What Trump’s health pick RFK Jr. could mean for patients, drugmakers

Donald Trump has made one clear promise about who could help take up the federal government’s health reins if he wins the presidency: notorious vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

The previous president said last week that Kennedy, who ended his own independent White House campaign earlier this yr and endorsed Trump, could have a “big role” in health care in his administration. Last month, Trump said he would let Kennedy “go wild” on health, food and drug regulation.

It’s unclear what exactly Kennedy’s role would appear like, but the chance is already raising alarm bells within the broader health community. Some health experts said elevating Kennedy, even in a casual Trump administration position, could potentially result in severe consequences for patients, drugmakers and the nation’s public health overall. 

“I believe it could be a world turned the wrong way up,” Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Kid’s Hospital of Philadelphia who has been an open critic of Kennedy, told CNBC. “Things wouldn’t be grounded in scientific truth, just grounded in whatever he or his acolytes consider. It will be a free-for-all. It will be uncertainty and instability. It will be chaos.” 

He said “chaos” could potentially appear like lower vaccination rates, increases in preventable disease and greater distrust in federal health agencies, equivalent to the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

That would exacerbate the nation’s existing public health challenges, equivalent to declining childhood vaccination rates for several preventable diseases, some experts say. The U.S. also has the bottom life expectancy at birth, the best rate of individuals with multiple chronic diseases, and the best maternal and infant death rate amongst other high-income nations, based on a 2023 report by the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group. 

Kennedy, who doesn’t have any medical or scientific credentials, believes drug firms and the federal health agencies that regulate them are making Americans less healthy. He has suggested that some vaccines ought to be taken off the market — a stance that Trump didn’t rule out Monday. 

The previous environmental lawyer might also bring uncertainty to the pharmaceutical industry, which relies on federal health agencies to greenlight recent products, keep old ones available on the market, and, in some cases, fund research and development. It would likely be difficult for Kennedy to alter the drug approval process, but experts said he could gain a recent platform to politicize certain treatments he opposes and tout others that are not proven to be protected and effective.

Top leadership roles, equivalent to the FDA commissioner, require confirmation by the Senate, which some experts noted could pose a hurdle for Kennedy. But Kennedy has met with Trump transition officials and will take a broad White House “health czar” position that will not need Senate confirmation, The Washington Post reported Saturday. 

No matter what the position looks like, Kennedy will likely gain a “recent podium to spread his views,” said Drew Altman, president and CEO of health policy organization KFF. 

“It’s giving certainly one of the chief architects for health misinformation a national podium backed by the president,” Altman told CNBC. “Many more people will hear what he has to say, consider it and act on it. That would pose a risk to their health.”

Kennedy’s team didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment.

Real-world data from the CDC indicates that routine vaccination rates for kindergarten children ticked down throughout the pandemic and have yet to rebound. If Kennedy manages to push those rates even lower, vaccine-preventable diseases like polio and measles could potentially make a comeback, experts noted. 

For the businesses that manufacture shots, a rise in anti-vaccine rhetoric could potentially translate to lower revenue. Drugmakers equivalent to Pfizer and Moderna are still recovering from falling Covid vaccination rates within the U.S., which have dented their profits over the past two years. 

Kennedy might also affect the pharmaceutical industry’s ability to reply to one other pandemic if given the facility to find out how much federal funding should go toward vaccine development, some experts say. He told NBC News last yr that he would not prioritize the research, manufacturing or distribution of shots if faced with one other pandemic, falsely adding that “vaccines have probably caused more deaths than they’ve averted.”

Kennedy’s track record as a vaccine skeptic is extensive: He has long made misleading and false statements concerning the safety of shots, equivalent to claiming that they’re linked to autism despite quite a few studies going back many years that debunk the association. Kennedy is the founding father of the nonprofit Kid’s Health Defense, essentially the most well-funded anti-vaccine organization within the country. 

“He misinforms to the purpose that children suffer or die, and likewise stands back and doesn’t take any responsibility for it,” Offit said.

He pointed to Kennedy’s misinformation concerning the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, which was linked to a severe measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019 that left dozens of kids dead.

Last week, Kennedy warned in a post on X that the “FDA’s war on public health is about to finish” and hinted at plans to gut the agency of staff who don’t agree along with his views. 

He accused the agency of its “aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything that advances human health and might’t be patented by Pharma.”

Kennedy has previously claimed that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin work against Covid, although several studies say they don’t. Hydroxychloroquine is an immunosuppressive drug, while ivermectin is used to treat infections attributable to parasites.

“He has embraced a whole lot of therapies which were unproven for certain uses and a few have been discredited,” Kanter said. 

An increasing share of individuals in America are coping with multiple chronic conditions, with roughly 42% having two or more, based on the CDC. Greater than 40% of school-aged children and adolescents have not less than one. Chronic diseases equivalent to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity are also a serious driver of health-care costs within the U.S., accounting for about 90% of the $4.1 trillion annual health-care expenditure, the CDC said. 

Kennedy could spearhead “Operation Warp Speed for childhood chronic disease” under a Trump administration, sources near the previous president’s campaign told NBC News last week. That refers back to the title of the Covid vaccine development and distribution project during Trump’s first term. 

It’s unclear what the brand new program or Kennedy’s role would appear like, however the concentrate on chronic illnesses aligns along with his so-called Make America Healthy Again platform.

The initiative — a riff on Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan — goals to remove chemicals from food production, combat the “root” causes of chronic diseases and eliminate conflicts of interest in medical research, amongst other priorities that largely have bipartisan support. Environmental aspects equivalent to air pollution and eating regimen contribute to chronic health conditions, but Kennedy has pushed unfounded claims around certain food ingredients and minerals. 

Last week, Kennedy also proposed advising all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from drinking water, falsely claiming that it’s “an industrial waste” linked to several medical conditions, equivalent to thyroid disease and and neurodevelopmental disorders. Trump has since said that concept sounds “OK to me.”

But fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral present in soil, water and plants. Adding low levels of fluoride to drinking water is widely considered certainly one of the best public health achievements of the twentieth century for its role in stopping tooth decay. 

USC’s Kanter also said “there may be a danger of oversimplifying complicated health problems” and attributing them to a couple of “root causes,” especially when they don’t seem to be backed by science. Chronic diseases are complex conditions that could be attributable to multiple aspects, equivalent to a patient’s genetics and socioeconomic status, based on Kanter. 

Kennedy’s nonprofit falsely links vaccines to chronic diseases, citing misleading articles and studies that show unvaccinated populations have fewer chronic conditions than their vaccinated peers.