Many scientists at the federal health agencies await the second Donald Trump administration with dread as well as uncertainty over how the president-elect will reconcile starkly different philosophies among the leaders of his team.
Trump announced Thursday he’ll nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, after saying during his campaign he’d let the anti-vaccine activist “go wild” on medicines, food, and health.
Should Kennedy win Senate confirmation, his critics say a radical antiestablishment medical movement with roots in past centuries would take power, threatening the achievements of a science-based public health order painstakingly built since World War II.
Trump said in a post on the social platform X that “Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” echoing Kennedy’s complaints about the medical establishment. The former Democratic presidential candidate will “end the Chronic Disease epidemic” and “Make American Great and Healthy Again!” Trump wrote.
Vaccine makers’ stocks dipped Thursday afternoon amid news reports ahead of Trump’s RFK announcement.
If Kennedy makes good on his vision for transforming public health, childhood vaccine mandates could wither. New vaccines might never win approval, even as the FDA allows dangerous or inefficient therapies onto the market. Agency websites could trumpet unproven or debunked health ideas. And if Trump’s plan to weaken civil service rights goes through, anyone who questions these decisions could be summarily fired.
“Never has anybody like RFK Jr. gotten anywhere close to the position he may be in to actually shape policy,” said Lewis Grossman, a law professor at American University and the author of “Choose Your Medicine,” a history of U.S. public health.
Kennedy and an adviser Calley Means, a health care entrepreneur, say dramatic changes are needed because of the high levels of chronic disease in the United States. Government agencies have corruptly tolerated or promoted unhealthy diets and dangerous drugs and vaccines, they say.
Means and Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment. Four conservative members of the first Trump health bureaucracy spoke on condition of anonymity. They eagerly welcomed the former president’s return but voiced few opinions about specific policies. Days after last week’s election, RFK Jr. announced that the Trump administration would immediately fire and replace 600 National Institutes of Health officials. He set up a website seeking crowdsourced nominees for federal appointments, with a host of vaccination foes and chiropractors among the early favorites.
At meetings last week at Mar-a-Lago involving Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., Kennedy, and Means, according to Politico, some candidates for leading health posts included Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University scientist who opposed covid lockdowns; Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who opposes mRNA covid vaccines and rejected well-established disease control practices during a measles outbreak; Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty Makary; and Means’ sister, Stanford-trained surgeon and health guru Casey Means.
All are mavericks of a sort, though their ideas are not uniform. Yet the notion that they could elbow aside a century of science-based health policy is profoundly troubling to many health professionals. They see Kennedy’s presence at the heart of the Trump transition as a triumph of the “medical freedom” movement, which arose in opposition to the Progressive Era idea that experts should guide health care policy and practices.
It could represent a turning away from the expectation that mainstream doctors be respected for their specialized knowledge, said Howard Markel, an emeritus professor of pediatrics and history at the University of Michigan, who began his clinical career treating AIDS patients and ended it after suffering a yearlong bout of long covid.
“We’ve gone back to the idea of ‘every man his own doctor,’” he said, referring to a phrase that gained currency in the 19th century. It was a bad idea then and it’s even worse now, he said.
“What does that do to the morale of scientists?” Markel asked. The public health agencies, largely a post-WWII legacy, are “remarkable institutions, but you can screw up these systems, not just by defunding them but by deflating the true patriots who work in them.”
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf told a conference on Nov. 12 that he worried about mass firings at the FDA. “I’m biased, but I feel like the FDA is sort of at peak performance right now,” he said. At a conference the next day, CDC Director Mandy Cohen reminded listeners of the horrors of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and polio. “I don’t want to have to see us go backward in order to remind ourselves that vaccines work,” she said.
Stocks of some the biggest vaccine developers fell after news outlets led by Politico reported that the RFK pick was expected. Moderna, the developer of one of the most popular covid-19 vaccines, closed down 5.6%. Pfizer, another covid vaccine manufacturer, fell 2.6%. GSK, the producer of vaccines protecting against respiratory syncytial virus, hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, and influenza, fell just over 2%. French drug company Sanofi, whose website boasts its products vaccinate over 500 million annually, tumbled nearly 3.5%.
Exodus From the Agencies?
With uncertainty over the direction of their agencies, many older scientists at the NIH, FDA, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering retirement, said a senior NIH scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job.
“Everybody I talk to sort of takes a deep breath and says, ‘It doesn’t look good,’” the official said.
“I hear of many people getting CVs ready,” said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University. They include two of his former students who now work at the FDA, Caplan said.
