Among the programs that RFK Jr. has not determined to be important:
- food safety,
- a wide variety of scientific research,
- lead paint abatement,
- heating for low-income people in the winter,
- vaccines for measles, chicken pox, polio, and COVID,
- emergency responses to disease pandemics.
New FDA rules block COVID vaccines for healthy adults under 65 and force parents of high-risk children to gain special permission before their kids can be protected. In June, RFK Jr. fired the entire Advisory Committe for Immunization Practices and replaced them with anti-vaccine fanatics. A Republican Senator has opposed having the new committee meet.
It's funny to watch John Oliver's highlight reels of RFK Jr.'s falsehoods or accounts of his hiring of phony doctors. But this guy is causing future deaths and suffering on a large scale.
Already, RFK Jr. has pushed out the competent director of the CDC, in response to which four top CDC officials have resigned, and CDC workers have held a mass walkout and rally in protest. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, remarked, upon submitting his resignation:
"I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health."
Former CDC directors appointed by presidents of both parties recently wrote in the New York Times:
"Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven 'treatments' while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements."
