, across many countries, have concluded that there is no link between vaccines and autism.

Dr. David Elliman, a consultant in child health at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, said RFK Jr has perpetuated myths about vaccination with “a complete disregard for the evidence”.

“If he is appointed and continues in the same state, I fear not only for the vaccination program in the United States, but similar programs around the world and for health care in general,” says Dr. Elliman.

“Vaccination has probably saved more lives and is better researched than most, if not all, aspects of healthcare. RFK Jr could set this back and be responsible for the death and disability of countless people, especially children.”

Fluorine – a naturally occurring mineral recognized for protect the teeth from decay – supplied to water supplies in many countries, including the USA, where approx 63% of the population has fluoridated water.

Kennedy has long campaigned against the practice, and claimed in a recent post on X that Trump as president would advise “all US water systems to remove fluoride from public water”.

The president-elect told the NBC network: “Well, I haven’t talked to (Kennedy) about it yet, but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”

In his post on X, Kennedy said fluoride was “associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders and thyroid disease”.

But Professor Avijit Banerjee, chair of cariology and operative dentistry at King’s College London, said “the potential harmful effects of fluoride mentioned have not been linked to the very low levels of fluoride used in water fluoridation programmes”.

Kennedy cited a September 2024 ruling by a California judge recommending further investigation of potential harms following the publication of a report suggesting possible links between exposure to higher levels of fluoride to lower IQ in children.

But that report has proven highly controversial. Dr. Ray Lowry of the British Fluoridation Society notes that the ruling “was not an outright condemnation of fluoride; rather it suggested that the EPA might investigate further to ensure an adequate margin of safety.”

Kennedy has been outspoken about her concerns about food additives and the role ultra-processed foods (UPFs) play in many people’s diets.

In October he said in a post on X that “ultra-processed foods are driving the obesity epidemic.”

Kennedy has also associated UPFs with a range of medical conditions including cancers in young adults and mental disorders.

There is a growing body of evidence that these foods are not good for us, and although recent research shows that many widespread health problems including cancer, obesity and depression are linked to diet, there is still no clear evidence that they are caused by UPFs. .

Dr. Nerys Astbury, a diet and obesity expert at the Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Sciences at the University of Oxford, says that “while improving diet and reducing the population’s body weight, it will undoubtedly reduce the number of people who develop conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain forms of cancer, the role of food processing in a healthy diet… is not clear”.

Dr. David Nunan of the Center for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) says that “multiple factors, including broader lifestyle, socioeconomic determinants and access to health care, need to be considered. Studies to date cannot reliably separate the individual impact of UPFs from these other factors .”

A vocal critic of restrictions to limit the spread of Covid-19, Kennedy said at the press event last year in a video posted by New York Post that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

Health specialists say these claims are false and that the virus is not targeting any particular ethnic group.

“The claims made by Robert F Kennedy Jr are very damaging as they do not follow scientific evidence,” said Professor Melinda Mills of Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Population Health.

“Like many credible peer-reviewed Covid-19 studies has showndifferences in Covid infections and deaths between socio-economic and ethnic groups are related to inequalities, deprivation and living in larger or intergenerational households.”

After widespread criticism of his remarks, Kennedy published on X that he does not “believe and never suggest that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered”, and cited a study that he claimed supported his comments about genetic factors influencing immunity.

But one of the report authors reacted by strongly repulsive this interpretation of the study and that its findings “never supported” Kennedy’s claims.