President Donald Trump has appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer without official medical or public know -how, as secretary of health and human sciences. Two Senate committees will challenge Kennedy this week on how his views on science and medicine will describe him as $ 1.7 trillion, 80,000 employees federal health system.
Here are four estimates for legislators in the Senate and Senate Committees on the health, education, work and pensions of the Senate, which will host Kennedy for challenging on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively:
1) The unusual claims for Kennedy’s health.
For decades, Kennedy has supported health -related ideas that are scientifically defamatory or controversial. He created and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from defending children’s health, a group that promotes the false idea that vaccines cause autism and other chronic diseases and has sued to get vaccines from the market. Kennedy said Covid vaccines are the most deadly in history, antidepressants lead children to commit mass shooting, environmental contaminants can cause people to become trans and HIV is not the only cause of AIDS. It also pushes the use of products that regulators consider dangerous, such as raw milk, and for wider use of certain drugs, such as bermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat FDA without approval. He says public health services are only in use because of the regulatory arrest by large drug and food interests.
“He believes that you can avoid diseases if you have a healthy immune system, see vaccines and antibiotics as toxins,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Training Center at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital. Top Trump’s Health Candidates – Kennedy, Marty Makary for FDA Commissioner, Jay Bhattacharya for the Director of National Institutes They will drive, the Offit said.
“They think they are going to the office, pull the curtain back, find all these bad things and reveal it to the American public,” he said.
During an measles epidemic in 2019 and in 2020, killing 83 people, mainly children, in Samoa, Kennedy, president of defense of children’s health, warned the country’s prime minister against measles vaccination. This behavior alone “excludes” for an HHS candidate, said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Union.
Equally problematic, in Benjamin’s view, was Kennedy’s legal effort in 2021 to pull the Covid vaccine from the market. “It can’t say it’s not anti-Vax,” Benjamin said. “Not followed the items.”
A Kennedy spokesman did not respond to a request for comments.
2) Kennedy’s chances are good, despite the opposition.
Kennedy’s candidacy has appeared at a time when Trump is in a roll and mistrust of public health and medical power after the pandemic has created an opening for people with unorthodox views of science to occupy the reins of the country’s health system.
After the former personality of Fox News, Pete Hegseth was confirmed as a defense minister last week, despite his controversial qualifications for work and intense warnings from a former leading military brass, many Washington observers believe Rfk Jr. It will be difficult to beat. In a meeting on the hill with Democratic Senators and their assistants last week, the Offit said: “The feeling was that it would probably be confirmed.”
Trump asked the Republican senators to align behind his candidates and have succeeded so far. It is considered to be Sens. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins could oppose Kennedy, based on their opposition to Hegseth. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY.), The other Hegseth “nay” vote, is a surviving polio who has not spoken publicly about Kennedy, but said in December that the opposite “proven treatments” were dangerous. Other senators whose votes of Kennedy are said to be in question include Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La), the chairman of the aid committee, a doctor who gave a lukewarm response after the meeting with Kennedy.
Others reported that Sens Cory Booker (DN.J.), who shares Kennedy’s concern with the spread of obesity and chronic illness and Sheldon WhiteHouse (Dr.i.), who attended the Law School with Kennedy , he could vote for him. Nor did the senator’s office respond to a request for comments. The promotion of American freedom, a conservative defense team founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, has fought with Kennedy’s candidacy with a large advertising market.
3) The hearings will be heated.
Democratic senators come with many ammunition. Sen. drug prices and the cause of AIDS.
While public health and medical groups were not coordinated with the PENCE conservative organization, questions about Kennedy’s previous stance to support abortion rights could increase hackles on the side of the corridor. Although his team is far from Pence for reproductive rights, Benjamin said: “If it helps him derail him, I hope some senators hear Pence. Any refuge in a storm.”
“The hearings will be very difficult for him because he told him on a web of withdrawal as he was going to the offices,” said Leslie Dach, executive president of our Protect, a team of defense of democratic alignment.
Public opinion reflects Kennedy’s slope for health, though not too much. In a poll released on Tuesday by KFF, 43% of respondents said they trusted him to make the right health recommendations. About 81% of Republicans in the poll said they trusted Kennedy – almost those who trust their own doctor.
4) What happens if Kennedy assumes duties.
In NIH, FDA and other federal health organizations, nervous scientists are talking about early retirement or jumping in industry if Kennedy and heads of service take on duties.
The pharmaceutical industry has remained quiet for nomination, as well as the American Medical Society. Many patients’ defense groups are worried, but cautious about creating friction with a administration that cannot ignore or defeat.
Kennedy’s comments on AIDS – which suggest that the use of stimulants by homosexuals, and not HIV virus, were its cause – are concerned about Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hypatitis Institute. But “I don’t know if it’s going to be confirmed or not,” he said. “If he does, we look forward to working with him and training him.”
At the JP Morgan Healthcare conference earlier this month, Emma Walmsley, CEO of GSK, a leading vaccine manufacturer, said he would “wait and see what the events are” before predicting what Kennedy would do. Vaccines, as he noted, are not “our biggest business”.
GSK is one of the handful of vaccine manufacturers that remain in the US market. This number could be further shrunk if Trump’s administration and Congress overthrow the 1986 law that provided legal protection for vaccine manufacturers – as Kennedy argued.
