What scares health experts the most about RFK Jr. is what he leaves out of his health policy proposals | CNN

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“I’m going to let him live badly,” former President Donald Trump promised Sunday at his rally at Madison Square Garden. “I’m going to make him eat. I’m going to let him talk about the medicine.”

Trump was referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former political opponent whom Trump has been promising to take a health care role in his administration if elected to a second term.

Trump’s plans have been noticed in the public health community, not so much for the specific policy proposals that Kennedy mentioned as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” platform as an important issue that which he is still giving up: vaccinations.

“I think we are seeing an attempt to reassert ourselves in the weeks before the election, but it should not be taken seriously,” said Dr. Jason Schwartz, assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health.

Kennedy, who founded the nonprofit organization Children’s Health Defense, which promotes anti-vaccine materials such as “Vaxed III: Authorized to Kill” recently focused on the chronic disease, not talking about his to sign the September opinion article. The Wall Street Journal or Tuesday’s appearance on “Fox and Friends.”

Instead, Kennedy advocates controlling chemicals in food — including the idea of ​​swapping tallow oil for seed oil to make McDonald’s fries healthier — and limiting access of soda and cooked meals in school lunches and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“You know that [vaccines are] the matter of the lightning rod and that it does not help him,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

But, Osterholm warned, “I don’t think there’s anyone more dangerous to vaccines and the use of vaccines than RFK.”

In a public event with supporters on Monday, Kennedy said Trump had promised to give him “control” of several public health agencies, including the US Department of Health and Human Services and the US Department of Agriculture.

“The key that I think is — you know, what President Trump has promised me is — is the regulation of the public health agencies, which is HHS and its sub-agency, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH and some of the ‘ several, then. and the USDA, which, you know, is the key to making America healthy,” Kennedy said, according to a video of the event obtained by CNN.

A spokesman for Kennedy did not directly respond to a question about whether he expected to serve as Trump administration chief but said the former president had asked him to “remove federal health agencies from conflicts with corruption and return them in the tradition of evidence-based gold standard science.”

“He also asked him to address the chronic disease epidemic, which affects more than 50% of Americans and has a negative impact on national health, the economy and global security, ” said spokeswoman Stefanie Spear.

CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

Kennedy recently monitored obesity and diabetes as well as kidney disease, autoimmune conditions, cancer and addiction. He wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he wants to reform the US Food and Drug Administration’s funding system with user fees from the pharmaceutical industry, drug prices to reach European levels and review drug marketing guidelines. direct to consumers on TV. .

He also said he would bar members of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Drug Administration’s Food and Drug Administration’s Advisory Committee from making money from food or pharmaceutical companies, keeping the National Institutes of Health’s funding to researchers. who have conflicts of interest and review toxicology and chemical standards.

Kennedy wrote: “Americans are getting sicker and sicker, suffering from diseases that our medical system does not adequately address.

In a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Trump held up a chart comparing life expectancy and health care costs around the world, with the U.S. being the outlier in both metrics.

“I’m going to send this to RFK Jr.,” Trump told Rogan, who replied, “I like the idea of ​​you two meeting.”

The Trump campaign has been warned by donors and business owners “about the consequences to the party and the country to appear against science, and to control and have a flood of measles and polio,” Dr. Jerome Adams, who served. as surgeon general under Trump, he told CNN.

Adams said Kennedy may “spread misinformation and take us back to the dark ages about vaccine-preventable diseases” but hoped he would focus on “promoting overall health.”

And, Trump’s allies point out, it’s hard to argue that the US health care system can’t be improved.

“Who can argue that we spend a lot of money on health care and we don’t get our money’s worth?” Joe Grogan, who served as director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump administration, told CNN. “We have a mental health problem, an obesity problem, chronic illness, and we are plagued with alcoholism and overdose. We are not healthy, and we need to rethink where our money goes.

“Anything that RFK can do to bring attention to that should be appreciated and welcomed by anyone who wants Americans to be healthy,” Grogan continued. “Regardless of political party.”

Kennedy’s messages, at least on food policy, continue to resonate with other health professionals in the field.

“They want to fix the food system, do something to coordinate and deal with chronic food-related diseases, stop corporate power, end conflicts of interest between industry and government, get rid of chemicals “to eliminate toxins from the food supply, and to do their best to refocus food and nutrition advice on health,” food policy researcher Marion Nestle wrote on her Food blog. Politics.

He was talking about a discussion around nutrition and policy led by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, which involved Kennedy and others who Nestle described as “highly influential.”

“These are things I’ve been writing about here for years,” Nestle said on his blog. “It’s hard to argue with this and I won’t say no.”

However, he noted, “as they say, politics creates strange people.”

Nestle expressed more skepticism in an email, telling CNN that while he shares some of the same goals, “we have no evidence” that Kennedy “can or will” accomplish either. and any of them, “and overwhelming evidence from the Trump presidency that public health. , education and health care will be destroyed.”

On the medical side of things, Kennedy’s absence of vaccines in his recent policy debates has not allayed the fears of public health experts. Schwartz noted that anti-vaccine advocates often allege – without credible evidence – links between vaccines and increased rates of chronic disease, suggesting that the focus on vaccines is below the surface Kennedy’s current messages.

Kennedy also issued warnings that he planned to destroy government agencies, such as the FDA and NIH.

“The FDA’s war on public health is almost over,” he wrote Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter, blasting the “aggressive push” for a laundry list of ingredients. such as psychedelics, raw milk, ivermectin, vitamins, sunlight, exercise” and anything else that improves human health and cannot be patented by Pharma.

“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Keep your records,” Kennedy continued, “and 2. Pack your bags.”

That warning followed comments Kennedy made about ending NIH research on infectious diseases, which put doctors in the field on edge.

“Infectious diseases are part of our present and will be part of our future, and he do you want to stop learning them?” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an infectious disease physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Offit said Kennedy continues to make misleading or false claims about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine – including some related to the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019 – as the evidence shows that it is not true. When it comes to vaccines, Offit said, “I’m a science denier.”

Schwartz called Kennedy’s latest pivot to not talk about vaccines “an eleventh-hour attempt to clean up his image and cast himself as a rational champion of disease prevention.” chronic – perhaps to find a position in a potential Trump administration,” which he said was “not the case”. it can be trusted.”

Osterholm, who noted that he has worked on health policy in every presidential administration since Ronald Reagan considers himself a “nonpartisan public health warrior,” says he he felt compelled to explore in public where he had never done so before, anxiously. about Trump’s potential policies and what he called Kennedy’s “pseudoscience.”

“Everything we see and know about what the Trump administration could look like could be devastating to public health in this country,” he said. “It destroys.”

CNN’s Aaron Pellish contributed to this report.