Others, such as Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, have voiced wait-and-see attitudes. “We worked with the Trump administration last time. There were times things worked reasonably well,” he said, “and times when things were chaotic, particularly during covid.” Any wholesale deregulation efforts in public health would be politically risky for Trump, he said, because when administrations “screw things up, people get sick and die.”
At the FDA, at least, “it’s very hard to make seismic changes,” former FDA chief counsel Dan Troy said.
But the administration could score easy libertarian-tinged wins by, for example, telling its new FDA chief to reverse the agency’s refusal to approve the psychedelic drug MDMA from the company Lykos. Access to psychedelics to treat post-traumatic stress disorder has grabbed the interest of many veterans. Vitamins and supplements, already only lightly regulated, will probably get even more of a free pass from the next Trump FDA.
‘Medical Freedom’ or ‘Nanny State‘
Trump’s health influencers are not monolithic. Analysts see potential clashes among Kennedy, Musk, and more traditional GOP voices. Casey Means, a “holistic” MD at the center of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” team, calls for the government to cut ties with industry and remove sugar, processed food, and toxic substances from American diets. Republicans lampooned such policies as exemplifying a “nanny state” when Mike Bloomberg promoted them as mayor of New York City.
Both the libertarian and “medical freedom” wings oppose aspects of regulation, but Silicon Valley biotech supporters of Trump, like Samuel Hammond of the Foundation for American Innovation, have pressed the agency to speed drug and device approvals, while Kennedy’s team says the FDA and other agencies have been “captured” by industry, resulting in dangerous and unnecessary drugs, vaccines, and devices on the market.
Kennedy and Casey Means want to end industry user fees that pay for drug and device rules and support nearly half the FDA’s $7.2 billion budget. It’s unclear whether Congress would make up the shortfall at a time when Trump and Musk have vowed to slash government programs. User fees are set by laws Congress passes every five years, most recently in 2022.
The industry supports the user-fee system, which bolsters FDA staffing and speeds product approvals. Writing new rules “requires an enormous amount of time, effort, energy, and collaboration” by FDA staff, Troy said. Policy changes made through informal “guidance” alone are not binding, he added.
Kennedy and the Means siblings have suggested overhauling agricultural policies so that they incentivize the cultivation of organic vegetables instead of industrial corn and soy, but “I don’t think they’ll be very influential in that area,” Caplan said. “Big Ag is a powerful entrenched industry, and they aren’t interested in changing.”
“There’s a fine line between the libertarian impulse of the ‘medical freedom’ types and advocating a reformation of American bodies, which is definitely ‘nanny state’ territory,” said historian Robert Johnston of the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Specific federal agencies are likely to face major changes. Republicans want to trim the NIH’s 27 research institutes and centers to 15, slashing Anthony Fauci’s legacy by splitting the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he led for 38 years, into two or three pieces.
Numerous past attempts to slim down the NIH have failed in the face of campaigns by patients, researchers, and doctors. GOP lawmakers have advocated substantial cuts to the CDC budget in recent years, including an end to funding gun violence, climate change, and health equity research. If carried out, Project 2025, a policy blueprint from the conservative Heritage Foundation, would divide the agency into data-collecting and health-promoting arms. The CDC has limited clout in Washington, although former CDC directors and public health officials are defending its value.
“It would be surprising if CDC wasn’t on the radar” for potential change, said Anne Schuchat, a former principal deputy director of the agency, who retired in 2021.
The CDC’s workforce is “very employable” and might start to look for other work if “their area of focus is going to be either cut or changed,” she said.
Kennedy’s attacks on HHS and its agencies as corrupted tools of the drug industry, and his demands that the FDA allow access to scientifically controversial drugs, are closely reminiscent of the 1970s campaign by conservative champions of Laetrile, a dangerous and ineffective apricot-pit derivative touted as a cancer treatment. Just as Kennedy championed off-patent drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat covid, Laetrile’s defenders claimed that the FDA and a profit-seeking industry were conspiring to suppress a cheaper alternative.
The public and industry have often been skeptical of health regulatory agencies over the decades, Grossman said. The agencies succeed best when they are called in to fix things — particularly after bad medicine kills or damages children, he said.
The 1902 Biologics Control Act, which created the NIH’s forerunner, was enacted in response to smallpox vaccine contamination that killed at least nine children in Camden, New Jersey. Child poisonings linked to the antifreeze solvent for a sulfa drug prompted the modern FDA’s creation in 1938. The agency, in 1962, acquired the power to demand evidence of safety and efficacy before the marketing of drugs after the thalidomide disaster, in which children of pregnant women taking the anti-nausea drug were born with terribly malformed limbs.
