During his presidential campaign, Kennedy developed a national profile for his criticism of the Covid vaccine and childhood immunizations.

Summary

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken anti-vaccine activist, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Known for promoting debunked claims linking vaccines to autism, Kennedy’s appointment has sparked concerns within federal health agencies, with some FDA staff reportedly considering resignations.

Kennedy, who previously ran for president before endorsing Trump, has hinted at plans to overhaul the FDA, ban fluoride in drinking water, and reduce ultra-processed foods.

His nomination marks a significant potential shift for U.S. public health policy.

  • Valthorn@feddit.nu
    855·
    3 hours ago

    To all you who didn’t vote because “Harris isn’t good either”: You chose this. You let this happen.

    • Kalkaline @leminal.space
      4·
      14 minutes ago

      When kids start dying of Whooping Cough, I’m going to strongly encourage people to post their anger and direct it to not only Republican voters, but also to people who stayed home because “it doesn’t matter.”

    • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
      646·
      2 hours ago

      It’s quite pathetic how so many of these stories have top comments that all blame voters for the decades of compound failures by the Democratic party.

      You have it backwards my friend, voters cannot fail the party. It’s the party’s job to win voters, but instead, they shed 14 million voters over the last election.

      Remind me, how many users are on Lemmy?

      • JakJak98@lemmy.world
        2·
        15 minutes ago

        So many downvotes for such an objectively true statement. It’s not “we the party” it’s “we the people” if dems didn’t win that’s objectively the parties fault for not winning us over.

  • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    15 minutes ago

    Has Trump rehired anyone from his previous administration? I know he fired a shit ton of them but I know a few managed to stay on.

    Because if this is all new people, it’s very telling and I have a feeling it means it’s going to be more dangerous and not less.

    I feel like the only people who can do anything powerful would be the front line government workers and contractors. If they all quit their jobs en masse on January 20th, it might prevent the new administration from doing even more dangerous shit.

  • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    1 hour ago

    I feel like these articles blowing up now is just a way to make people less interested when it eventually has to pass the Senate… manufacturing consent and all that

  • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
    643·
    4 hours ago

    RFK has said “there is no such thing as a safe and effective vaccine”.

    You voted for this, America.

  • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
    18·
    3 hours ago

    Next time ebola breaks out, I half expect him to eat a live bat on TV to prove it doesn’t exist and immediately become patient zero right here

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          52·
          3 hours ago

          I don’t know what about that comment signaled to you that I’d be okay with my family members that live in a red state dying because RFK fucked with vaccines, but I’m not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Where you live is a location, not an ideology.

  • bamboo@lemm.ee
    164·
    4 hours ago

    I don’t know how he thinks he’ll reduce ultra-processed foods but that’s probably not the worst. Other stuff is 🤮

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
      9·
      2 hours ago

      Depends on what he means by “ultra-processed”, but you can bet that it’s probably not a reasonable criteria that he’ll be using.

      The man isn’t rational, and doesn’t base his conclusions on sound reasoning.

      Note the call to lessen regulations around “raw milk, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine”. That’s pretty insane.

      And I can almost be certain that what they’ll do is eliminate funding for snap benefits and school lunches going to what they’ll classify as “ultra processed foods”, without adjusting funding to account for what they left behind being significantly more expensive. Some definitions of “ultra-processed” include things like “store bought bread”, “frozen meals”, “soup concentrate”, “yoghurt” and “sausage”.
      Call me cynical, but I think if you apply the stricter work requirements for benefits they always want, while reducing the scope of the benefits to cover fewer things, and almost nothing helpful for the people with the severe time restrictions the work requirements can cause you’ll end up seeing people use the benefits far less often, because they give less usable food for the money. Then they’ll use that to justify reducing the size of the program even further.

      We expect people making school lunches to make hundreds of meals that finish at the same time, to have the meal be nutritionally complete, tasty, and now also not use frozen or premade ingredients. We give them literally $1 for the ingredients for these meals, and maybe another $2 for operational overhead like labor costs and equipment.
      Saying you can’t use canned tomato sauce, peanut butter, pre-packaged bread or ground meats is basically just cutting funding for feeding children under the guise of not paying for a scary sounding classification of food.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      31·
      4 hours ago

      In practice what it probably means is removing all the modern preservatives and added vitamins/minerals. Who’s excited to get goiter and pellagra?!

      Doing that would also mean a return to traditional preservatives: salt and sugar. Because we don’t have enough of that in the American diet already.

  • greenshirtdenimjeans@sh.itjust.works
    94·
    3 hours ago

    This administration is turning out to be one of the most experienced in history. I have extremely high hopes for these picks, the combined knowledge is unheard of, nobody could imagine all of these top individuals.