President-elect Trump appointed a man who has actively sabotaged global health to be in charge of our nation’s public health system. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a dangerous quack, whose conspiracy theories put millions of lives at risk.
Why did Trump choose a man to lead HHS whose ideology subverts public health? Well, he promised RFK Jr. the job in exchange for his endorsement. Why does Trump fill key positions at HHS with others whose views or experience are derided by mainstream scientists? Clearly, he is being advised by RFK Jr., so he can surround himself with like-minded people.
The effect of these appointments on the career scientists and physicians at HHS will be devastating. There is sure to be a brain drain. Trump could cripple our nation’s public health system for years to come.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is in line to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the next Trump administration, is well-known for promoting conspiracy theories and vaccine skepticism in the United States.
But Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has also spent years working abroad to undermine policies that have been pillars of global health policy for a half-century, records show.
He has done this by lending his celebrity, and the name of his nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, to a network of overseas chapters that sow distrust in vaccine safety and spread misinformation far and wide.
He, his organizations and their officials have interfered with vaccination efforts, undermined sex education campaigns meant to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa, and railed against global organizations like the World Health Organization that are in charge of health initiatives.
Along the way, Mr. Kennedy has partnered with, financed or promoted fringe figures — people who claim that 5G cellphone towers cause cancer, that homosexuality and contraceptive education are part of a global conspiracy to reduce African fertility and that the World Health Organization is trying to steal countries’ sovereignty.
One of his group’s advisers, in Uganda, suggested using “supernatural insight” and a man she calls Prophet Elvis to guide policymaking. “We do well to embrace ethereal means to get ahead as a nation,” she wrote on a Ugandan news site this year.
These people, more than leading scientists and experienced public health professionals, have existed in Mr. Kennedy’s orbit for years. The ideas spread by him and his associates abroad highlight the unorthodox, sometimes conspiratorial nature of the world occupied by a man who stands to lead America’s health department, its 80,000 employees and its $1.8 trillion budget.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
RFK Jr was profoundly psychologically impacted by the assassination of his father and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and he has never recovered the ability to competently reason. He is fundamentally mentally unstable, as his bizarre behavior over the decades has illustrated.
Trump’s appointment of RFK Jr to head HHS is seen by Trump as merely just an in-your-face jab at the “liberals” and as a bone tossed to his rabid MAGA Minions — but Trump will almost certainly come to realize that the havoc that RFK Jr sows in U.S. healthcare will four years from now have created so much disease, death, and anger that even his MAGA Minions will be angry and ready to vote Blue.
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I don’t know about RFK’s psyche. I know what I see: a man who knows very little about vaccines, disease, and science being placed in charge of the nation’s health research program.
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