I’m sure you are as sick of reading about RFK Jr. as we are of writing about him, but this is the world we live in. We cannot let outrage fatigue cause us to take our eye off the ball. If nothing else, SBM needs to chronicle every anti-science move that this administration makes.
As most people, and certainly most readers here, certainly know, RFK Jr. is a dangerous anti-science and specifically anti-vaccine crank who is now the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). This puts him in charge of health care policy at the federal level, with a directive from Trump to “go wild on medicine”. That’s what he is doing.
RFK Jr. is a particular kind of crank. He is a lawyer who knows how to start with a desired conclusion, then cherry pick and twist evidence to suit that conclusion. He has apparently operated that way for so long, he behaves as if he truly believes that is how science and logic work. Of course, that is precisely how pseudoscience works. RFK is also the master of “I am not anti-vaccine, I am pro-safe vaccine” coyness. It is a toxic mix of anti-intellectual deception that is now running roughshod through American health care.
The latest outrage was completely predicted here by David Gorski. In February he wrote:
“The Secretary of HHS picks the members of ACIP, after a nomination and selection process. These members serve staggered terms, and the current roster has four members, including the chair Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot, whose term expires June 30, 2025, four whose terms expire in 2027, with the rest expiring in 2028. (The reason for this is that, for whatever reason, the Biden administration left a number of ACIP committee positions vacant after the members’ terms had expired and then appointed several new members in February.) By the end of a Trump administration, all members of ACIP could be replaced; that is, if RFK Jr. were to wait until the terms of existing members expire. He could easily decide not to wait and replace the entire committee now. Such is the power he now holds.”
RFK went with the worst-case scenario – he just fired the entire ACIP panel at once. He was not content to wait until their staggered terms were up. An again, in typical RFK style, he has a ready-made pretext for this extraordinary move. In his WSJ editorial announcing the move, he begins:
“Vaccines have become a divisive issue in American politics, but there is one thing all parties can agree on: The U.S. faces a crisis of public trust. Whether toward health agencies, pharmaceutical companies or vaccines themselves, public confidence is waning.”
This is part of his justification – he needed to take this unprecedented action because of waning public trust in the CDC and vaccines. This is an old-school strategy often used by anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and pseudoscientists – do everything you can to undermine public trust or to create questions, then use waning public trust as justification for taking action. Perhaps no individual has done more to undermine public trust in vaccines, so it’s rich that he is using that to justify attacking the vaccine infrastructure. Of course, this is all by design.
RFK is also using another pretext for his sacking of the entire ACIP panel, one that was also anticipated by David, because this is also something cranks do – citing conflicts of interest. This is part of a general strategy to weaponize methods of quality control within science and medicine to achieve a predetermined outcome. We see this in the recent executive order by Trump ostensibly to promote “gold standard science”. He too writes: “Over the last 5 years, confidence that scientists act in the best interests of the public has fallen significantly.” And then he uses this as pretext to direct the heads of agencies to institute certain standards, including that government science be “without conflicts of interest”.
Superficially, setting such standards, and the standards themselves, are reasonable. They use all the right phrases, promoting standards we support here as SBM. The problem is, none of this is a sincere effort to improve the quality of science. RFK’s sacking of ACIP and Tump’s executive order represent the weaponization of science standards to achieve predetermined ends.
Getting back to conflicts of interest – Kennedy cites that many of the ACIP panel members have had connections with the pharmaceutical industry. Of course they have – they are vaccine experts. The pharmaceutical industry produces all vaccines, and they require experts to do this. There is a collaboration among government, universities, the medical profession, and industry. Scientific research informs policy, and also feeds into translation into products by industry. This kind of relationship exists in all industries heavily based on science and technology.
But Kennedy sees this all as a conspiracy. He even acknowledges that individual members of the panel may not have specific conflicts of interest (panel members are vetted very carefully for this) – but they are all part of this collaboration with industry, which biases their recommendations. In other words – they’re vaccine scientists and experts. So who is Kennedy going to get to replace them? Where are the experts that have never had even a brush with a pharmaceutical company?
RFK’s real beef with the panel is that they make recommendations he personally doesn’t like, because he is an anti-vaccine crank. Like all cranks, he interprets the fact that actual experts disagree with him as a conspiracy, not as a reflection of the fact that they are experts and he is not. The system disagree with him – so he undermines the system, spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories, and then uses that as pretext to dismantle the system.
What will come next? I think we all know. RFK will appoint a panel of cranks who will proceed to weaken vaccine recommendations. This in turn will affect messaging about vaccines, and will even affect insurance company coverage of vaccines. We can expect no new vaccines to get approved by RFKs hand-picked panel of cranks.
For those keeping score – since RFK has been secretary of HHS he has weakened CDC public messaging on vaccines, reversed recommendations for specific vaccines, pulled funding for vaccine research (such as developing a bird-flu vaccine), and has now wiped out the CDC panel that makes official vaccine recommendations.
This is American Lysenkoism. Lysenko’s crank agricultural science, which became the official science of the Soviet Union, ultimately resulted in the death of millions of people. The only question now is – will RFK Jr surpass Lysenko with a higher body count? The smart money is on yes.