If vaccination rates plummet and measles and whooping cough outbreaks proliferate, babies could die or suffer brain damage. “It won’t be harmless for the administration to broadly attack public health,” said Alfredo Morabia, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Public Health. “It would be like taking away your house insurance.”
–Arthur Allen, Kaiser Health News and Scientific American
Sam Whitehead, Stephanie Armour, David Hilzenrath, and Darius Tahir contributed to this report.
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
It’s not going to mean anything. Remember when the CDC decided that covid wasn’t a problem any more because the CEO of delta was upset about people being sick and following covid protocol? Yeah, that’s what it means. Nothing.
Deborah Coffey says
It’s going to mean everything when all the forced birth kids are dead from viruses. This nut case is a totally unqualified, conspiracy theorist, and brain dead from drugs and a worm. The entire world is shaking in its boots…knowing that there will be one pandemic after another. What a total embarrassment Trump is already proving himself to be. There is nothing else to deduce except that Donald Trump despises The United States of America because his lifelong criminality finally caught up with him.
Jake from state farm says
It would have been easy for the Democrats to win. All you had to do is put up a candidate who is in the middle. The middle where both Democrats and Republicans believe the same thing. But you had to put up someone who is far left. And maybe the Democrats should have not called over half of the voting public Nazi’s. fascists, racists, and the list goes on and on. Maybe the Democrats should not have listened to a dishonest “media”. Didn’t a famous Democrat say “elections have consequences”? The lying, dishonest Democrats will now reap what you sowed.
End times says
Ha you think Kamala was far left ?we don’t have a far left yet in this country. Truth hurts you nazi lovers don’t it? Enjoy the dismantling of the government should be fun. Now all government agencies are run by morons and we have a rapist convict to lead them. Hahaha jokes on you.
Adam Friedland says
Cope and seethe
The dude says
Nothing to seethe over here.
I tried, and failed. But me and mine will be just fine, we’re well prepared to weather this oncoming storm.
This time around, we’ll just have sit it out and allow all the horrible things promised unfold. No need to try and interfere.
As I understand it, the folks that will most be hurt by the promised actions of the incoming administration flocked to MAGA. For some reason they felt all that all that was promised, wasn’t about them… in come the face eating leopards who don’t really care who you voted for. They gonna eat some faces.
I hate it for union members, hispanics, and muslims… life isn’t gonna be quite what you expected starting in 2025. This was absolutely promised, then reinforced over and over. None of you will be exempt just because you fell for the MAGA lies and voted accordingly.
Just seeing the exuberance and unmitigated glee from our own MAGA, like Dennis or Jimbo, should be a clue as to what’s to come.
Sherry says
@adam. . . spoken like a true divisive, fear and hate filled maga mindless cult member. Just remember, the horrors about to unfold in the next 4 years, “It’s All the Fault” of maga. Me, I’m actually LMAO, I’m not seething at all. . . looking forward to trump and maga going down in flames. LOL! Living well is the best revenge and that is precisely what we are doing here in wonderful California!
Rip merica says
Let it burn!
jackson says
Republicans made a deal with the devil to realize some of their priorities with no concern for what Trump would end up doing that were not priorities or even approved of. The latest is if Trump messes with the ACA it could mean retirement postponed for many American seniors who need coverage before Medicare kicks in. We tried to warn them. (SMH).
jake says
Remember, Obamacare “fixed” the healthcare system.
Pierre Tristam says
It certainly did for millions, me among them, who’d have been bankrupted by medical cost insurers used to not cover if there were pre-existing conditions. It didn’t fix it all by any means. But at least we went from the health care equivalent of a first degree felony to a third degree felony: still criminal, but awaiting it’s more workable diversionary program, which we would have had by now but for those GOP predators.
k5n says
[Do not use multiple handles to pretend you are different people. We’ve changed them to be uniform. Next you’re comments won;t be approved. Please pick one handle and stick with it in compliance with our comment policy. Thank you.–FL]
The main problems with the ACA are a result of compromises it was forced to make with the GOP in order to pass.
Insurance-based for-profit medicine tied to employment is the problem.
It only benefits those at the top. Once again, GOP and MAGA pandering to the billionaire class.
Y’all only call it Obamacare when you’re mad at it. But when you’re enjoying the benefits it provides you, like protection against pre-existing condition exceptions, it’s the ACA.
jake says
“The main problems with the ACA are a result of compromises it was forced to make with the GOP in order to pass.”
