THURSDAY, Nov. 14, 2024 (HealthDay News) — President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The department encompasses numerous key agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, Medicaid, and Medicare.
In a statement, Trump, who has already said he would let Kennedy “go wild on health,” reinforced his would-be appointee’s image as a maverick.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the nomination. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
It has been a dramatic arc for Kennedy, whose namesake father was assassinated in 1968 in the midst of a campaign to become the Democratic presidential nominee that year.
Kennedy Jr. was himself a Democrat until he campaigned in this year’s presidential campaign as an independent focused on health care. But he abandoned the race after receiving a pledge from the Republican Trump that he would be given a high-ranking position in health policy if Trump won the election.
However, Kennedy’s many controversial positions on various aspects of health have made him a target of critics. He has long claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines employed during the pandemic caused more harm than good — a claim not borne out by science, most experts say. He has touted the long-discredited notion that childhood vaccines can cause autism. He is also a supporter of the safety of raw, unpasteurized milk (long linked to outbreaks of illness) and an opponent of fluoride in drinking water, something that for decades has been a mainstay of dental health.
Kennedy has long cast himself as a fighter against Big Pharma and food conglomerates, something that may have bolstered Trump’s appeal among voting blocks such as young mothers, the Associated Press noted. As such, Kennedy has pushed for tougher regulation of the food and drug industry, which could be at odds with Republicans’ promises of deregulation in a second Trump term.
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