Neither Kennedy nor his campaign responded to requests for comment on just what he would do if he were nominated and approved by the Senate to serve in a position former HHS Secretary Alex Azar
described as having “a shocking amount of power by the stroke of a pen,” at the head of a department with a
more than $1.5 trillion budget.
By historical comparisons, Kennedy, a famous anti-vaccine advocate and conspiracy theorist, would be an odd pick for HHS secretary. Previous appointees have had varied backgrounds in medicine, government, law and public health. The current secretary, Xavier Becerra, served as attorney general of California.
Kennedy, also an attorney, practiced environmental law and founded Children’s Health Defense, which is now the most well-funded anti-vaccine organization in the country. During the pandemic, he became the purveyor of
wild conspiracy
theories, often aimed at public health officials in the agencies he now seeks to lead. Kennedy has criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for Covid’s death toll and said
Fauci should be prosecuted if he committed a crime. He has also said the attorney general should force
editors of medical journals to publish retracted studies.
HHS oversees
13 agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. On the campaign trail, in podcasts and in news interviews, Kennedy has described wanting to dismantle those offices and rebuild them with like-minded fringe figures.
The agencies have become “sock puppets” for the industries they regulate, Kennedy
told NBC News in an interview last year, in which he laid out his plans for public health if he were elected president. Faced with another pandemic, Kennedy said, he wouldn’t prioritize the research, manufacture or distribution of vaccines.
“The priority should be finding treatments that work and building people’s immune systems,” he said,
falsely adding that “vaccines have probably caused more deaths than they’ve averted.” He mentioned ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments — which he says worked against Covid, even though numerous studies say they didn’t.
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