The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is no longer a trusted, science-based agency under the current U.S. administration. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with Donald Trump’s backing, has created an agenda with no credibility. The U.S. and the rest of the world should have seen this coming with the preview, the first administration of the current president, whose efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic included press conferences where Trump promoted unproven medications, suggested bleach as a cure, or shining lights inside bodies to defeat the disease. Meanwhile, COVID-19, from the first recorded American deaths in February 2020, a month before it was declared a global pandemic, to the end of Trump’s first term in office, surpassed 400,000.
COVID-19 was a virus that likely jumped from animal populations to humans, first in China, and then through our modern global transportation network, spread around the world. To date, COVID-19 is still a threat. We may not be calling it a pandemic anymore, but it is endemic, with estimated global deaths directly attributed to the virus standing at over 7 million. Excess mortality analysis, based on data from the World Health Organization (WHO), with the U.S. no longer a member, indicates deaths above expected national baselines have been estimated to be 2.74 times greater.
That was Trump’s first term. Now, in his second he has inflicted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. upon the American public with ramifications for the CDC and global health. Kennedy Jr. was awarded the job of Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), not because he has scientific expertise, but because he dropped out of the 2024 presidential election, throwing his support to Trump.
Kennedy Jr. is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s law school. He has also acquired a master’s degree in environmental law from Pace University. He has no medical or public health background. Traditionally, HHS has been run by leaders with medical or public health experience, or by executives recruited by large hospitals and health systems. The resume or curriculum vitae of HHS secretaries usually includes familiarity with U.S. Medicare, Medicaid, and now Obamacare. Not Kennedy Jr. He has no qualifications for the job, but has lots of opinions with no scientific credibility.
Kennedy Jr. may be remembered as the second pandemic to descend on the American public, taking the CDC down in the process as an institution that supports recommendations and decisions using scientific evidence. Trump, in appointing Kennedy Jr., has tasked him with the role of making America healthy again. So, how is he going about doing this?
The Kennedy Jr. relationship with the CDC, part of his HHS mandate, has included:
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Terminating a CDC Director over disagreements on vaccine policy, and replacing the members of the federal vaccine advisory committee with anti-vaccine appointees.
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Altering CDC online content related to vaccines and autism without any scientific evidence to support the changes.
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Cancelling federal funding for mRNA vaccine research on 22 projects, including promising progress on mRNA vaccines to treat cancer.
- Restricting the dispensing of COVID-19 vaccines to deal with emerging new variants of the virus.
- Accusing the CDC of lying about everything and misleading the public during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the use of masks, vaccines and other measures taken during the early stages, resulting in schools and businesses moving to remote learning and work.
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Inserting his alternative medical views as the head of HHS to further undermine CDC credibility, including:
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His opinion that Lyme disease is an engineered bioweapon.
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Questioning the role of HIV in AIDS.
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Questioning the use of thimerosal, a commonly used preservative in vaccines and linking it to autism.
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Promoting the miasma theory of disease (toxins and pollution in the environment) over germ theory (viruses, bacteria and other pathogens) as the primary cause of allergies and autoimmune conditions in children.
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Linking COVID-19 deaths to Vitamin-D deficiency.
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Promoting unpasteurized milk and natural health remedies over drugs and vaccines as the way to make Americans healthy again.
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Removing fluoride from public water supplies because of his belief that the chemical lowers the IQ of children, meanwhile ignoring the evidence of how community water fluoridation has decreased the level of dental caries (a chronic and preventable disease that affects 1 in 4 children living below the poverty line), and, if unmanaged, leading to heart disease.
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Where Kennedy Jr. gets it right is in his views about the increasing amount of ultra-processed foods in the American diet, linking their consumption to increasing obesity and cases of Type 2 diabetes. That’s because these packaged and fast foods are high in sugar, sodium and saturated fats, and low in dietary fibre and key nutrients such as Omega-3, magnesium, zinc, chromium, vitamins B, C and D.
It is good to know that Kennedy Jr. got at least one thing right in the middle of all of his other opinions he brandishes as science.
The fallout from Kennedy Jr. and Trump on the CDC has weakened America’s primary source of science-based health information. It is harder for the public to trust the site.
Katelyn Jetelina, the publisher of Your Local Epidemiologist, a public health newsletter, recently noted that the CDC is now dominated by political actors overriding science. She states, “It’s getting harder and harder to know what is data-driven and what is spun,” referring to the CDC site. Jetelina believes there is still credible science to be found on the CDC website, but she is knowledgeable about medicine and not the average user. She recommends that none of the information on vaccines at this time can be trusted.
For the majority of the public, therefore, determining the difference between CDC fact and fiction will increasingly be difficult, at least for the remaining term of Kennedy Jr’s and Trump’s reign.
Jetelina suggests finding alternative data-driven sources and The Evidence Collective, with the latter developing what amounts to an alternative to the CDC as a reference site for data-driven medical science.
