Make America Sick Again

RFK Jr.’s War on Public Health Is Putting Lives at Risk

They were bound to get around to it eventually. After gutting the Department of Education, the Agency for International Development, and other parts of the government, the new administration has turned its sights on the agencies that safeguard public health.

Roughly 2,400 jobs are being eliminated at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a world leader in public health. More than $12 billion in grants have been withdrawn from state public health agencies, and layoffs have already begun in the office that monitors the safety of food and medicine. It’s hard to imagine a more dramatic assault on one of the government’s core responsibilities.

Although empowered by President Trump’s newly created, budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the driving force behind the dismantling of our public health infrastructure is Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Like his boss in the Oval Office, Kennedy seems intent on settling old scores with his former opponents.

Before his appointment, Kennedy—son of the slain liberal icon of the 1960s—spent years battling the disease prevention establishment. At the heart of the conflict were the vaccines administered to American children to protect against diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella. In defiance of overwhelming scientific evidence, Kennedy claimed that thimerosal, a preservative once used in vaccines, causes autism. He even founded an advocacy organization, Children’s Health Defense, to promote a range of fringe beliefs about vaccines. (In 2021, his Instagram account was suspended for spreading misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19.)

With the vast majority of qualified experts rejecting Kennedy’s claims about thimerosal and vaccines more broadly, it’s difficult to call the dispute a “debate.” Nonetheless, Kennedy and his supporters argue that mainstream scientists and physicians are either bought by the vaccine industry or blindly following the herd.

“I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” Kennedy said in 2023. To support his position, he has long cited a single study published in 1999 by British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield. In the years since, the paper has been thoroughly debunked, Wakefield’s coauthors retracted their conclusions, and The Lancet—the journal that published it—formally withdrew the article, calling its conclusions “utterly false.” Wakefield was later stripped of his medical license after authorities found he had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly.”

Despite this, Wakefield retained a cult following among vaccine skeptics, becoming something of a folk hero. Kennedy aligned himself with Wakefield as one of the leading figures in the anti-vaccine movement. Like Wakefield, he vocally opposed the COVID-19 vaccines and even falsely claimed that one vaccine trial resulted in a “100 percent injury rate.”

One of Kennedy’s first moves as HHS Secretary was to suspend a CDC campaign encouraging Americans to get the flu shot. He also created a panel to revisit the debunked vaccine-autism link and appointed vaccine skeptic David Geier to lead it. Geier had previously been disciplined in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license.

Thanks to figures like Wakefield, Kennedy, and Geier—as well as vocal support from Donald Trump—vaccine skepticism has become widespread. Millions of parents now refuse to vaccinate their children against diseases once thought eradicated. This is why measles is making a comeback. A current outbreak, directly tied to low vaccination rates in parts of West Texas and New Mexico, has infected nearly 500 people. Thirty have been hospitalized. Three—two of them unvaccinated children—have died.

In another era, state public health agencies might have been able to compensate for the CDC’s retreat. But Kennedy has attacked those agencies too, suspending grants that funded their response to infectious disease outbreaks. One immediate casualty was a measles vaccination program in West Texas.

Although Kennedy claims the CDC layoffs will mainly impact administrators, many of those being let go are scientists and frontline public health workers. Among those targeted are specialists in tobacco and health, asthma, lead poisoning, climate change, and injury prevention—the leading cause of death for Americans under 40. More than a quarter of the staff working on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases will also be cut.

The cuts have also hit the Food and Drug Administration, where thousands of employees work to ensure the safety of our food and medicines. While the administration claims inspections won’t be affected, 170 staff members from the Office of Inspections and Investigations have been eliminated. Some key officials—including Dr. Peter Marks, head of the FDA’s vaccine division—have resigned under pressure.

Secretary Kennedy insists that a system experiencing a nearly 20 percent workforce reduction will somehow function better. It’s the same kind of magical thinking that fueled his anti-vaccine crusade. Then and now, evidence and logic take a back seat.

He calls his agenda “Make America Healthy Again.” But looking at the hollowed-out public health infrastructure and the rising measles death toll, I can only call it what it truly is: Make America Sick Again.