In his first Senate confirmation hearing to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated claims we have written about before on vaccines and chronic disease.
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. Here, we summarize our past work fact-checking Kennedy’s claims about health and science.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has given children’s health and the “chronic disease epidemic” a prominent role in his campaign. Diagnoses of a variety of chronic conditions in children have increased in recent decades, but likely not to the extent that Kennedy claims or for the reasons he gives.
In a July 31 television interview, Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson inaccurately implied there might be a connection between vaccines and higher reported rates of childhood chronic diseases. She is correct that reported rates of chronic conditions in kids have increased over the last several decades, but there is no scientific evidence to suggest vaccines are the cause.