Editorial written by New York Daily News Editorial Board.
In simple terms, pediatricians save children, while Bobby Kennedy kills children. And so the dangerous quack Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now attacking the American Academy of Pediatrics, which dared to issue guidance recommending that children under age 2 be given the COVID-19 vaccine, in contrast to the fatally compromised CDC under Kennedy, which had rescinded that earlier recommendation.
The secretary accused the AAP of kowtowing to corporate benefactors while ignoring the clear evidence that such vaccines are safe for children and can prevent serious illness. Once again, RFK Jr.’s rabid antivaxxer outlook is dictating the direction of HHS that is determinantal to public health.
Part of the problem with RFK and his Make America Healthy Again movement is that he is talking about some things that can be legitimate concerns for the American public, such as diet. It is true that the pharmaceutical industry is a profit-driven one that can engage in abuses for business reasons — look no further than the infamous case of Purdue Pharma pushing opioids on the public despite knowing the risks, to disastrous effect.
Having a government bureaucracy that can think critically about the incentive structures of our health system could be a good thing.
The issue is that the solution to a system incentivized to occasionally misuse science for its own ends is not to simply reject science altogether. What RFK is ultimately insisting is not just that we examine potential conflicts of interest, but throw out the research and scientific method practices that undergird our entire understanding of public health, which is the exact opposite of his job.
