Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could do a massive amount of harm as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, warned Dan Diamond of The Washington Post in a lengthy thread posted to Bluesky on Friday.
This comes as Trump is making other conspiracy theorist picks to head up major government departments, including another antivaxxer to head up the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Diamond specifically wrote that he was asked by relatives at Thanksgiving dinner how much Kennedy could really do to harm public health — and offered up what he told them in response.
"RFK Jr has said he doesn't want to 'take away' anybody's vaccines. But there are still lots of things he can do instead," he wrote. "As the head of the U.S. health agencies, he'd have huge control over the messages and recommendations that they issue. RFK Jr has long questioned the childhood vaccine recommendations, for instance, and called for reviews. You could see some of those recommended doses and schedule changing."
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One way he could do this, he wrote, would be to staff vaccine advisory boards with his own allies.
"Those committees' recommendations aren't binding, but it could confuse state agencies, schools, etc that historically follow federal guidance + rupture that longstanding relationship," explained Diamond.
He could also impose duplicative "safety reviews" on vaccines far beyond what other drugs go through for approval, which could "slow down the approval of new vaccines or updated versions of older shots getting to market."
Even short of these, wrote Diamond, Kennedy has more "subtle" ways he could interfere with the vaccine system.
"For instance, vaccine manufacturing plants need to undergo federal inspections," he writes. "RFK Jr could just delay those inspections, perhaps indefinitely. Or he could raise awareness of vaccine side effects, perhaps highlighting them for patients" — even side effects that are vanishingly rare and unlikely.
"He says he doesn't want to take vaccines away — but he has made pledges before and backtracked," concluded Diamond, citing as an example his repeated flip-flops on abortion rights. "If he's confirmed as HHS secretary, his allies in the anti-vaccine movement want him to follow through."
