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In one of his most controversial Cabinet picks, President-elect Donald Trump said he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy is a longtime spreader of inaccurate information about vaccines, and we’ve written about many of his claims, particularly after Kennedy entered politics in April 2023 as a Democratic challenger to President Joe Biden. That October, he switched parties to run as an independent, before dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Trump in August in exchange for a potential role in the administration.
Kennedy is an environmental lawyer and founder of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that is one of the most prolific sources of vaccine misinformation. In perhaps the clearest example of harm, Kennedy’s vaccine misinformation contributed to a measles outbreak in American Samoa in 2019 that led to the deaths of 83 people, most of them younger than 5 years old.
Since joining Trump, Kennedy has spearheaded the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, which is centered on the laudable goal of reducing chronic disease. But a closer look at Kennedy’s statements shows that the MAHA platform is not always evidence-based.
In an Oct. 25 X post, Kennedy wrote that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” before accusing the agency of “aggressive suppression” of a litany of therapies or products, several of which either lack scientific support for their use or may be harmful, including raw, or unpasteurized, milk and off-label use of the drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. Both drugs are effective for other diseases but have repeatedly failed to help with COVID-19 in clinical trials.
“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags,” he continued.
It remains to be seen whether Kennedy, who has also endorsed a variety of conspiracy theories, will have enough Senate support to be confirmed. Trump has also suggested that he might bypass the chamber for some of his nominees by making appointments when the Senate is in recess.
“The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country,” Trump wrote in a Nov. 14 X post announcing the nomination. “Mr. Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
As the nation’s top health official, Kennedy would be in charge of the very agencies he has for years alleged are corrupt. The HHS secretary oversees 13 agencies, most notably the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
HHS also includes the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency that provides health insurance for older adults and low-income people, as well as the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the government’s agency for public health emergencies, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. The latter encompasses the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which was a key part of Operation Warp Speed, Trump’s successful effort to develop safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time. Misusing data from a vaccine safety surveillance system that would be under his purview as HHS secretary, Kennedy has falsely called the COVID-19 vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”
While there are some limits on what Kennedy might be able to do as the head of HHS, he would likely wield significant influence. He would be able to eliminate departments within the FDA, as he has suggested, for example. He also would have final say in who is selected to join the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the independent group of experts that creates federal vaccine guidance. On Nov. 9, he indicated that he would replace 600 NIH employees a day after inauguration day.
Here, we summarize our past work fact-checking Kennedy’s claims about health and science.
Vaccine Safety
Kennedy has long claimed to be “for” vaccine safety rather than opposed to vaccines. Shortly before and after Election Day, he has doubled down on this message.
“I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines,” he said in a Nov. 6 interview with NBC News, in which he proceeded to say that he would ensure vaccine studies were available to the public. “I’ve never been anti-vaccine.”
The same day, Kennedy also told NPR that he wouldn’t take vaccines away, but wanted to “make sure that Americans have good information. Right now, the science on vaccine safety, particularly, has huge deficits in it, and we’re going to make sure those scientific studies are done and that people can make informed choices about their vaccinations and their children’s vaccinations.”
This followed an Oct. 30 CNN interview in which Howard Lutnick, co-chair of Trump’s transition team, denied that Kennedy would get — or even wanted — the top HHS position.
“Here’s what he wants to do. He said, ‘I want data, I just want data,’ because they block the data,” Lutnick said of Kennedy and vaccines. “He wants the data so he can say these things are unsafe.”
The problem with these comments is that vaccine safety studies have been done and Americans do have access to that information. There’s no evidence that any important vaccine safety information is being withheld from the public.
As with any medical product, vaccines are not 100% safe. Many people experience mild, temporary side effects, but serious side effects are rare. Multiple independent panels of scientists help review the data on each vaccine to make sure the benefits outweigh the risks. Several vaccine safety monitoring systems then watch for subsequent issues. Regulators have removed or paused the use of certain vaccines when serious side effects too rare to have been detected in clinical trials come to light.
Kennedy has also cast himself as a person of science, both uniquely suited to interpreting scientific studies — despite no scientific training — and willing to change his mind if shown a “well-founded study.”
“I’m an evidence-based person,” he said in an interview in June 2023. “If I’m wrong about something, I admit I’m wrong and then I move on.”
But there is little to suggest that either is true. When presented with data showing that a particular vaccine is safe, Kennedy has proven himself to be unmoved. He has been reciting the same debunked claims about vaccines and autism (see below) for nearly two decades, well after numerous experts and studies have explained and shown that he is wrong. He frequently misrepresents or cherry-picks scientific studies to argue against vaccination, and his nonprofit regularly churns out content doing the same.
In a July 2023 podcast, Kennedy admitted that he thought “no vaccine” is safe and effective. Four months later, in an interview with PBS, Kennedy falsely claimed that he had never said that, all the while repeating one of his favorite vaccine claims — that vaccines are the “only medical product … that is allowed to get a license without engaging in safety tests.”
