The Disastrous First Year of RFK Jr.
The damage the HHS secretary has done to science and public health is appalling—and it could have been avoided.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. MARKED THE EVE of his first anniversary as secretary of health and human services as only he could: By telling podcaster Theo Von that he attended in-person recovery meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic (instead of isolating at home) to survive addiction: “I’m not scared of a germ. You know, I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”
Shaughnessy Naughton, head of 314 Action, which works to elect doctors and scientists to office, raised a good point in response: “But . . . RFK Jr. doesn’t believe in germ theory?”
Not really, no: Kennedy, in a bestselling 2021 book, explicitly rejected germ theory, one of the foundations of modern medical science, in favor of “miasma theory,” which pediatrician and vaccine inventor Paul Offit describes as “a long-abandoned medical theory that holds that diseases are caused by poisonous vapors.”
It is beyond comprehension that the Senate confirmed this man to oversee America’s health. The risks are so immediate and constant that it can be difficult to keep track of them all.
Take last week. On Tuesday, we found out one part of Kennedy’s department is researching horse dewormer (Ivermectin) as a cancer cure while another is refusing to consider a new Moderna flu vaccine.
On Wednesday, four states led by Democrats—California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota—filed suit to block $600 million in cuts to public health funding from Kennedy’s department, arguing that the “devastating” plan is “based on arbitrary political animus” and violates both the law and the Constitution in multiple ways.
On Thursday—the same day the Trump administration ended the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution, a threat to both human and planetary health and welfare—Kennedy announced from his highly visible perch that the nation’s top public health official had disregarded public health guidance during a worldwide pandemic.
On Friday, a judge in Boston heard arguments in a lawsuit filed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other health groups, trying to restore childhood vaccine recommendations weakened by Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisory group.
And that was just one week. It’s hard to disagree with the verdict from Protect Our Care, a health care advocacy group, after the interview with Theo Von: Kennedy “continues to lay bare why he is the most dangerous, in over his head, ill-suited person ever to lead such an important federal agency that has life-and-death power.” Brad Woodhouse, the group’s CEO, offered this succinct comment: “Resign.”
More disease, more death
ALL THIS COMES AGAINST THE BACKDROP of a growing measles outbreak in South Carolina, the United States on path to lose its measles eradication status in April, and the new childhood vaccine recommendations that amount to “choose your own adventure,” in the words of vaccine expert Jason L. Schwartz, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health.
Yale color-codes the new vaccine schedule on what appears to be a scale of perfectly clear to utterly opaque: (1) recommended for all kids, (2) recommended for high-risk kids, (3) recommended for high-risk kids and for other kids after “shared clinical decision-making,” and (4) recommended only after “shared clinical decision-making.” In other words, parents, it depends on the meaning of “risk” and “clinical decision-making.” You figure it out. Oh, and all vaccines are available at no cost. Unless you must see your doctor to make a “shared” decision. If you even have a doctor. Or insurance.
Confusion, and fewer vaccinated children, are inevitable. Which means more disease and death are inevitable.
If only someone could have prevented this.
There are, in fact, two senators who could have stopped Kennedy, and whose political and personal histories make them particularly well suited to stand up to him. I’m thinking of Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican Senate leader who shaped today’s disastrous Supreme Court and allowed Donald Trump’s resurgence, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a gastroenterologist who once organized a public-private drive to vaccinate 36,000 children against hepatitis B at no cost to schools or parents—but later swallowed Kennedy’s lies and made possible his catastrophic tenure atop America’s public health system.
McConnell, 83, is the only Republican who voted against Kennedy’s confirmation. A childhood polio survivor from before there was a polio vaccine, in the past few years he has had occasional falls and other problems associated with post-polio syndrome. He recently spent a week in the hospital for flu-like symptoms, and is not running for re-election this year.
Cassidy is 68 and he is running, but he shouldn’t be. Since voting to convict Trump of “incitement of insurrection” in his 2021 Senate impeachment trial, and earning an instant censure from the Louisiana GOP, Cassidy has done his cringeworthy best to simulate diehard devotion to Trump.
He cast the deciding vote on the Finance Committee last year to send Kennedy’s nomination to the Senate floor, and voted yes on his confirmation. In August, he praised Trump for his leadership fighting fentanyl (he had signed a Cassidy bill into law). In October, Cassidy posted on Instagram: “In the Oval Office with President Trump today. He signed this terrific ‘Gulf of America’ hat for me. Made in the USA, of course. Nobody supports American manufacturing like our President.”
All the kissing up isn’t working. At Trump’s urging, and with his advance endorsement, Rep. Julia Letlow jumped in to challenge Cassidy last month. “You can’t represent Louisiana if you voted to impeach President Trump. We deserve a Senator who can work with the President and deliver results,” she wrote recently.
The Baton Rouge Advocate put a photo of Letlow with Trump on its front page last week, under a headline about her endorsement from Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement—a Trump-backed effort that encourages healthy eating and exercise but that also believes there is a chronic disease “epidemic” and promotes conspiracy theories about vaccines, wi-fi, and autism.
No guilt, no shame, no regrets
MAHA AND MIASMAS ARE NO SUBSTITUTE for modern science. They’re just a distraction from the wrecking crew Trump and Senate Republicans have installed to oversee the nation’s public health system. It’s a way for Letlow and others to seem concerned about health, when in fact the news each day suggests things are going to hell.
Cassidy and McConnell could do a literal world of good if they spent the rest of 2026 speaking out against Kennedy and joining his Democratic critics in calling for him to be removed from his job. They could help gin up so much negative attention that Kennedy becomes an unsustainable drag on Trump and is fired or relocated.
But there’s no indication this is a priority for the two senators. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) introduced a well-grounded 28-charge impeachment resolution against Kennedy in December, but so far it has attracted only one cosponsor. McConnell remains engaged on other matters he cares about—he published a Politico op-ed Thursday about various geopolitical challenges—so his failure to speak out strongly against Kennedy is striking.
And Cassidy, for his part, is still trying to prove he’s got what it takes to be a MAGA success, including a working relationship with Trump. “President Trump SIGNED my bill that ensures drug discounts work to DECREASE Americans’ health care costs, NOT increase profit for shareholders. Big win for patients!!” he tweeted last Wednesday. Maybe. Whatever. Fine. But does that really compensate for the lies Kennedy told him to get confirmed, and the damage the secretary is doing to scientific research, public health institutions, and the nation’s well-being?
Dignity and professionalism are hard to find these days. Redemption is even less fashionable. You have to be capable of guilt or shame to even think about that sort of thing, and the Republican message from top to bottom, from the president down to the MAGA rank-and-file—whether it’s the Epstein files or killing two people in Minneapolis or watching measles make a comeback—amounts to no apologies, no regrets, just power on through to the next great abomination/victory.
Only wimps worry about how history will judge them. The only time that matters is now, and the only judge that matters is Donald Trump. Even for McConnell and Cassidy. Even if their legacies, and the first sentences of their eventual obituaries, may hang in the balance.
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