How to appoint a flat earther as director of NASA. Or giving Nero the flamethrower and the lyre to set Rome on fire. The appointment of the anti-vaccine Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the future Secretary of Health of the Donald Trump Government has provoked among scientists, and some politicians, a cataract of reactions ranging from stupor to indignation, while the ridicule spread like wildfire. through social networks. “[Kennedy] he is not even remotely qualified for the position and should not be even close to the agencies [federales] based on science that safeguard our nutrition, food security and health,” the Center for Science as a Public Interest (CSPI) says in a statement. “Nominating an anti-vaccine like Kennedy is like putting a flat earther at the head of NASA. (…) If unassuming little viruses could talk, measles, mumps and rubella would be loudly protesting the nomination of this prolific spreader of scientific misinformation.”
Kennedy will lead the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is made up of 13 federal agencies with a total of 80,000 employees, and on which not only the country’s health policy depends, but also the regulation of medicines and foods, as well as the main public health coverage programs, Medicare and Medicaid. Kennedy is a well-known conspiracy theorist who does not limit his suspicions to the effect of vaccines, and their possible relationship with autism in the case of children, but extends it to the chlorine in drinking water or his racist conception of the coronavirus as a biological weapon that It would especially affect white and black people, with Jews and Chinese (sic) being immune, in his opinion.
“An undemocratic appointment,” adds the CSPI, which asks the Senate – with a Republican majority – to exercise good judgment when confirming Kennedy’s appointment. “A terrifying day for public health,” writes Apurva Amit Akkad, a doctor specializing in contagious diseases and professor at the University of Southern California, on the social network X (formerly Twitter). “I repeat it again and again, it will be of the utmost importance that ONLY decisions or changes are made in matters of public health based on solid evidence,” the doctor concludes his publication, with a link to the account of the Faculty of Medicine in the that teaches… mysteriously disappeared in the coven of misinformation that X has become since it was acquired by Elon Musk, and more specifically since Trump’s re-election.
“It is difficult to overstate how terrible this decision is. RFK Jr. has no medical training. He is a staunch anti-vaccine and a promoter of misinformation. The last time he meddled in the medical affairs of a State (Samoa), 83 children died of measles…” Alastair McAlpine, a pediatrician and author of several books and with more than 40,000 followers on the social network, also wrote in X. The reference to what happened in Samoa was the obligatory counterpoint to the news of the appointment in serious and reliable media such as PBS television and the public radio network NPR, which recalled a deadly measles outbreak in 2019, from which Kennedy has tried to disassociate himself by throwing away more falsehoods.
The fact-checking page of the prestigious Annenberg Center for Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania refers to the episode as follows: “Kennedy also participated in one of the worst measles outbreaks in recent times. In 2018, two babies in American Samoa died when nurses accidentally prepared the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine with expired muscle relaxant instead of water. The Samoan government temporarily suspended the vaccination program, and anti-vaxxers – including Kennedy and his NGO[Children’s Health Defense, que preside]― flooded the area with misinformation. The vaccination rate fell to a dangerously low level. The following year, when a traveler brought measles to the islands, the disease ravaged the population, infecting more than 5,700 people and killing 83, most of them young children. The center dedicates an entire page to denying the politician’s misinformed positions on “vaccines, autism and covid-19.”
“The most important thing to know about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is that there are probably people dead because of him. Thousands of people who followed their medical advice about vaccines in the midst of a deadly coronavirus pandemic, Lawrence O’Donnell, one of the main presenters of the MSNBC network, elaborated on his prime-time program. A commentator on the network, David Corn, editor of the solvent publication Mother Jonesand with almost a million followers on X, he criticized the adjective chosen by the newspaper The New York Timesto headline the news of the appointment: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not a skeptical [el calificativo que aparece en el título de la edición impresa de este viernes] of vaccines. He has said there are no safe or effective vaccines. “He is an enemy of vaccines.” Both spoke at the same time that Kennedy celebrated his appointment in the presence of crowds at a gala at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence in Florida, which Musk also attended.
Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic minority leader in the current House of Representatives, described the appointment as inappropriate in statements to CNN. “We understand that it is completely and totally incompetent… We need serious people, with serious experience and knowledge. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is, of course, none of the above (…). [¿Es] Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the best that the United States has to offer? Will he and others give us the best opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the American people?”
On behalf of his family, which has openly disowned him, his sister Kerry spoke out, especially critical of the politician, formerly a Democrat, then independent, and since August, a fervent Republican. “I am disgusted by my brother’s obscene embrace of Donald Trump. And I completely repudiate and disassociate myself from Robert Kennedy Jr. and his flagrant efforts to desecrate my father’s memory,” Kerry Kennedy reacted.