Only one Republican Representitive voted for Obamacare, and no Republican Senator. Not sure what compromises you are referring.
BMW says
So all of these so called ‘scientists’ are defending the status quo knowing we are the sickest, fattest and most drug consuming nation amongst our peers – all after spending the most on health care. God forbid that America demands the food companies sell the same products they are forced to produce for other countries where genetically engineered ingredients are banned for the safety of their citizens. Let’s face it, the drug companies control the FDA and yield the most power by dominating the media’s advertising budgets. Ever ask yourself why the US is only one of two countries that allow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs? Of course not, too busy politicizing everything.
k5n says
[Do not use multiple handles to pretend you are different people. We’ve changed them to be uniform. Next you’re comments won;t be approved. Please pick one handle and stick with it in compliance with our comment policy. Thank you.–FL]
So you want to throw out science, in an effort to battle corporate pharma?
You *almost* got it!
Let’s get rid of the pharma lobby, and let’s get campaign finance reform back. But leave science alone.
Al says
My last yearly physical the doctor recommended 12 different vaccinations. I didn’t get any of them and I damn sure not getting a MRNA vaccination for covid.
The NIH should be abolished and Faulci needs to be prosecuted for violating the law. He knew where the money be given to a third party was going. Thanks to that jerk the country was pummeled with covid.
I don’t remember as many food recalls on food products as there has been lately. It’s not that they catch these at the processor but rather weeks later. What are the inspectors doing? Most of the inspectors have a cozy relationship with the plants they’re supposed to be overseeing. Do you trust them with the food supply?
Bottom line is the whole government needs to be shaken up and the deadwood thrown out. It seems like the first job of most bureaucrats is to protect big industries from the public and protect their jobs in the process. That is why Trump is there to unwind this mess and make the government responsive to Americans again.
Deborah Coffey says
Well, we might need to make unvaccinated people that kill others with Covid a felony. BTW, it was Donald Trump that pummeled our country with Covid…not Fauci…TRUTH is really important.
FlaPharmTech says
A1 steak sauce is lacking in reason.
Liz says
The Covid vaccine does not prevent transmission.
Deborah Coffey says
“Study results show that this new vaccine prevents SARS-CoV-2 transmission and infection.” AI
Sherry Epley says
@al. . . either post “credentialed evidence” that Dr. Fauci has violate the law, or we will all continue to understand that all you are capable of posting is hate filled lies and Fox BS!
No one cares dude says
They have a traditional Covid vaccine made just like the annual flu vaccine, Novavax. But you’d rather rage on about what exactly? It’s a recommendation FFS. No one actually cares if you take care of your health or not. The sicker you are the more money they make on you so, you do you pal, no one really cares. Honest.
DaleL says
N. o. c. dude s. is correct. No one is forcing anyone to take life saving medical vaccines or treatments. According to a Yale Medicine fact sheet, the mRNA vaccines are about 95% effective in prevention of COVID symptoms and the Novavax is about 90% effective. Whether further annual or even more frequent booster vaccinations are appropriate, depends on the individual person.
This is similar with all vaccinations and medical treatments.
Dr. Anthony Fauci seems to be a wonderful person. A doctor of impeccable abilities and ethics. I have yet to read of any actual evidence that he in anyway violated any law.
Jim says
Twelve vaccines? Really?
List them for us.
Atwp says
Al, you trust Trump, you have that right. When you need help Trump has the right to ignore you. Dont get vaccines, I will be glad to read about your demise. Trump will not attend your funeral. Dont trust the food inspectors, but we eat the food.
k5n says
[Do not use multiple handles to pretend you are different people. We’ve changed them to be uniform. Next you’re comments won;t be approved. Please pick one handle and stick with it in compliance with our comment policy. Thank you.–FL]
Food recalls are Trump’s fault. He deregulated all kinds of food safety practices.
Y’all think “regulation” is a bad thing. It’s not. It’s there to protect You, me, all of us. Regulations are Consumer Protections.
Your maga friends want to deregulate everything so that their billionaire CEO and investor friends can get away with cheaper, less safe production practices, and squeeze more money out of us little people. It has Nothing to do with making us healthier. It’s greed. It’s a grift.
Once again you have the enemy all wrong. You have been sold a bill of goods.
Pogo says
@If there is a doG, trump will be US patient #2, after patient #1
… newly arrived in town from Russia, uses trump’s bathroom to look at classified documents; the actual beginning of the Last Of Us. Season 2 — like trump’s, is coming.
