The global threat of RFK’s anti-science rhetoric

We need our politicians to challenge the many myths that the US Health Secretary is peddling

Here we are, at the end of another year. And what a year it has been, with Donald Trump taking over as US President, Michael D Higgins handing over the baton as Irish President to Catherine Connolly, and our erstwhile Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, clinging to leadership even as some Fianna Fáil members have concluded that, after 14 years, it is time for a new leader to take the helm.

2025 will go down in history as one in which universal public health got shunted firmly backwards. While the main driver is located in the US, the damage done by ‘Make America Healthy Again’ is spreading well beyond its borders. The sinking feeling we had when Trump appointed Robert F Kennedy Jr as his Secretary for Health and Human Services has deepened as the year has gone on.

In the past, Kennedy has called vaccination a ‘Holocaust’, and suggested that vaccines are used to microchip people without their knowledge. In 2022, he implied that the Covid-19 pandemic was manufactured by the government to destroy democracy as part of a Central Intelligence Agency backed coup d’état. He has repeatedly spread the untruth that the MMR vaccine causes autism.

Since taking office, Kennedy, a long-term vaccine sceptic, has cancelled $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research, fired vaccine experts, and given mixed messaging on measles vaccination amid a deadly outbreak of the disease.

The situation is so serious that employees at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other government health agencies have asked Kennedy to stop spreading misinformation and endangering public health.

They said that statements made by Kennedy were “dangerous and deceitful” in an open letter addressed to him and all 535 members of Congress. In that letter, they alleged that the Health Secretary had sown public mistrust by questioning the integrity and morality of CDC personnel and by calling the agency a “cesspool of corruption”. They further asserted that he fired key CDC staff in a “destroy first and ask questions later” fashion, squandering taxpayer funds and leaving serious gaps in infectious-disease surveillance, worker protection, and chronic disease prevention.

The letter also argued that he weakened the response to the measles outbreak by claiming the measles vaccine had not been safety tested and by endorsing unsuitable treatments such as vitamin A. In addition, the authors said he dismantled the CDC’s advisory committee on immunisation practices and installed members who lacked proper expertise and followed ideology instead of scientific evidence. They also accused him of misusing data to assert falsely that childhood vaccines cause autism, contradicting decades of research.

It just continues to get worse. Last month both Trump and Kennedy announced that taking paracetamol during pregnancy caused autism. Countries that use the most paracetamol also have the “highest level of autism”, Kennedy said during an October cabinet meeting. He added that while there was no current evidence of this, “we’re doing the studies to make the proof.”

And new guidance published by the CDC suggesting vaccines may cause autism has been slammed by medical and autism advocacy groups. Underlining the insidious nature of the way that public health knowledge is being destroyed, a CDC webpage, which previously stated there was no link between vaccines and autism, was quietly changed on 19 November.

The page now reads: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim.” The revised webpage added that historically the CDC and other federal health agencies have told the public that vaccines don’t cause autism to “prevent vaccine hesitancy”.

Kennedy’s deep distrust of scientific evidence is one of the key factors that makes him a significant risk to global public health. He personifies the bad faith tactics of conspiracy theorists, flogging the flawed belief that any assertion is valid until proven otherwise.

At a local level, we need politicians, and in particular our Minister for Health, to challenge the many myths that Kennedy is peddling. We need her and others to emphasise the trustworthiness of science and the value of immunisation. We need this because of the gradual poisoning of faith in science emanating from across the Atlantic. Already there is some evidence that anti-science propaganda and conspiracy theories are taking root here and in Europe.

Which brings me back, in an admittedly roundabout way, to why it is time for our Taoiseach to hang up his boots. As a medical journalist I followed him closely throughout his time as Minister for Health and I regret to say he was a poor decision-maker. He is a classic sit-on-the-fence politician and I believe he will discourage Cabinet members from challenging the destructive public health bilge that currently seeps from the US.

It’s been an uncharacteristically serious Christmas column from your scribe – please forgive me. I would like to finish by wishing all Medical Independent readers a pleasant Christmas and the very best of health in 2026.