NEWSROOM

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kennedy often calls out moms as his biggest supporters. His message to women sounds like praise and empowerment, but he's actually shifting the burden of evaluating scientific studies onto moms. That’s unfair and dangerous.

Senators Sanders and Cassidy objected when Secretary Kennedy claimed, in a Senate committee meeting, that "if you want to talk about why disease mortality disappeared in the 20th Century it was not vaccines." RFK Jr. distorts the historical medical record to support his ideology. The decline in infant and childhood mortality in the 20th Century was not due to vaccines alone, but new vaccines dramatically reduced death and disease due to infectious disease and saved millions of lives.

In April 2025, Kennedy promised to phase out all petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the nation’s food supply in order to restore “gold-standard science” and “earn back the public’s trust.” Since then he has made little headway and has walked back tough talk about bans on dyes in favor of voluntary commitments from the food industry while deregulating food labeling to broaden the products that can claim to contain “no artificial colors.” Faced with industry opposition, Kennedy is proving weak.

RFK Jr is hyping peptides and promising changes to FDA rules that would make some unapproved peptides legally available from compounding pharmacies, despite concerns about their safety. His claims that the FDA “illegally” changed regulations for compounding pharmacies are not true. Kennedy is pushing the FDA to adopt an evidence free and potentially dangerous peptide policy.

For National Public Health Week, we look at Secretary Kennedy’s claims to be “restoring trust” in public health. Unfortunately, he is doing the opposite and weakening America’s scientific, medical, and public health systems. Under his watch, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has terminated at least 75 scientific advisory committees and elevated the voices of unqualified, conspiratorial, and conflicted individuals. Kennedy is destroying technical knowledge and expertise at HHS and using "public trust" as his excuse for doing so.

When Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to encourage the domestic production of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate, Kennedy’s MAHA supporters were angry. Kennedy has waffled in his messaging about glyphosates and whether they should be regulated. Glyphosates are a rare example where the Trump administration has blocked Kennedy from pursuing MAHA goals.

RFK Jr said in January that it may be a "better thing" if fewer children are vaccinated against influenza. In fact, multiple studies have shown that influenza vaccination protects children against severe illness, hospitalization and death, including the CDC's own data and studies. A March 16 judicial ruling has put the CDC's new flu vaccine guidelines on hold. But Kennedy continues to sow doubt in order to restrict access to life saving flu vaccines.

Kennedy said he was ending the “war on women” by removing box warnings about the risks associated with menopausal hormone therapy. He wildly exaggerates MHT benefits and stokes conspiracy theories by blaming doctors for historical caution.

Secretary Kennedy frequently says that Americans were healthier and had fewer chronic diseases in the1960s but the data are mixed and in some ways Americans are healthier than their grandparents. The goal of the Secretary of Health should be to make America one of the healthiest countries in the modern world, not to revert to a mythical past.

Kennedy visited Samoa in 2019 when the Samoan government was restarting its childhood MMR immunization program. At his confirmation hearing in 2025, Secretary Kennedy assured Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) that his trip to Samoa "had nothing to do with vaccines," but recently discovered emails prove Kennedy lied. Kennedy wanted data for a ‘natural experiment’ in Samoa to see how children would fare against the disease without vaccines.

Secretary Kennedy has repeatedly challenged the safety of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in most abortions. Hundreds of studies using decades of data have conclusively shown that mifepristone is safe, but Kennedy is following the anti-abortion playbook by raising unfounded concerns to decrease abortion access.

Kennedy wants to ban gender affirming care for children. He says transgender care “fails to meet professionally recognized standards.” He called gender-affirming care “malpractice.” The reality is that gender-affirming care is a legitimate, well-established, multi-disciplinary branch of medical practice supported by decades of research.