do not put this man in charge of public health

Let's turn back the clock a few years:

• It was June 15, 2020.

• Over 100,000 Americans had already died from COVID.

• Donald Trump — who was president at the time (a reality many of his adherents seem to have, um, revised in their memories) — said this at the White House:

• "If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any."

• It wasn't the only time Trump put forth the absurd notion that if we didn't keep track of how many people were dying from COVID, we could pretend nobody was dying at all.

• And — crucially, for Trump's ego and re-election chances — it would mask how catastrophic his denialist, inept, inhumane response to the worst public health crisis in a century really was.

So now let's jump forward to today.

Among the very first actions Trump took upon returning to office last week was ordering critical public health agencies — such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — to cancel scientific meetings and to cease all public communications.

Trump also ordered the FDA to purge from its website information about ensuring that clinical trials are representative — directly interfering with good science in pursuit of the mindless "anti-woke" agenda.

The American people are entitled to know what our nation's leading public health experts have to tell us — our taxes paid for it, for one thing, and, oh yeah, it could save our lives — including about the bird flu outbreak in multiple states that could become our next major epidemic.

It should go without saying, but apparently it must be said: Not studying or even talking about threats to public health doesn't make those threats go away.

But that's what Donald Trump seems to believe. And it's what we will get much more of if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — is confirmed by the United States Senate.

RFK Jr. is an anti-science conspiracist and anti-vaccine zealot whose misinformation and hype have already endangered people here in America and around the world. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr. would be a threat to our core public health infrastructure.

He has stated he would stop research on drug development and infectious disease, giving them "a break for about eight years." He has pledged to fire hundreds of NIH employees, told FDA workers to "pack [their] bags," and said he'd like to clear out entire departments of the federal government, including the nutrition department at the FDA.

As the nation's leading public health official, his conspiracy theorizing would undermine belief in vaccines and basic public health measures.

And we should be clear about something: RFK Jr. talks a tough game about Big Pharma. But when he's talking about Big Pharma compromising the FDA, for example, he's not saying FDA standards and independence should be increased — as Public Citizen has advocated for our entire existence — he's saying FDA standards should be degraded to permit marketing of unproven and dubious treatments.

Look, we know that many MAGA senators — who otherwise have profound doubts about RFK Jr. simply for how weird he is — will rubber stamp his nomination in groveling fealty to Donald Trump. But the Republican majority in the Senate is wafer thin.

For the sake of ourselves and future generations, we have to try to get 51 senators to vote against RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

By the way, as we fight to block Trump's dangerous and unqualified nominees for essential roles throughout the federal government, some people ask what happens if we defeat one person and Trump nominates someone else just as bad or even worse. The answer is simple: we fight that person too, and the one after that, and the one after that. What we don't do — what we absolutely will not do — is throw up our hands and give in. Not gonna happen.

To every United States senator:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a science-denying conspiracy theorist who will endanger millions of lives if placed in a position of authority over public health. Donald Trump's bungling of health policy during the COVID pandemic cost hundreds of thousands of lives. By picking Kennedy to run HHS, Trump is risking another public health catastrophe. If you submit to Trump on this nomination, you will have to answer for the suffering and death that follow. Do not approve RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

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For health and safety,

- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
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