Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services sent shares of major drug companies crashing today.
Moderna stock tumbled seven percent following the announcement of RFK Jr as his most senior health chief, as Pfizer’s fell three percent and Novavax saw its shares drop five percent.
The idea of one of the country’s foremost vaccine skeptics heading up health policy has many health experts in government nervous, but he has earned praise from the left and right for his plans to crack down on harmful food ingredients that aren’t allowed abroad and emphasize exercise and healthy eating over taking pills.
As HHS boss, Kennedy would be in charge of America’s three healthcare agencies — the CDC, FDA and the NIH —and would have the power to bring in many of those changes and more.
Kennedy’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ tapped into the frustration at the fact that the US spends more on healthcare than any other country yet is among the sickest, with a lower life expectancy than peer nations like the UK, Canada and Australia.
He claims this contradiction is being driven by corporate interests putting profits over Americans’ health when it comes to vaccines, medications and food and drink.
Kennedy has promised to purge swathes of the workforce at the country’s health agencies and stem the revolving door of staff leaving to lobby for food and drug companies.
This is how he could overhaul America’s health if his appointment is confirmed by the Senate, which is now made up of a majority Republicans:
Focus on prevention and non-pharma interventions
Kennedy wants to move the US from a reactive healthcare system that treats people once they’re sick, to a preventive healthcare system that tries to stop diseases emerging in the first place.
He wants to extend Medicaid and Medicare budgets to cover visits to functional medicine doctors, which aim to treat people through nutrition and exercise rather than pharmaceuticals.
This taps into the idea promoted by Kennedy that drug companies have an interest in keeping someone unwell rather than improving their health.
He has suggested using psychedelics, raw milk, ivermectin, sunshine, exercise, ‘and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma’ as ways to treat some of Americans’ health woes.
Kennedy has also repeatedly called on health agencies to embrace alternative therapies, despite limited or no evidence supporting them.
Setting out his views in his book, The Real Anthony Fauci, Kennedy suggested healthcare prioritized a ‘vaccine-only’ strategy at the start of the Covid pandemic, while overlooking other ways to ease the outbreak.
Studies showed that 81 percent of Covid deaths were among adults aged 65 years or older in 2020, with the group at higher risk because they have weaker immune systems. In 2023, they made up 90 percent.
He also supports nutraceuticals, which are products derived from food sources that claim to provide benefits beyond basic nutrition.
These include dietary supplements like vitamins and fish oil, which many experts say don’t have any health benefits.
Kennedy has also suggested devoting half the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget to researching alternative healthcare, and devoting more federal funding to determining why people are getting sick.
Vaccine shake-up
Kennedy has previously claimed ‘no vaccine is effective’ and suggested childhood vaccines could be driving rising autism rates.
He has also previously floated the idea that schools with vaccine requirements should be defunded.
He appeared to back away from that stance earlier this week, however, but left the door open to making some vaccines non-compulsory.
He told NBC News: ‘If vaccines are working for somebody, I am not going to take them away.
‘People ought to have a choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information, so I’m going to make sure that safety studies and efficacy studies are out there and people can make individual assumptions whether that product is going to be good for them.’
In 2019, Kennedy flew to Samoa during the nation’s measles outbreak to campaign for people not to get the vaccine — saying it would cause autism, a theory widely debunked.
Dr Paul Offit, a pediatrician in Philadelphia who previously slammed Kennedy as ‘remarkably dishonest,’ told DailyMail.com it was likely the administration would not be able to ban vaccines.
‘I am confident that the guardrails in place at the FDA and CDC are long-standing and have served us well,’ he said. ‘I am not sure how much RFK Jnr can do to destroy that.’
Many states mandate vaccines for children to allow them to attend school, including shots against measles, diphtheria, polio, hepatitis and chickenpox.
This is similar to European nations like Germany and France, which also mandate vaccinations for attending school, but differs from the UK — where all childhood vaccines are voluntary but widely recommended.
Vaccination uptake in the US is now falling to dangerously low levels, with experts blaming the explosion in conspiracy theories.
CDC surveillance shows uptake of the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, was below the optimum level for the third year in a row in the US — raising the risk of an outbreak because too few children have immunity.
Surveillance suggests that the uptake of other major childhood vaccines like polio has also slipped.
All the vaccines have been through large and rigorous clinical trials, which have shown the shots are safe and highly effective at preventing the diseases.
Before the measles vaccine became available in 1963, about four million Americans were sickened and 450 died from the virus every year. And before the polio vaccine became available in the 1950s, about 15,000 people were paralyzed by the virus every year.
