Bioethics Forum Essay
Accomplishing the Unthinkable, RFK Jr Takes a Bow
Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s speech on September 17 to his friends at the organization he co-founded, the antivaccine Children’s Health Defense, was a tour de force but of the wrong kind. The director of the Department of Health and Human Services began his remarks explaining that what drives his work is a concern for rising rates of chronic mental and physical illness among American kids. While one could argue with his numbers, the motivation to make America’s children healthier is commendable and appears very sincere. But things went downhill fast as he got to solutions.
Kennedy wallowed in misinformation about how to achieve better health for children.
He claimed there were huge dangers from vaccines and said that he was willing to “die with my boots on” to investigate their risks, reneging on his vow to Congress at his confirmation hearings not to cause upheaval in vaccine policy.
He touted food policy reforms, saying that he was fighting for food safety and improved farming, while food recalls and safety alerts are everyday occurrences swamping the Food and Drug Administration and the Trump administration’s budget cuts have reduced capacity for food surveillance and protections.
He threw a bone to the pseudoscience crowd by promising to study chemtrails, a conspiracy theory at its most florid.
He insisted that the plagues of chronic illnesses impacting young Americans, including diabetes, autism, obesity, and allergies, are the result of bad diet and inadequate protein consumption. (He loves steak and fermented food as medicines).
He took credit for a reduction in obesity with efforts he initiated to teach cooking, encourage family meals, and upgrade the nutritional contents of food in the armed forces, hospitals, and the Indian Health Service, never mentioning that the greatest factor reducing obesity around the world are the GLP1 injectable drugs, introduced by what he kept sneering at as the “medical cartel”.
He bragged that what he had accomplished in the 19 months he has been in office “would have seemed unthinkable two years ago” and asserted that none of that could have been done without the enthusiastic support of the President. However, the state of public health would seem to foretell bad times.
What are the most notable achievements of Kennedy’s tenure? Surely bringing back measles would have to rank high on any objective list. Right behind would be assaulting effective vaccine mandates under the banner of choice. Undermining trust in the mountain of evidence proving that vaccines are safe, evidence showing that they are not connected to autism in any way after decades of studies, has been big.
Is our food actually healthier for kids? Not when Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1, Public Law 119-21) enacted the largest federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in its history and the Trump administration’s proposed 2027 budget cuts funding for WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Dyes may be coming out of some foods but for many American kids there is far less to eat.
Kennedy also advanced a view of science or, as he says, “gold standard science,” that is at best idiosyncratic and at worst just incoherent. He insists that anyone who challenges scientific orthodoxy about what causes ill health has been drummed out of science. In fact, we know a lot about what causes ill health. Critics are welcome but not those who peddle crackpot theories or long-refuted ideas about risk or who simply engage in fearmongering for their own profit.
An underrecognized issue facing RFK Jr is his exclusive focus on sick kids. That is an important issue even if Kennedy’s remedies seem cringy, fringy or both. But he spent almost no time telling us about his accomplishments or plans for battling adult diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, ALS, heart disease, strokes, arthritis, PTSD, depression, and schizophrenia. Two hundred and seventy-seven million Americans over 18 have health challenges.
There are important tradeoffs that must be made between meeting the needs of those currently sick and disabled and preventing diseases in future generations. RFK Jr is all kids and prevention with no attention to the middle-aged and elderly who need cures, safe housing, caregivers, and long-term care and medical management. The question of how much effort at the federal level to devote to kids needs a more transparent answer that he has yet to provide.
Arthur Caplan, PhD, is a retired professor of bioethics and a Hastings Center Fellow who writes frequently on vaccine policy. @ArthurCaplan
