Since taking over HHS in February, RFK Jr. and his allies have hammered the nation’s public health infrastructure, encouraged medical fraud, and forced government agencies on wild goose chases to support their favorite principles, while downplaying the real threats to people’s health.
There’s an extensive list of ways RFK Jr. actually made America less, not more, healthy. But here are some of the most serious failures of his presidency in 2025 (at least there are still three more years left??).
anti-vaccine flunkies
In June 2025, RFK Jr. unilaterally dismissed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a panel of relevant experts convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help guide vaccine policy in the US. He then largely reinstated ACIP with its ideological allies, many of whom have a track record of misrepresenting vaccine safety or have directly profited from testifying against vaccine manufacturers.
The new ACIP has since been a boon for the anti-vaccination movement. During three meetings this year, their evidence-free recommendations have led to the removal or weakening of many vaccines. This month, in its biggest change yet, ACIP voted to overturn a long-standing recommendation that all children in the U.S. be vaccinated against hepatitis B at birth — a safe, decades-old policy that has helped dramatically reduce rates of the viral disease in the U.S., especially among children.
Although many doctors and health organizations will refuse to follow these instructions, it is likely that more children will be exposed to nearly eliminated diseases such as hepatitis B as a result. And the worst is yet to come. Some ACIP members, RFK Jr., and even President Donald Trump himself have made no secret of their desire to dismantle the childhood vaccination program as a whole.
CDC’s fall
Kennedy’s hijacking of ACIP also hastened the collapse of CDC.
In late August, RFK Jr. arranged for the dismissal of former CDC Director Susan Monarez, only four weeks after taking the job. Monarez has since testified publicly that he was let go because of his refusal to sign off on ACIP’s recommendations without review (CDC has the final say on whether any ACIP vote is adopted). Following his dismissal, several senior CDC officials resigned in protest, feeling that they could no longer support, even indirectly, RFK Jr.’s agenda.
“Federal public health has now been compromised — it has been taken over by ideology, it has been weaponized,” Demetre Daskalakis, one of these officials and former director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told Gizmodo in October.
The CDC is now a shadow of its former self, and its current operators certainly seem ready to cater to RFK Jr.’s every whim. In October, acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill indicated that he wanted to scrap the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, a longtime goal of the anti-vaccination movement.
Undermining government funded science
The CDC may have been the worst-hit federal agency under RFK Jr., but it was hardly good for anyone.
The Kennedy and Trump administrations this year have implemented sweeping job and funding cuts to science-related branches of the government, particularly the National Institutes of Health. RFK Jr. also signed off on ending billions of dollars of federal grants to health departments and research scientists, though sometimes without even realizing it.
Many of these cuts were made on the recommendations of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), reportedly as part of streamlining government priorities and resources. But Kennedy’s personal ideology is making some cuts, too. In August, HHS announced it would cancel approximately $500 million of funding earmarked for mRNA vaccine research. Kennedy justified the move by falsely claiming that mRNA vaccines are no less safe and effective than older vaccine technologies (never mind the fact that Kennedy has also described several older, non-mRNA vaccines as unsafe).
These cuts have already had a real-life impact. The loss of NIH funding this year has affected hundreds of clinical trials involving 74,000 patients, while many young scientists have lost the resources they need to pursue their promising careers.
Helping to roll back measles
The effects of RFK Jr.’s disdain for vaccines are already visible – for germs.
This year, nearly 2,000 cases of measles have been reported in 47 outbreaks, while three people have died so far. This is the highest number since the viral disease was locally eliminated in the US a quarter-century ago. Although it is not yet certain, the country is on the verge of losing its official measles-free status (this will depend on whether some of the outbreaks can be genetically linked to the initial cases in Texas that occurred in January). Other vaccine-preventable childhood diseases such as pertussis have also increased this year.
To be clear, Kennedy is not solely to blame for the measles’ return. Many parts of the world have recently experienced a resurgence of the disease thanks to declining vaccination rates, including our upstate neighbor Canada. But his policies and rhetoric are strengthening the anti-vaccination movement and worsening people’s access to vaccines. And it is certainly worth wondering whether the current outbreak could have been better handled by a CDC that had not lost many of its staff and federal funding.
If 2025 is anything to go by, measles is unlikely to change significantly if it officially returns to the United States.
During the massive outbreak in Texas earlier this year, Kennedy reluctantly endorsed the MMR vaccine. At the same time, he advocated scientifically unsupported treatments for measles, including vitamin A-rich cod liver oil pills. Not surprisingly, his advice probably harmed more children, as local doctors reported treating several cases of measles-infected children who had taken excessive amounts of vitamin A.
Blaming Tylenol for Autism
In September, Trump and RFK Jr. made a bombshell announcement: They claimed there was a possible link between the use of acetaminophen (better known by the brand name Tylenol) during pregnancy and autism. While the federal government was more cautious in its words, Trump was not. During the press conference, Trump repeatedly yelled at pregnant women to stop taking the drug and declared: “It is not good to take Tylenol – I will say this, it is not good.”
The trouble is that the evidence for any causal relationship between acetaminophen and autism is weak, with the most rigorous studies failing to support such a relationship. Medical experts, health agencies, and countries around the world have completely rejected the Trump administration’s scapegoating and continue to support the drug as a safe pain reliever and fever reducer for pregnant women (although, like any drug, it should only be taken as needed).
That’s not stopping the Trump regime from moving forward with their plan to blame acetaminophen (and possibly vaccines) for autism, even as they struggle for more data to support their claim. In early October, during a White House Cabinet meeting discussing the link, RFK Jr. said, “This is not evidence. We are doing studies to create evidence.”
false lead
The autism/acetaminophen debacle represents one of the more disappointing aspects of RFK Jr.’s approach to public health.
Kennedy often tosses out strange ideas that have little to do with reality, such as the alleged danger of chemtrails or the epidemic of children with damaged mitochondria. However, other times, he points out real issues but offers completely useless solutions that waste everyone’s time. For example, while the federal government has promoted Tylenol as a cause of autism, HHS has actively cut funding for research examining more concrete drivers, such as our genetics or environmental toxins.
And just last month, RFK Jr. said he would fund a study examining the possible link between mass shootings and antidepressant drugs like SSRIs. Mass shootings are a growing public health threat that requires a serious response, but research collected so far has found little evidence that SSRIs are playing even a minor role in causing these acts. The money and time spent conducting this SSRI study almost certainly could have been better spent elsewhere studying the actual risk factors.
Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again initiative has also celebrated hollow victories such as prompting Coca-Cola to sell more of its cane sugar version in the US, as if high amounts of cane sugar are magically less unhealthy to consume than high fructose corn syrup. Since the company isn’t even replacing the original version, it’s possible that MAHA’s free advertising will actually drive people to drink more soda than ever before!
There are many real and complex public health problems facing the country today. But nothing about Kennedy’s track record suggests that he will tackle these problems in a meaningful way. And we will all suffer worse for it.
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