RFK Jr.’s Misdirection Gambit

On February 18, 2025, RFK Jr. outlined his agenda for the nation’s largest public health agency. Unfortunately, it had little to do with public health.

RFK Jr. makes several claims that resonate with the American public, primarily because he’s right. He is right to claim that we suffer from an epidemic of obesity, leading to an increased risk of high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. He is right to claim that our longevity and infant mortality rates don’t compare favorably with other developed world countries. He is right to claim that most Americans are dissatisfied with the healthcare system. He is right to claim that we overmedicate our children. And he is right to claim that we don’t eat well, relying on ultra-processed foods that contain artificial flavorings and colorings.

Unfortunately, on February 18, 2025, when RFK Jr. stood in front of the American public to outline his agenda, he didn’t talk about any of those things. Rather, he focused on chronic diseases, providing a list of possible causes. At the top of his list were childhood vaccines, electromagnetic radiation, and the pesticide glyphosate. “Nothing is off the table,” he said, “even issues considered taboo, where scientists were unwilling to take it on for fear of countering Big Pharma or other commercial interests.”

Unwilling to take it on? On the contrary, the three causes at the top of his list have been well studied. For example, RFK Jr. believes that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is caused by childhood vaccines. However, dozens of studies have shown that they don’t. RFK Jr. wants to do more studies because he refuses to believe the ones that show he’s wrong. Similarly, electromagnetic radiation, which can be found in cell phones, microwave ovens, Wi-Fi, and power lines, don’t cause cancer, despite RFK Jr.’s unyielding belief that they do. Again, RFK Jr. wants studies that confirm his biases. Also, a wealth of scientific studies have found that glyphosate, which has been claimed to cause everything from autism to cancer to bee extinction, is a relatively benign chemical that poses no risk to humans. Focusing on these issues will do nothing to lessen the incidence of chronic diseases.

Most notable is what RFK Jr. didn’t talk about. He didn’t talk about the growing measles epidemics in at least six states. West Texas alone is experiencing an outbreak larger than any in the last 30 years; at least 99 cases have been reported with more than a dozen hospitalizations. This outbreak has now crossed the border into New Mexico, with an additional nine cases. Callie Means, a member of RFK Jr.’s inner circle, recently said that these measles outbreaks were no big deal. RFK Jr. also didn’t talk about this year’s influenza epidemic, which has caused 24 million illnesses, 310,00 hospitalizations, and 13,000 deaths, more deaths than the 2009 swine flu pandemic. The administration’s response to the current influenza epidemic has been to yank the CDC’s influenza vaccine campaign. Later, RFK Jr. further restricted the CDC’s attempts to promote any vaccine. RFK Jr. also hasn’t talk about the 32,000 cases of pertussis in 2024, the largest outbreak in a decade. And he didn’t talk about the 12 children who died last year from pertussis.

The reason that RFK Jr. didn’t talk about these outbreaks is that he believes that vaccines don’t work and are unsafe, a belief he has held for the past 20 years. Indeed, when RFK Jr. visited Samoa in 2018, which suffered a measles epidemic that caused 5,600 cases and 83 deaths, mostly in children less than 4, he refused to admit that the deaths were caused by measles virus (even though natural measles virus was isolated from these children). Rather, he claimed that the outbreak was caused by a defective strain of measles vaccine. RFK Jr.’s science denialism reached a level of parody when he recently claimed that the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic was caused by a defective influenza vaccine (even though the influenza vaccine wasn’t invented until the late 1940s).

RFK Jr.’s agenda will do little to Make America Healthy Again. Instead, his ability to ignore the growing threat of vaccine-preventable diseases will only make us sicker. In his presidential campaign, RFK Jr. said that he wanted to “give infectious diseases a break for eight years.” Unfortunately, as cases of measles mount and bird flu lurks on the fringes, infectious diseases aren’t likely to give us a break. This is what you get when you ask an anti-vaccine activist, science denialist, and conspiracy theorist to head the nation’s largest public health agency.