Crack down on food
Kennedy repeatedly hammers the food industry, saying they are ‘mass poisoning’ the American public.
He has promised to ban ultraprocessed food from schools and provide families ‘with safe food and end the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children.’
He also wants to ban harmful ingredients that are illegal in food abroad.
He has only explicitly mentioned Yellow 5, but similar ingredients that could be under the microscope are Red 40, Blue 1, titanium dioxide, propylparaben and potassium bromate, which are often added to sweets and baked goods.
The ingredients, which are either banned or heavily regulated in Europe, have been the focus of new laws trying to make food safer.
Kennedy has also targeted McDonald’s French fries and criticized Trump’s diet.
He has argued against consuming seed oils, although others have pushed back on this.
Overhauling food policy generally takes years, but in 2025 the Trump administration will be charged with writing the next iteration of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a publication that provides recommendations every five years for what adults should do.
Eliminate fluoride in drinking water
Kennedy has vowed to remove fluoride from the public water supply if elected within his first day in office.
Added to the water supply for three-quarters of Americans, it has been heralded as the greatest public health achievement of the 20th century for its ability to prevent cavities and tooth decay and save families thousands in dental bills.
But earlier this year, a federal study linked very high levels of the substance — more than are normally in tap water — to a drop in IQs of up to five points among children.
The team said they had ‘moderate confidence’ in their findings, and added that it just showed an association but did not prove that fluoride was causing lower IQ.
Despite this, however, several cities have already withdrawn fluoride in response to the research, and an expert told DailyMail.com that expectant and new mothers should avoid it.
Writing on X, Kennedy said: ‘On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all US water systems to remove fluoride from public water.
‘Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.’
Some studies have suggested exposure to high levels of fluoride can affect the thyroid, a gland in the front of the neck that manufactures hormones.
But there is no conclusive proof that fluoride is linked to Alzheimer’s and weakened bones. Over-exposure to fluoride has been linked to a condition called skeletal fluorosis, however, which leaves children with painful bones and joints.
The Fluoride Action Network, which spearheads efforts to remove fluoride, said online: ‘No matter who wins, one thing is crystal clear: Fluoridation is a house of cards.
‘The science shows it. The public has caught on. Fluoride’s days are numbered.’
Three cities held votes over adding fluoride to their drinking water yesterday — Hillsboro and Lebanon, in Oregon, and Sarcoxie, in Missouri — which all voted to have it removed from their drinking water.
Responding to the allegations, Dr Offit said: ‘Fluoride has been well tested. It clearly and definitively decreases cavities, and is not associated with any clear evidence of the chronic diseases mentioned.’
The American Dental Association is a strong advocate of adding fluoride to water, with the CDC estimating it has saved more than $6.5billion in dental bills.
A spokesperson said: ‘The key takeaway for the public and public health community… is that [studies and rulings] do not conclude with any certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health.’
The quote was given in response to a bombshell ruling in California, which suggested that fluoride may pose a ‘hazard’ in drinking water.
Healthcare savings accounts
Kennedy has also said he wants to expand healthcare savings accounts.
Under the current scheme, these accounts — called HSAs — which allow people to deposit pre-tax income which can then be used tax-free to pay off medical bills.
They are currently typically only available to those enrolled on high-deductible health plans, such as employer-sponsored plans or bronze plans.
But Kennedy wants to make them more accessible for Americans and provide greater flexibility for how the money is used — which may include also using it to access functional medicine doctors.
About 37million Americans already have a HSA, estimates suggest — with the accounts having a combined value in excess of $123billion.
End ‘corrupt’ healthcare agencies
Should he be approved by the Senate to take on the role, Kennedy has promised to ‘clean up corruption’ in the health agencies.
Accepting the nomination, he said: ‘I look forward to working with the more than 80,000 employees at HHS to free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture so they can pursue their mission to make Americans once again the healthiest people on Earth.’
He added: ‘Together we will clean up corruption, stop the revolving door between industry and government, and return our health agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science.’
Kennedy points out that more than 75 percent of the FDA’s drug review budget is provided by the pharmaceutical industry, which he says is a clear conflict of interest. Estimates also suggest that around 60 percent of FDA staff have previously worked for big pharma.
Kennedy previously told the Washington Post: ‘The fact that Democratic sachems are debating whether their party should support public health as a political strategy rather than embracing it as a core value is testimony to how out of touch and morally bankrupt the party has become.
‘Healthy food and clean, uncorrupted Government agencies ought not to be partisan issues.’
He is expected to curb the influence of industry-funded research groups in the area and to lean on Trump to ban thousands of chemicals that studies suggest are harmful to health.
