A former Trump administration Food and Drug Administration commissioner is worried that the incoming administration’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead a key health agency will prove dangerous.
“I think if RFK follows through on his intentions, and I believe he will, and I believe he can, it will cost lives in this country,” Scott Gottlieb said during a Friday appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
“You’re going to see measles, mumps and rubella vaccination rates go down, and like I said, if we lose another 5 percent [of vaccinations], which could happen in the next year or two, we will see large measles outbreaks,” he added.
Gottlieb, who serves on the board of Pfizer, maker of one of the Covid vaccines, is one of a number of health experts who have raised the alarm about the Trump administration’s pick of Kennedy to lead the department of Health and Human Services.
The Independent has contacted the Trump-Vance transition team for comment.
Kennedy, who doesn’t have a medical background, has a long history of raising doubts about vaccines, though he denies he’s an anti-vaxxer.
During a July interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, Kennedy doubted the utility of the polio vaccine and said falsely that, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” He later denied making the comments.
In 2019, the island of Samoa suffered a measles outbreak that left 83 people dead, which critics argued Kennedy and his Children’s Health Defense organization helped bring about during a trip to the nation that year where Kennedy met with and later praised a prominent anti-vaxxer.
Kennedy has said he had “nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa.”
The former environmental lawyer has said he will not take away anyone’s vaccines in office.
“We are going to make sure that Americans have good information right now,” Kennedy told NPR this month. “The science on vaccine safety particularly has huge deficits, and we’re going to make sure those scientific studies are done and that people can make informed choices about their vaccinations and their children’s vaccinations.”
Public health experts worry this message will further drive a partisan rejection of vaccines, at a time when routine vaccination rates are dropping, more children are seeking vaccine exemptions, and cases of measles are sprouting around the country.
Georgetown University public health expert Lawrence Gostin has warned that Trump’s victory and alliance with Kennedy represent “the darkest day for public health and science in my lifetime.”
