A new report from NPR outlines just how quickly public health in the United States could unravel should anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. be confirmed to run the Health and Human Services Department.
NPR spoke with several public health experts who feared that RFK Jr.'s appointment as the nation's top health official could "cause renewed, deadly epidemics of measles, whooping cough, meningitis, or even polio."
James Hodge, a public health law expert at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, said that putting Kennedy in charge of HHS would be a sea change in public health policy -- and not for the better.
"The litany of things that will start to topple is profound," he said. "We're going to experience a seminal change in vaccine law and policy."
Lawrence Gostin, a professor of public health law at Georgetown University, was even more blunt about the impact of Kennedy's appointment and declared, "He's going to make America sick again."
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Gregory Poland, co-director of the Atria Academy of Science & Medicine, argued that Kennedy didn't need to go as far as banning vaccinations to have a severe impact. Rather, he said, simply having a public health official casting doubt on the necessity of vaccinations could lead to a dangerous drop in vaccination rates and impact herd immunity.
"It is a fantasy to think we can lower vaccination rates and herd immunity in the U.S. and not suffer recurrence of these diseases," Poland told NPR. "One in 3,000 kids who gets measles is going to die. There's no treatment for it. They are going to die."
Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, also worried that Kennedy being given the status of a public health official would be enough to tip the scales against vaccinations and thus lead to a resurgence in diseases.
"The notion that he'd even be considered for that position makes people think he knows what he's talking about," Offit said.
