Health Secretary RFK Jr. says not to take medical advice from him
ERIC LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the House health committee in Washington on Wednesday. Kennedy, the health secretary and vaccine skeptic who has used his position to amplify discredited health theories and promote unconventional medical treatments, ducked questions during a congressional hearing Wednesday about whether children should be vaccinated for measles, chickenpox or polio. He said people should not rely on him for medical advice.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary and vaccine skeptic who has used his position to amplify discredited health theories and promote unconventional medical treatments, ducked questions during a congressional hearing Wednesday about whether children should be vaccinated for measles, chickenpox or polio. He said people should not rely on him for medical advice.
The issue came up when Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., who is on the House Appropriations Committee, asked Kennedy if he would vaccinate his own child for measles.
“For measles? Probably for measles I —” Kennedy began to answer before stopping himself. “You know, what I would say is, my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant.
“I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me,” he said.
But Kennedy, who oversees several agencies whose mandate is to give advice and make policy on public health, has repeatedly used his position to weigh in on health topics, including vaccination. (He has urged parents of newborns to “do your own research” on vaccines and suggested the measles vaccine might be unsafe.)
As health secretary, he also declared recently that “sugar is poison, and Americans need to know that it is poison,” and that doctors who treated measles with cod liver oil had seen “very, very good results.”
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Pocan continued to press Kennedy about his views on vaccines during the hearing, which was held for Kennedy to answer questions about President Donald Trump’s health budget for the upcoming year. Pocan asked Kennedy if he would vaccinate his child for polio or chickenpox.
Again Kennedy punted, saying that he “didn’t want to give advice” about the vaccines.
He did, however, misleadingly claim that “in Europe they don’t use the chickenpox vaccine specifically.” A 2022 article in Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics stated that 28 European countries use chickenpox vaccines, of which 16 use combination vaccines for chickenpox, mumps, measles and rubella. Many European countries have also introduced national chickenpox vaccination programs in the past 10 years.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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