RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary will be a catastrophe for public health and medical research

[SidDithers]

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2024/11/15/rfk-jr-as-hhs-secretary-will-be-a-catastrophe-for-public-health-and-medical-research/

President-Elect Donald Trump has nominated antivax activist, conspiracy theorist, and all around crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. We are so screwed.

And then, late yesterday afternoon, I learned that, as I had feared, speculated, and predicted, Donald Trump had nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Yes, I had started speculating that that’s the job that RFK Jr. was angling for when he suspended his campaign and bent the knee to Donald Trump nearly three months ago, but even as I was predicting it I wasn’t quite sure that I believed that Trump would go through with it, if only because of discussions I had had with a reporter and others who said that many thought RFK Jr. would be “unconfirmable.” My retort, although not my 100% certain retort, was: Are you sure about that? Are you really sure, given the current state of the Republican Party? I’m not, nor was I at the time.

In any case, if there’s anything that could motivate me to get back in the blogging game, it has to be something like this. After all, I’ve been writing about RFK Jr.’s antivax stylings and conspiracy mongering since June 17, 2005. If ever there was a time to get back to my old ways, it’s now. So, regardless of my personal family challenges, I’m going to try to do just that. I’m also going to start out by calling out reporters for sanewashing RFK Jr., just as Jonathan has. I experienced one example of this just this morning on the way to work. While flipping channels, I came across NPR’s Morning Edition, which in a story about the nomination kept referring to RFK Jr. as a “vaccine skeptic,” although the story as published on the website has the less offensive title Trump picks RFK Jr. to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services. However, if you listen to the report, which is nearly four minutes long, you will hear the term “vaccine skeptic” applied to RFK Jr. several times:

Let’s just say that, every time I heard the term “vaccine skeptic” used, I cringed. No, I literally cringed. It wasn’t just NPR, either, which pulled a masterpiece of “bothsides” reporting in which the reporter counters RFK Jr.’s stated claim that vaccine science is inadequate and vaccines are unsafe with, basically, a pathetic, “Experts disagree.” The venerable BBC is guilty too (Trump picks vaccine sceptic RFK Jr for health secretary). So are STAT News (Trump taps RFK Jr. to run HHS, nominating vaccine skeptic for nation’s top health role), The Washington Post (Trump taps Robert F. Kennedy Jr., vaccine skeptic, to lead HHS), and the New York Times (Trump Picks R.F.K. Jr. to Be Head of Health and Human Services Dept., which has the tag line, “Whether the Senate would confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has unorthodox views about medicine, is an open question.”) I might have to write yet another post about this soon (maybe as soon as my Monday post at my not-so-super-secret other blog), but my message to reporters is this: Stop it! Just stop it! RFK Jr. is not a “vaccine skeptic.” He is antivaccine. That I still have to keep saying this now, two decades after RFK Jr. Be more like NBC News and the AP (Trump picks RFK Jr., anti-vaccine activist, for health and human services secretary and Trump chooses anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, respectively), at least on this. Stop sanewashing RFK Jr.

From the very excellent Dr. David Gorski, AKA Orac, who has been writing about RFK Jr. for almost 2 decades.

Sid

[snowybirdie]

1. RFK Jr

Has been a political gadfly for years and a lifelong diletante. Just how long is he going to be satisfied with running a bureaucracy? Bet he's gone within a year, if approved.

[Horse with no Name]

2. We will have a brain drain for sure

People aren’t going to quit their research. Instead, they will go where they can continue it.
I fear we will be so broken once he is done that we will never recover.

[Walleye]

3. I think I complained about the term "vaccine skeptic" in another post. It's Journalistic malpractice

It seems like the media has decided that’s the way to refer to him because I’ve seen it on multiple outlets.

[LiberalLoner]

8. I can't wait until "gravity skeptic" becomes all the rage in MAGA world and people start stepping off cliffs en masse.

[Lovie777]

4. Only the strong shall.....

when you have money.

[RobinA]

5. I Have To Say

this is such a bad appointment I'm almost curious to see how it plays out. Looking at it strictly as a narrative. Kook With Famous Name Gets Major Cabinet Position

[misanthrope]

6. Gorski's colleague Steve Novella is likewise concerned

A neurologist, Yale University professor and founder of the New England Skeptical Society, Novella founded the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe with his brothers a couple of decades back and have parlayed it into a franchise of podcasts, book, livestreams and in-person events. They have done as much to promote critical thinking as anyone in the nation since the new millennia began. Over the last dozen years that I have followed them, I have never heard the level of worry they have expressed in the last 10 days.

[GusBob]

7. I work IHS

He is now my boss