from the sage-advice dept
Fresh off of his Mother’s Day swim in a literal shit creek, RFK Jr. sat before House and Senate committees to answer questions about the impact of the proposed Trump budget on Health and Human Services (HHS), the cuts that have and are proposed further for HHS, and an explanation for why some programs are being saved while others are being cut. In his testimony, Kennedy advocated for the Republican budget, including those major cuts to his own ability to deliver on HHS’ mission.
Straight from the HHS website, here is its mission statement.
The mission of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services.
That mission statement is obviously no longer valid. Like, at all. HHS certainly isn’t enhancing health anywhere at all compared to a couple of months ago. Social services and public health facilities are being cut back, not advanced. And the “sound science” bit? Miss me with that bullshit while RFK Jr. is leading the charge on American medicine and healthcare.
And it seems RFK Jr. agrees on that last point as well. Kennedy not only currently heads up HHS, but he has written several books on the topics of health, medicine, and healthcare over the years. They include titles like The Real Anthony Fauci, The Wuhan Cover-Up, Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak, and Profiles of the Vaccine Injured, among others. These all touch heavily upon medicine and healthcare, advising the reader as to the truth within medicine or advocating for one health policy or another.
Which makes it pretty fucking rich when Kennedy said this in response to a question about whether he would advocate for the public to get certain vaccinations in these same hearings.
“If you had a child today, would you vaccinate that child for measles?” began the Democratic congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin at the House appropriations committee hearing.
“For measles? Um, probably for measles,” said Kennedy, in one of the few hesitations of the hearing. “What I would say is my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant … I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking advice, medical advice, from me.”
On the one hand, hey, he finally said something medically sensible: don’t take advice from him. That’s, well, good advice. On the other hand, maybe it would be better if we had someone leading HHS who’s advice we could listen to? I know, crazy idea, but it just might work.
And given the volume of medical advice Kennedy has dispensed over the years, it’s both remarkable that he would make that statement and equally remarkable that he can’t manage to take any sort of stance on several medical questions in front of Congress.
Pocan went on to ask about chickenpox.
“Um, again, I don’t want to give advice,” Kennedy said, before commenting on shingles.
Pocan continued: “Polio?”
“Polio?” Kennedy said. “Again, I don’t want to be giving advice.”
The issued re-emerged in his afternoon testimony before the Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions, where the Democrat Chris Murphy asked Kennedy if he would recommend the measles vaccine. The secretary demurred, prompting Murphy to say: “I think that’s really dangerous for the American public and for families.
“The secretary of health and human services is no longer recommending the measles vaccines,” Murphy said.
Again, we’re in the middle of a ballooning measles outbreak in America and the Secretary of HHS can’t figure out a way to tell the public to get an MMR vaccine that is safe and effective. Good times.
There’s a long tail aspect to all of this. Even were Kennedy to be removed from his post today — a move that is so overly justified as to be laughable — the effects of his holding the position even these few months are going to be felt for decades, if not longer. There are already deaths at least partially on his hands. How long is the current administration really going to let this go on?
Filed Under: congressional hearings, health and human services, polio, rfk jr., vaccinations, vaccines