All vaccines are tested for safety before being authorized or approved. The safety testing, however, does not have to include a placebo-controlled trial using water or saline. This is because, as in the case of a newer version of an existing vaccine, it may not make sense ethically or scientifically to use such a placebo. Non-placebo testing, notably, is also common when testing drugs, as the useful comparison is often to another medication or standard of care.
Compared with drugs or other medical products, vaccines are arguably the most closely scrutinized for safety. There is also more post-market monitoring for vaccines than for drugs.
Ironically, Kennedy and his nonprofit frequently distort data from one such monitoring system — the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS — to argue that vaccination is unsafe.
As we have explained before, VAERS is meant to detect potential safety issues quickly. The system collects unverified reports of health problems that occur after vaccination from anyone, regardless of whether a vaccine was a likely cause. The system also works in tandem with other surveillance systems and cannot on its own confirm a safety issue. Reports naturally go up when more people get a certain vaccine, or if there is more interest in a new vaccine, as there has been with the COVID-19 vaccines. These nuances, however, are often lost on the public, and the reports, which are publicly available through a searchable database, are wrongly presented as government-sourced proof that vaccines are dangerous. Hundreds of stories on the Children’s Health Defense website mention VAERS.
Another of Kennedy’s common lines of attack — also recently repeated by Lutnik — is that vaccines are not safe because vaccine companies don’t have product liability. In reality, vaccine makers do have some liability, as evidenced by the fact that Kennedy himself has sued some companies.
Lawmakers did remove most liability in 1986 after increasing litigation — much of it later found to be unwarranted — threatened the vaccine supply. An alternate compensation system was established for people with reasonable claims of harm. This was done with the understanding that vaccines are beneficial to society but in rare instances do cause serious side effects. The existence of the program is not evidence that vaccines are unsafe and does nothing to change the fact that multiple regulatory layers are in place to ensure vaccine safety.
For more, see our past articles on these issues: “FactChecking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” “Trump Embraces RFK Jr.’s Views on Vaccines, Fluoride,” “RFK Jr. Incorrectly Denies Past Remarks on Vaccine Safety and Effectiveness” and “What VAERS Can and Can’t Do, and How Anti-Vaccination Groups Habitually Misuse Its Data.”
Autism
Kennedy is perhaps best known for his continued insistence — despite ample evidence to the contrary — that vaccines cause autism. He often claims to simply want more research on the subject, but a vast body of research has already been conducted, and the upshot is clear: Vaccines do not cause autism.
In recent months, Kennedy has largely shied away from mentioning vaccines when he brings up autism. But about a week before the election, Lutnick repeated the claim — citing Kennedy — on CNN.
“And what he explained was, when he was born, we had three vaccines. And autism was 1 in 10,000,” Lutnick said on Oct. 31 of a conversation he had with Kennedy. “Now a baby’s born with 76 vaccines because in 1986 they waived product liability for vaccines. … So what happened now — autism is 1 in 34.”
Ignoring the fact that these numbers are misleading and not quite right, and that over time the number of vaccine antigens has actually declined even as children are protected against more diseases, this is a classic case of correlation not equaling causation.
Even when he isn’t mentioning the vaccine part, Kennedy recites autism statistics and an oft-used anecdote to argue there is now an epidemic of the condition.
“I’ve literally not ever met anybody [my age] with full-blown autism,” Kennedy said in a post-election podcast that aired on Nov. 11, repeating a line he used last summer during his presidential campaign.
As we’ve explained, autism diagnoses have indeed gone up over the past several decades, but the bulk of the increase is thought to be due to better awareness and a broader definition of the condition. A small portion of the increase may be real, explained in part by known risk factors, such as more babies with complications at birth surviving and more older parents having children.
Kennedy may not have met anyone his age with profound autism — the correct term for the symptoms he describes — but that doesn’t mean those individuals don’t exist. They do, experts told us. In previous decades, many would have been diagnosed with a different ailment, instead of autism.
Kennedy’s continued focus on vaccines, when research has shown they don’t cause autism, harms people and distracts from real efforts to help those with the condition, researchers told us.
For more, see “What RFK Jr. Gets Wrong About Autism” and “Trump Embraces RFK Jr.’s Views on Vaccines, Fluoride.”
COVID-19
Kennedy has espoused many misleading or incorrect ideas related to the COVID-19 pandemic, an event that supercharged the reach and influence of Children’s Health Defense.
As we’ve said, he’s backed medicines for the coronavirus such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin that work well for other diseases, but do nothing for COVID-19. And in misconstruing VAERS data, he has incorrectly presented the COVID-19 vaccines as uniquely dangerous.
In a March 2021 video, he misrepresented scientific studies and reminded viewers of past medical ethics failures such as the Tuskegee experiment to discourage Black people from getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Misinterpreting a study, Kennedy also said in 2023 that “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.”
