A month into his new role as health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is beginning to make his priorities for the country clear — and confirming some public health experts’ worst fears.
Since Kennedy was sworn in Feb. 13, the agencies he leads have canceled or postponed meetings about flu shots and other vaccines and announced plans to investigate already debunked links between vaccines and autism. He has downplayed the importance of vaccination in the Texas measles outbreak while endorsing unproven remedies for the highly contagious disease.
At the same time, Kennedy has begun to act on his long-standing concerns about the U.S. food system, directing the Food and Drug Administration to tighten a rule about the use of food additives and railing against seed oils in a Fox News interview.
As a whole, these actions and statements indicate that Kennedy has not abandoned some of the fringe beliefs that made him a controversial pick. His early moves on vaccines have worried health experts, who fear he is sowing confusion that could ultimately lead to the spread of preventable diseases.
“Taking steps to make it less likely that people will get vaccinated is 100% on brand for a Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-led Health and Human Services Department,” said Andrew Kelly, associate professor of public health at California State University, East Bay. “All of this just adds to increasing apprehension, misinformation and fear around vaccines.”
In response to questions about his recent actions and his critics’ concerns, Stefanie Spear, Kennedy’s principal deputy chief of staff at HHS, referred NBC News to his earlier releases, videos and op-eds. Spear also highlighted other actions the health secretary has taken, including meeting with doctors to discuss protecting patients from surprise medical bills and hosting discussions about chronic disease among children — an issue he has said is a top priority.
Elevating unproven remedies for measles while downplaying vaccines
When the United States saw a resurgence of measles in 2019, then-Health Secretary Alex Azar stressed the importance and safety of vaccines.
“That’s not what we’re seeing from Robert F Kennedy Jr.,” Kelly said.
As the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico has swelled — sickening more than 290 people and killing an unvaccinated child, with another suspected death under investigation — Kennedy has touted unproven remedies and emphasized that getting vaccinated is a personal choice. He has also warned, without evidence, about harms associated with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot.
“There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes,” Kennedy told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview Monday.
There have been no deaths linked to the MMR vaccine in healthy people, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and immunocompromised people aren’t advised to get it. Most people don’t have side effects, though some may experience a fever, rash or joint pain and stiffness.
“What Kennedy has done, in my view, is set a cartoonishly high standard for what constitutes scientific evidence,” said Matt Motta, an assistant professor of health law and policy at Boston University’s School of Public Health. “The chances of getting hurt by a vaccine are infinitesimally small, whereas the chances of getting sick with measles — which, by the way, is the most infectious disease on Earth — are much, much higher.”
Kennedy also told Hannity that protection from measles vaccines wanes “in many people,” though in reality, infections are rare among those who are fully vaccinated.
Kennedy has spoken more favorably about alternative remedies for measles, a disease for which there is no approved treatment. On Fox News last week, Kennedy said Texas doctors had seen “very good results” from treating measles with the steroid budesonide, the antibiotic clarithromycin and cod-liver oil. None of these treatments have been shown in studies to be effective against measles.
Vitamin A, which is found in cod-liver oil, is used to treat severe measles in developing countries, where vitamin deficiencies are common, but it’s unclear how beneficial it is in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its measles website last month to say that infants and children can be treated with vitamin A.
Kennedy wrote in an op-ed for Fox News that vitamin A “can dramatically reduce measles mortality,” citing a study largely based on results in African countries. He noted, as well, that “vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity.”
A Trump administration official said that medical professionals’ use of vitamin A is critical to save lives and that the CDC guidance is rooted in the latest medical consensus. However, doctors interviewed by NBC News have not all agreed. The official pointed to a 2020 article in the journal Infectious Disease in Clinical Practice recommending vitamin A for children who get measles in the U.S.
The CDC maintains that vaccines are the best defense against measles, the official said.
Changes to vaccine meetings and research
As HHS secretary, Kennedy oversees 13 agencies, including the CDC, the FDA and the National Institutes of Health.
Public health experts worry that by instituting gradual changes in the way these agencies study or evaluate vaccines, Kennedy could make immunizations harder to access over time.
In February, federal health officials canceled a public meeting of the independent FDA vaccine advisory committee meant to select the strains for next season’s flu shot. Instead, a group of officials from the FDA, the CDC and the Defense Department met behind closed doors Thursday to make the decision without the committee’s input.
The cancellation came roughly a week after the Department of Health and Human Services announced the postponement of a CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting, in which members had planned to discuss new or updated vaccines for meningococcal disease and the chikungunya virus, as well as a nasal spray for influenza. Andrew Nixon, a senior HHS spokesperson, said at the time that the delay was intended to allow time for public comment. No new date has been announced.
“States depend on the federal government for information about what vaccines ought to be recommended and when and for whom. What Kennedy can do is obscure that information,” Motta said. “That’s one of the things that he’s doing right now by canceling these meetings.”
Kennedy has previously accused the members of the CDC advisory committee of having conflicts of interest, citing ties to the pharmaceutical industry. On March 7, the agency released a database of some members’ previous work on clinical trials or vaccine research funded by drug companies, though much of the information was already public. Nixon said at the time that the department wanted to make the disclosures more easily accessible.
“You want to have people on these committees who are experts in vaccines and infectious diseases,” said Dr. Richard Besser, the former acting director of the CDC and current president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health-focused nonprofit. “Those individuals are often in academia or in industry, and they will get funding from the government, and they will get funding from industry. That’s highly appropriate, as long as it’s disclosed — and it is.”
Kennedy also appears to be shifting research priorities about vaccines. The Washington Post reported Monday that, according to an internal email it obtained, the NIH had terminated grants for research on vaccine hesitancy and increasing uptake. It is not clear if Kennedy played a role in the move. The CDC, meanwhile, is planning to research potential links between autism and vaccines, a source familiar with the agency’s planning previously told NBC News.
Hundreds of scientific studies have already debunked any purported connection between vaccines and autism. However, Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, has spent much of his career questioning the safety of vaccines and amplifying the false theory.
Nixon said earlier this month that the CDC “will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening.”
Cracking down on food additives
This week, Kennedy took action on a less controversial goal: removing chemicals from the U.S. food supply.
He directed the FDA to revise a rule that allows food manufacturers to use additives that are generally recognized as safe — either because they’re commonly consumed or have been scientifically evaluated — without notifying the federal government. If the rule is changed, companies that want to add new ingredients to food products would instead have to start notifying the FDA and providing safety data.
Kennedy also directed the FDA and the NIH to assess additives already allowed because of the current rule, and he met with food industry executives Wednesday to discuss removing artificial dyes.
Nutrition and food safety are major planks of Kennedy’s agenda. He has repeatedly blamed ultraprocessed foods for chronic diseases (such foods are indeed linked to obesity and heart disease) and suggested that “seed oils” such as canola and safflower oil are “poisoning” Americans.
Kennedy’s interview with Hannity on Monday took place at the fast-food chain Steak ‘n Shake, which Kennedy praised for frying its french fries in beef tallow instead of vegetable oil — a switch the company announced in January.
“We want to do everything that we can to incentivize these companies to be transparent, to switch over from ultraprocessed food,” he said. (French fries, hamburger buns and many other fast-food items, however, are considered processed foods.)
Kennedy also suggested last month that participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as food stamps — should not be allowed to use the benefit to purchase junk food.
Several public health experts said Kennedy’s criticisms of processed food have merit, but efforts to increase regulation might conflict with the current gutting of federal agencies.
“Regulating ultraprocessed foods takes expertise, it takes personnel, it takes resources, and all of those things are being cut by the Trump administration,” Kelly said.
