Scott Gurvey's Public Offerings

Someday someone will produce a study that will try to quantify how many people died as a result of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.‘s war on vaccines, medicine and science. Tens of thousands? Millions? It is hard to predict.

Donald Trump, implementing the Project 2025 plan to destroy the federal government, has appointed the worst possible people to run the executive agencies. It is hard to select the most deplorable of the deplorables. But RFK, Jr. is certainly in the top group.

Kennedy is a former heroin addict who as a youth was expelled from two schools, dumped a dead bear in Central Park, has no medical or science degree, and was labeled a “predator” by his own family. He made a career out of being an anti-vaxxer, spreading false information about vaccines. In return for his political support in 2024, Trump named Kennedy Secretary of Health and Human Services. At his own confirmation hearing Kennedy himself stated that Trump had “offered him control of the public health agencies,” including HHS, CDC, FDA, NIH, and USDA.

To date Kennedy has Challenged Vaccine Consensus: Despite being confronted with overwhelming scientific data confirming vaccine safety and effectiveness, Secretary Kennedy has continued to question the consensus, promoting the scientifically disproven link between vaccines and autism. His handpicked crew of anti-vaxxers are rewriting vaccine recommendation standards which have nearly eliminated many childhood diseases.

Altered CDC Information: He publicly instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to revise language on its website about vaccines and autism, moving away from the long-standing scientific position that no link exists. He is preventing government researchers from publishing papers in the world’s leading refereed scientific journals. His actions have met with universal disgust by the scientific and public health community.

Dismantled Advisory Boards: He fired the 17 voting members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which provides independent, expert advice to the CDC on vaccine recommendations. This move was described as a “coup” by physician groups, who view it as a destruction of the committee’s credibility and a disruption of the transparent, evidence-based process. He then replaced them with handpicked appointees. Millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance will face new barriers to vaccination, as insurers typically only cover vaccines recommended by the ACIP. The committee’s weakened language signals a preference for personalized consultation that could result in individuals being told they should avoid vaccination based on perceived rather than actual risk.

Mass Firings and Reduced Capacity: He oversaw the firing of thousands of employees across key agencies like the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which critics argue severely weakens the nation’s capacity to respond to public health threats.

Changed COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendations: His department unilaterally removed the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and pregnant people from the CDC’s immunization schedule, bypassing the standard scientific review process. He is now setting up to greatly reduce the availability of vaccines for all types of diseases and for all age groups, especially the young.

Censoring Research: Kennedy’s HHS has implemented policies to scrutinize and censor research that is deemed “controversial, high profile, or sensitive.”

This list is far from complete. And we haven’t yet survived the first year of RFK, Jr.’s reign. Eventually it will fill volumes.

There have been consequences. There are measles outbreaks in several states, most prominently Texas, where state government has often questioned the use of vaccines. Kennedy has refused to endorse vaccination, which is highly effective in preventing the disease. The CDC’s own data shows childhood deaths on the rise as vaccination rates fall. Instead of vaccination Kennedy has promoted unscientific therapies, like specific vitamins and drugs, as treatments for measles, which medical experts have called “misleading and dangerous,” with reports of serious complications like liver injury linked to their use.

This attack on science is nothing new for Donald Trump. We now have multiple studies showing that the United States experienced high COVID-19 death rates and higher excess all-cause mortality compared with peer countries. We can blame that on the anti-treatment policies of Trump and Republican governors who not only resisted medical advice on dealing with the pandemic but also demonized the medical professionals working to cope with an unprecedented threat. Kennedy has cut most government funding for mRNA research. This type of vaccine development led to the COVID vaccine and promises to produce a new revolution in disease prevention. America stands to be caught defenseless by the next COVID type outbreak.

And just to show you how personal this can get, consider an essay in The New Yorker magazine. The author is Tatiana Schlossberg and she chronicles her battle with leukemia, a diagnosis she received moments after the birth of her daughter in 2024, before the confirmation of her cousin Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who she calls “Bobby.”

“Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were canceled, affecting thousands of patients. I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission. Early in my illness, when I had the postpartum hemorrhage, I was given a dose of misoprostol to help stop the bleeding. This drug is part of medication abortion, which, at Bobby’s urging, is currently “under review” by the Food and Drug Administration. I freeze when I think about what would have happened if it had not been immediately available to me and to millions of other women who need it to save their lives or to get the care they deserve.”

Even if the Trump-Kennedy carnage were reversed promptly, much damage has already been done. Scores of fired researchers and many more grad students denied research funds at our major universities have fled the field. European nations are actively recruiting the best and the brightest from America. The research will continue. The new treatments and medicines will be created. But they will come from Europe, or from China.

####