In a claim he repeated to NBC on Nov. 6, Kennedy said he knew from reading “the monkey studies” early on that the COVID-19 vaccines would not prevent transmission of the coronavirus. In fact, many monkey studies did suggest that the vaccines would help reduce transmission — and data show that they did just that, even if their ability to do so later declined. In any case, the vaccines were not authorized for their ability to reduce transmission. The main purpose of vaccination is to prevent severe disease and death. The FDA specifically cautioned in December 2020 that it wasn’t known whether the vaccine would prevent spread of the virus.
For more, see “RFK Jr.’s COVID-19 Deceptions” and “RFK Jr. Video Pushes Known Vaccine Misrepresentations.”
Fluoride
Kennedy has long opposed water fluoridation, calling it “neurotoxic” and an “industrial waste.” Most research, however, has only demonstrated that fluoride can be harmful at higher levels than what the U.S. Public Health Service recommends states and local municipalities use in their drinking water. Small amounts of fluoride are added to drinking water in about two-thirds of the U.S. to improve dental health and prevent cavities, especially in children.
In two post-election interviews, Kennedy has incorrectly suggested that there is clear evidence that fluoride is dangerous at the levels currently in use, telling NBC that it is “lowering I.Q. in our children” and “causing bone cancer” and telling NPR that it is “almost certainly causing neurological development and loss of IQ in our children, as well as arthritis, bone breakage, thyroid problems, bone cancer and a number of other diseases.”
The research on fluoride is far more nuanced than that. As we’ve explained, there is some research suggesting that higher levels of fluoride are linked to decreases in children’s I.Q., but the evidence that this occurs at lower levels is much weaker and inconsistent.
In September, a federal judge ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must further regulate fluoride in drinking water, finding that the fluoridation the U.S. considers optimal “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.” However, the judge added that “this finding does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health.”
For more, see “CDC, Experts Say Fluoridated Water Is Safe, Contrary to RFK Jr.’s Warnings” and “Trump Embraces RFK Jr.’s Views on Vaccines, Fluoride.”
Chronic Disease
Chronic disease, particularly in children, has become one of Kennedy’s favorite topics. He often says that when his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was in office, just 6% of kids had a chronic condition, but now it’s 60%. At times, he adds that the 60% is “a conservative estimate” or that it reflects a “debilitating” degree of disease.
As we’ve written, there aren’t statistics that go back to the 1960s that provide a clear answer on how much more common chronic disease has become in children today. In many cases, the clinical definitions of conditions were different decades ago or had not even been recognized yet, making comparisons impossible. It is unclear where Kennedy is getting his figures, and he has not responded to our requests for their source.
But experts told us 60% is likely an overestimate. Moreover, not all cases of chronic disease are severe, as some definitions would include mild seasonal allergies, for example.
“The big growth areas are obesity and mental/behavioral conditions,” Paul Newacheck, a professor emeritus who studied children’s health policy at the University of California, San Francisco, told us. “But they don’t add up to 60% of kids.”
Even as he claims to know what the causes are — usually, chemicals or other environmental exposures — Kennedy alleges that the NIH “will not identify” the exposures, and that he will be able to end the “epidemic” of chronic disease “overnight.” Experts told us that prospect is implausible. Researchers do know some reasons why chronic diseases are more common, but they are more complex and often different than what Kennedy claims.
For more, see “RFK Jr.’s Exaggerations on Chronic Disease in Children.”
Other Science-Related Claims and Conspiracies
In addition to his other claims about COVID-19, in 2020 Kennedy appeared to endorse a debunked conspiracy theory involving Bill Gates, microchips and COVID-19 vaccines on social media.
In his 2021 book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” Kennedy cast Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as an archvillain who “deliberately derail[ed] America’s access to lifesaving drugs” during the pandemic in order to profit from vaccines. There is no evidence of this. Fauci has also denied earning any COVID-19-related royalties from pharmaceutical companies.
Apart from COVID-19 and vaccines, Kennedy has repeatedly linked antidepressants to mass shootings and suggested that chemicals in water are responsible for “gender confusion” in children. Both claims are baseless.
He has indicated he might believe in the chemtrails conspiracy theory, or the idea that the government or other group is secretly spraying dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere from airplanes. He’s said that cell phone radiation is dangerous and 5G wireless is a way “to harvest our data and control our behavior.” On multiple occasions, Kennedy has falsely said that HIV might not be the sole cause of AIDS.
In July, Kennedy misleadingly interpreted HHS efforts to prepare vaccines for a possible H5N1 bird flu outbreak in a nefarious light. “Why would you need this vaccine, unless you expected a much more virulent virus to appear which had mysteriously gained the ability to spread between humans?” he said in a post on X. “Will there be another lab-derived pandemic? Not on my watch!”
Notably, Kennedy also got several details wrong about the actions HHS had taken to secure bird flu vaccines.
For more, see “FactChecking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” “RFK Jr.’s COVID-19 Deceptions” and “Bird Flu Pandemic Preparedness Activities Are Not Evidence of a Conspiracy.”
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