The GOP-controlled Senate voted Thursday to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, to lead the country’s most powerful health care agency.
Kennedy was confirmed as the secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services on a mostly party-line vote of 52-48. However, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., broke ranks on yet another of President Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees, joining all Democrats in opposition.
McConnell, a childhood polio survivor, said Kennedy had a "record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding trust in public health institutions."
A number of Robert F. Kennedy's views are controversial and outside the mainstream. Here is a list of some of his controversial health policy views.
VACCINES
Kennedy has long been a vaccine skeptic, and he and Trump have falsely claimed that childhood vaccines are dangerous and tied to rising autism rates. His opposition to vaccines is broad, and he has said that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
The belief that vaccines can lead to autism has been disproven since a study that claimed this was published in the 1980s. In 1988, British doctor Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a report where he linked the MMR (mumps, measles and rubella) vaccines to autism in children -- part of a study that used a significantly small sample size of 12 children. Since then, there have been numerous big studies -- including one with 530,000 children and one with 1.8 million children. No link was found. In 2011, it came to light that Wakefield and his colleagues faked the research.
For its part, the scientific community has long said that vaccines are safe and effective. The U.S. has a long-standing safety system when it comes to vaccines.
On its website, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention note: "Vaccines are very safe. The United States’ long-standing vaccine safety system ensures that vaccines are as safe as possible. Currently, the United States has the safest vaccine supply in its history. Millions of children safely receive vaccines each year. The most common side effects are very mild, such as pain or swelling at the injection site."
REMOVAL OF RAW MILK RESTRICTIONS
Kennedy indicated before the election that he would be keen to end the Food and Drug Administration's “aggressive suppression” of raw milk. The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called raw milk one of the “riskiest” foods people can consume because of the possibility for contamination.
“Raw milk can be contaminated with harmful germs that can make you very sick,” the CDC says on its website.
From 1998 to 2018, the CDC documented more than 200 illness outbreaks traced to raw milk, which sickened more than 2,600 people and hospitalized more than 225.
Raw milk is far more likely than pasteurized milk to cause illnesses and hospitalizations linked to dangerous bacteria such as campylobacter, listeria, salmonella and E. coli, research shows.
Before milk standards were adopted in 1924, about 25% of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. were related to dairy consumption, said Alex O’Brien, safety and quality coordinator for the Center for Dairy Research. Now, dairy products account for about 1% of such illnesses, he said.
REMOVAL OF FLOURIDE FROM DRINKING WATER
Kennedy has said he wants the federal government to advise local governments against putting fluoride in their drinking water. The CDC has said small amounts of added fluoride in drinking water prevent cavities and tooth decay.
In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and the addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.
Fluoride can come from a number of sources, but drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say. Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population gets fluoridated drinking water, according to CDC data.
There is a recommended fluoridation level, but many communities exceed that, sometimes because fluoride occurs naturally at higher levels in certain water sources.
Opposition is nothing new, though for decades it was considered a fringe opinion. Adherents included conspiracy theorists who claimed fluoridation was a plot to make people submissive to government power.
VIEWS ON MEDICARE AND MEDICAID
As the new health and human services secretary, Kennedy will oversee the implementation of Medicaid, in addition to Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.
However, during his confirmation hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking member of the Finance Committee, suggested that he didn't seem to know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid.
“Most people who are on Medicaid are not happy,” Kennedy responded. “The premiums are too high, the deductibles are too high, the networks are narrow.”
A 2023 poll from KFF, a nonprofit group that researches health policy issues, found that a majority of Americans have “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” views of the program. He made similar comments about the Affordable Care Act, according the NBC News. People on Medicaid generally aren’t charged premiums or deductibles at all.
Kennedy also claimed that Medicaid isn’t producing “positive health outcomes” for people.
A 2022 study published in The Lancet found that Medicaid expansion from the ACA led to a reduction in deaths from all causes. An earlier study found Medicaid expansion improved physical health for older adults.
Kennedy has criticized prescription weight loss drugs like Ozempic, saying higher-quality food could solve the obesity problem in the U.S., but in December he pivoted, saying the drugs “have a place” in making sure people are not obese, in addition to lifestyle changes.
VIEWS ON ABORTION
Kennedy has previously expressed support for abortion rights, which contradicts the beliefs of many of the Republican lawmakers who confirmed him, though he has said that he will follow Trump’s directives on the topic.
He's in a bit of a bind on the issue. About 6 in 10 voters in November’s election said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters. About one-third said it should be illegal in all or most instances. But like the Republican senators who will be questioning him, conservative voters see the issue differently. Among Republican voters, about 6 in 10 said abortion should be illegal in at least “most” cases, and only about 4 in 10 said it should be mostly legal.
RESTRICTIONS ON INGREDIENTS IN PROCESSED FOODS
However, not all of Kennedy's proposals are seen as significantly controversial. One of Kennedy's ideas is popular across the board: getting some chemicals out of processed foods. Kennedy has vowed to ban certain food additives and crack down on ultra-processed foods that are tied to obesity and diabetes rates.
About two-thirds of Americans “somewhat” or “strongly” favor restricting or reformulating processed foods to remove ingredients like added sugar or dyes, according to an AP-NORC poll. This is an area where Democrats and Republicans agree: About 7 in 10 in each group favor the restrictions.
Support is particularly high among U.S. adults with a higher household income, though research from the National Institutes of Health has indicated that ultra-processed foods are consumed at higher rates in low-income groups. Roughly 8 in 10 adults with a household income of $100,000 or more per year support the restrictions, compared with about half of Americans with a household income of $30,000 or less.
