HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is dangerous to the American public and should resign or be fired, the executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA) said Wednesday.
“APHA expressed concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the choice for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and in the few short weeks that he has been in this position, those concerns have been realized,” Georges Benjamin, MD, said in a statementopens in a new tab or window. “The recent implementation of massive reductions in staff at key health agencies including the CDC, the FDA, and the Health Resources and Services Administration, among others, along with acknowledgement since that many of these people shouldn’t have been fired, is the latest example of poor and thoughtless management that will only undermine the work of our nation’s top public health agencies to keep us all healthy.”
Kennedy’s “complete disregard” for science has become evident through his actions, Benjamin said, including:
- Reducing staff at the relevant federal agencies and promoting a nonsensical reorganization of HHS “that will weaken our nation’s ability to meaningfully address any health problem”
- Forcing the leading FDA vaccine official, Peter Marks, MD, to leave the agency where he led the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and helped to launch Operation Warp Speed in the first Trump administration
- Refusing to strongly encourage measles vaccination despite the deaths of two unvaccinated children, and instead promoting unscientific therapies such as vitamin A, which has resulted in significant liver injury from its use among some children in Texas
- Hiring a known vaccine skeptic to lead a study to undermine proven science related to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, “which is 97% effective and has a long history of safety”
- Stopping research at NIH that was focused on preventing future epidemics
- Announcing plans to tell CDC to stop recommending fluoridation of community water supplies
“Americans deserve better than someone who is trying to impose his unscientific and judgmental view of public health and science,” he said. “We deserve better than RFK Jr. … As a physician, I pledged to first do no harm and to speak up when I see harm being done by others. I ask my colleagues to join me and speak up. Secretary Robert Kennedy is a danger to the public’s health and should resign or be fired.”
The APHA is not the only healthcare organization to recently publish a document critical of the current situation at HHS and other federal agencies. “We see real danger in this moment,” said an undated letter to the “American people”opens in a new tab or window signed by more than 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). “We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation’s scientific enterprise is being decimated.”
“For over 80 years, wise investments by the U.S. government have built up the nation’s research enterprise, making it the envy of the world,” the letter said. “Astoundingly, the Trump administration is destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data, and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds.”
“We call on the administration to cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science, and we urge the public to join this call,” the letter concluded. “Share this statement with others, contact your representatives in Congress, and help your community understand what is at risk. The voice of science must not be silenced. We all benefit from science, and we all stand to lose if the nation’s research enterprise is destroyed.”
Why did the letter include the term “SOS”? “We find that many of the leaders of our universities and research organizations and professional societies are laying low currently under the threats from the Trump administration, and it’s creating what we call a climate of fear that’s keeping them from speaking out in a really vocal way,” Steven Woolf, MD, MPH, one of the signers of the letter, told MedPage Todayopens in a new tab or window in an interview. “So we as scientists, felt like we needed to get the word out to the public about what’s going on, and that’s what we were referring to when we said that we were sending out an SOS.”
“For many people, it may seem like some distant bureaucratic machinations in Washington, D.C. and many of them may feel like a good shakeup there is long overdue,” said Woolf, who is senior advisor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health, in Richmond. “But ultimately what people don’t realize is how this is going to impact them when they next go to their primary care provider, when they’re next admitted to the hospital, when the next pandemic arrives, the systems that we have in place to protect our health and prevent disease are being damaged, and it will cost lives.”
Kind regards,
Richard van der Jagt, MD, FRCP (C),