The new health czar has raised eyebrows with his views on vaccines and the use of fluoride in drinking water.
Donald Trump’s second term could bring some fundamental shifts to our country, and that includes public health. On Thursday, the president-elect nominated former Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country,” Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social.
The announcement didn’t exactly come as a shock. In the weeks leading up to the election, Trump vowed to give Kennedy a vital role within his administration and let him “go wild” on health care. Then, in his victory speech, the president-elect name-checked RFK Jr. again. “He’s going to help make America healthy again,” Trump said, referring to Kennedy. “He wants to do some things, and we’re gonna let him go to it.”
However, this nomination has raised some concerns among healthcare professionals. Kennedy has made a number of bizarre, baseless claims, including that Wi-Fi causes cancer and school shootings are attributable to antidepressants. So, we looked at some key aspects of his plan to “Make America Healthy Again.”
Fluoride in water
For nearly 80 years, Americans have been bathing themselves and brushing their teeth with fluoride, which is naturally present in drinking water to varying degrees. In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first city to add the mineral to its water supply after scientists discovered its health benefits.
Since then, the Centers for Disease Control has called fluoridated water “one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century,” saying it reduces tooth decay by more than 25 percent in adults and children. So why does Kennedy suddenly want to stop putting it in water?
Well, this may be a little more nuanced than previously thought. After almost a decade of litigation, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled in late September that fluoride at current levels poses “an unreasonable risk of injury” to public health, including reduced IQs in children (particularly boys), following a report from HHS. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency must take some regulatory action, though it’s unclear as of now what exactly that will look like. But that ruling doesn’t mean fluoride has been banned or limited from drinking systems, and experts still believe the benefits outweigh the risks. The American Dental Association said it remains “staunchly in support” of community water fluoridation.
Still, Kennedy has claimed (without evidence) that the mineral is “industrial waste” that causes a list of harms. As soon as Trump takes office, he said the administration intends to “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” The president-elect has signaled that he’s open to this rule, telling NBC News, “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds OK to me.”
Medical professionals are skeptical of this move. “He has this notion that there are toxins in the environment that are causing all kinds of problems, and he just doesn’t have the scientific studies to back that up,” says Dr. Paul A. Offit, MD, who’s a physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
But Lawrence O. Gostin, a Georgetown University health law and policy expert, tells us that neither the president nor his federal agencies can ban fluoride in water. “States and localities control their drinking water supplies and have public health powers that the federal government cannot overturn,” Gostin says. “Of course, with both vaccines and water fluoridation, politically influenced federal agencies could put out false or misleading health recommendations that could affect state decisions on controversial issues like vaccination or fluoride in the water supply.”
Vaccines
Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team, told CNN that Kennedy has been looking at federal data to prove that vaccines shouldn’t be available to the public.
It’s no secret that Kennedy has a long history of skepticism towards vaccines — he has repeatedly pushed an unsubstantiated link between childhood vaccination and autism. He also started a prominent anti-vax group known as the Children’s Health Defense, which public health officials condemned during the Covid-19 pandemic for spreading misinformation about vaccine safety. (For the record, the World Health Organization says vaccines prevent as many as 5 million deaths each year.)
Offit, who’s also a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, tells us he’s seen the negative impact of Kennedy’s vaccine rhetoric first-hand. “I’ve had parents come into my office and say they don’t want to get vaccines because of what Kennedy has said,” Dr. Offit explains. “Now he has a bigger platform than he had before, and therefore can do more harm.”
However, after Trump’s win, Kennedy tried to water down his stance, telling NBC that he wouldn’t pull vaccines off the market. “If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away,” he told the network. “People ought to have a choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information.”
But would a ban on vaccines even be legal in the first place? Just like removing fluoride from drinking water, Gostin tells us that the president cannot ban vaccines, citing guardrails against such a move under the U.S. Consitution. “The president has no power to ban vaccines or to order states to do so,” Gostin says. “If the FDA were to withdraw vaccine approval without any scientific justification, even a highly conservative Supreme Court would strike it down.”
The restructuring of federal health agencies
Gostin says career scientists in federal agencies could (in theory) push back against any potential extreme health policies, but there’s a good chance they won’t be there.
Kennedy has said the White House needs to “act fast” and fire 600 federal workers from the National Institutes of Health on day one. He also plans to remove every nutritional scientist across the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This is because Kennedy is convinced that a number of health issues have worsened due to federal inaction, including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, sleep disorders, infertility rates, and diabetes.
He has said that the president-elect has now tasked him with returning agencies “to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science.” The irony is Kennedy also said “medical expertise” is not the priority for all staff picks.
“Here’s a man who presents himself as an advocate for science but embraces the least scientific aspects of the medical system,” says former FDA official Peter Lurie.
“Get the chemicals out” of food
Kennedy wants Americans to eat healthier (including Trump, whom he chided for eating foods Kennedy deems “poisonous”).
During an interview with Fox News last month, he pledged to remove processed foods from school lunches “immediately” if given a position in a second Trump administration. He also wants to bar them from SNAP Benefits, preventing people on food stamps from buying items like soda and chips.
The likely health czar has even voiced plans to cut food dyes and other chemicals out of ingredients, pointing to McDonald’s fries and Froot Loops as prime examples. “It’s easy to fix,” Kennedy said before the election. “We have a thousand ingredients in our foods that are illegal in Italy and other countries in Europe.”
Though health officials have embraced these initiatives, Kennedy has also pushed for some risky “healthy” swaps, including raw milk, which has long been associated with various disease outbreaks like bird flu. He has also promoted scientifically questionable uses for medications — this includes using a therapy known as chelation to treat autism instead of its intended use (which is to remove heavy metals from the blood.)
Despite his influence on the new administration, Kennedy’s ability to make any real overhauls remains up in the air. These changes generally take years to make, though the next iteration of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is expected in 2025.
“Changing food policy is complex and would take time,” Gostin tells us. “Part of it could be accomplished by updated recommendations from USDA, especially on healthy school lunches. But most reforms would have to come through Congress, such as changing food subsidies from unhealthy to health foods and more informative nutritional labeling. If the Trump administration got behind healthy nutrition, it could perhaps get Congress to act. But the big roadblock is that Big Food has a lot of clout, and legal reforms are unlikely without the president’s firm backing.”
