President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oversee the federal government's massive Health and Human Services apparatus is akin to the fox guarding the hen house. A noted foe of vaccines, RFK Jr. is also an AIDS denialist. Both are extreme positions and have the real potential to endanger lives.
Those who have been paying attention have long known of RFK Jr.'s aversion to vaccines — and it's more than just skepticism, sorry, New York Times. He has embraced the debunked theory that vaccines can cause autism and questioned the COVID vaccines a few years ago as the country was desperate for action in the wake of hundreds of thousands of people dying. Even today, years after botched scientific articles on autism and vaccines have been retracted, 60% of Americans are unsure there is a link, according to Gallup. That is evidence of the breadth of the anti-vaxx movement and its leaders, like RFK Jr. Most troublesome is his link to a measles outbreak in Samoa. According to reports, RFK Jr. visited a vaccine skeptic there in 2019, elevating anti-vaccine sentiment in the Polynesian country after the death of two infants who had received the measles vaccination, as the Times reported. The infants' deaths were attributed to a mistake by the nurse who administered the vaccines, not the vaccine itself, the paper reported. Nevertheless, vaccination rates decreased and a deadly measles outbreak occurred. The National Institute of Health's National Library of Medicine noted that 83 people died and 1,868 people were admitted to the hospital. RFK Jr., of course, denied any involvement.
"Kennedy was being disingenuous, sidestepping his connection to that tragedy," noted David Corn in a July article in Mother Jones. "Children's Health Defense, the nonprofit anti-vaxx outfit he led until becoming a presidential candidate, had helped spread misinformation that contributed to the decline in measles vaccination that preceded the lethal eruption. And during his trip to Samoa, Kennedy had publicly supported leading vaccination opponents there, lending credibility to anti-vaxxers who were succeeding in increasing vaccine hesitation among Samoans."
And don't think that opposition to RFK Jr. is universal among LGBTQs. Gay Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D), who has joined a group of governors to resist Trump and his policies, is supportive of RFK Jr.'s nomination, posting that he agreed with him in opposing vaccine mandates. Polis stated he was "excited" because Kennedy "helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and [Food and Drug Administration]." But in August, Polis posted, "Not sure how bringing back Measles and bringing back Polio makes anyone more healthy..." So now, Polis is helping to mainstream RFK Jr., as is Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), according to reports. A spokesperson for Polis later clarified that "he definitely does not endorse actions that would lead to measles outbreaks and opposes unscientific propaganda that undermines confidence in the lifesaving impact of vaccines." Good grief.
Vaccines have been a life-changing medical breakthrough for decades. Due to vaccines, polio has been eliminated from the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The polio vaccine is safe and effective," the CDC states. Other childhood vaccines prevent diseases such as measles and diphtheria and tetanus.
The 2022 mpox outbreak, largely affecting men who have sex with men and their social and sexual networks, was largely contained in the U.S. thanks to people getting vaccinated and changing their behavior. Now, however, the first case of a more dangerous mpox variant, clade I, was reported in San Mateo County over the weekend, bringing new attention to the need for people at higher risk, including gay and bi men, to get vaccinated.
HIV/AIDS is another area where RFK Jr. could do lethal damage if confirmed as HHS secretary. The federal government was initially abysmally silent about the disease when gay men, IV drug users, and others were dying by the hundreds back in the 1980s. It was left to local communities to provide a response, and San Francisco's model of care was held up as an excellent example. Working with nonprofit partners and medical centers like Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, the city designed a system that provided medical care, services, and prevention. Eventually, the federal government began providing funding through various sources, including the Ryan White CARE Act and HIV prevention on the domestic side, and the much-lauded President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, on the global side. The advent of more effective medications beginning in the mid-1990s also slowed the spread. Since 2012, PrEP has been a tremendous boon to prevention efforts, though disparities remain, particularly in communities of color. Even Trump, in his first term as president, declared an ambitious goal that had bipartisan support: ending the HIV epidemic in the United States. (Spoiler alert: according to NPR, House Republicans last year wanted to defund it.)
But to hear RFK Jr. tell it, HIV does not cause AIDS. In 2021, he wrote in his book "The Real Anthony Fauci" that "heavy recreational drug use in gay men and drug addicts was the real cause of immune deficiency." Though that was an early theory as to the origins of AIDS, it was debunked over four decades ago. In a fact sheet, GLAAD stated that RFK Jr. has attributed the disease to factors such as recreational drug use, particularly amyl nitrite ("poppers"), and lifestyle stressors. This is AIDS denialism, a fringe belief that has been thoroughly debunked by the scientific community. "In fact, the connection between HIV and AIDS is well-established science. In 2008, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for their discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS," the organization stated.
RFK Jr. also supports a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, which is something that should be decided by trans youth, their parents, and doctors. We oppose the numerous state bans prohibiting such care because they are unhelpful and largely based, not on medical research, but on prejudice and misinformation. Trump declaring numerous times during the recent campaign that schools were providing trans surgery to youth were just lies and nonsensical. No rational person actually believes that is happening. Major medical associations support gender-affirming care, but the bans in place have left many physicians unwilling to provide it, for fear of losing their medical licenses.
In short, RFK Jr. should not be confirmed as HHS secretary. But Trump, in his quest to install sycophants, has said that he could use recess appointments for his most controversial picks — or all of them, who knows? — sidestepping the Senate confirmation process altogether. It seems that many GOP senators, who will be in the majority come January 3, aren't all that upset by this possibility. Abdicating their responsibility under the Constitution to provide advice and consent would set a grave precedent for our democracy. We don't understand why senators would want to give up power, and bending the knee to Trump would further put the country on the road to authoritarianism.
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