Leave Ellie and Joel alone. Lol. says
Don’t bring the greatness that is TLOU into this. Lol.
Thomas Hutson says
Robert Kennedy Health Chief
Now, now let’s not live in the past, give little Fauci some slack. For all you “RED” supporters of Daddy Warbucks he wanted a vaccine using “DISINFECTANT” TO FIGHT COVID. Then after all that nonsense both he and his wife received those terrible shots and even praised them. Oh well so much for walking on water, just needed a little help. Must have been that damn China laboratory.
Now let’s see, if you don’t want to take your medicine, don’t, no law forcing you, and if you don’t trust out food products, don’t eat. Research where the current listeria outbreaks came from. Boy I for one am sure glad little Fauci didn’t cause that.
What a time to be in right now and in the coming months, America elected its popular candidates for both houses of government and the oval office. Big Daddy is now appointing his own “High” geniuses to cabinet positions. Including this true nut case Robert Kennedy, he is the guy that had a worm in his brain. He like big Daddy at first did not like vaccines, not now he changed his mind. No problem he will still shake up the medical profession anyway. Boy, and Kennedy is the guy to do just that. One thing I would suggest, if they offer you any “Kool-Aid” please don’t drink it.
Fear not “red” supporters of Big Daddy, it’s all yours’s now for at least two years. Just remember what is done for one includes everyone like it or not. And yes, this really sounds like a “Project 2025” policy activity agenda. Big Daddy said he knows nothing about it. Yep, believe that.
tulip says
We are now in the midst of watching a dictatorial regime being formed and more to come with all his threats of retribution which become fact. Turd Trump said what he is going to do if elected and he has already started. A lot of people that voted for him will soon regret it. However it is too late. _People claimed that Harris didn’t give a clear explanation of her policies and people believed Turds lies. Granted we didn’t know how she would run the country, but we never knew that for presidents in the past either until they were elected. One thing we did know about Harris is that she wouldn’t have an insurrection, cause hate and division in the country, lie, cheat and and be horrible to people, and she would have been respectful. All that would’ve been a relief However, it seems that the majority wants to be treated badly and like all the crap T gives out. God Save America, please.
Joseph Barand says
Have you listened to him talk, three possible reasons, Incest, Drugs or multiple STD’s.
rapscallion says
this man has sold and used illicit drugs.
grandfather was a rum runner
uncle john was womanizing amphetamine addict.
camelot pfff
SusieQ says
What is all this fuss about? Eggs and gas are going to be so cheap you won’t have time to worry about the small stuff…like global pandemics.
FlaPharmTech says
Now more than ever I know I have made the right decision to not renew my pharmacy tech license. It’s already rife with disrespect and abuse, now the trumpster fire is coming for it. More bad politics in big pharmaceuticals. Does Kennedy know what PBMs are???!!! Pharmacy Benefit Managers. Now that’s something that needs regulation.
Best of luck to us all.
Atwp says
People voted for Trump, this is what we get. If the vaccines are reduced or eliminated, expect pox outbreaks, measles outbreaks, flu, Covid and other infectious. Will this happen I hope not but if it does we can hold Trump voters accountable. When Trumps death decisions start killing, a lot of his faithful voters will meet their demise, and I say good for them.
Land of no turn signals says says
He’s just a former Dem that just couldn’t take anymore shit forced down his throat anymore.Don’t hate.
Nicki says
Trust only your personal doctor. This clown has a worm in his brain. He has no medical training to advise anyone what to do with their own health.
Trump is angry that our laws was bringing him to justice and he stated in his campaign he will seek revenge, that is the basis in his 4 year term, to destroy our country for trying to bring him to justice.
He wants control of our military to use for his personal attacks, he is threatening our military officers with prison if they don’t follow his orders. He is going to treat our government and our military as a dictator. The writing in on the wall.
He is going to exactly what he said he would do, and this is what the voters agreed to.
He is picking everyone in his cabinet that are yes people to him, their puppets and lack any respect to the US Constitution. Very few of them could pass a background check that is why Trump is trying ways to avoid them. Its his way or no way.
The Republican party is long gone, it is only left with weak men who have no courage or respect for the US Constitution, they have no respect for themselves and it sure shows.
JOSEPH HEMPFLING says
IT IS SAID “THE MEASURE OF A MAN, IS OFTEN HIS ENEMIES” IN WHICH CASE KENNEDY IS ONE
HELL OF A BIG MAN WITH ONE HELL OF A BIG TASK; TAKING ON THE MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
AND GOD BLESS HIM FOR IT AND HIS EFFORTS TO MAKE AMERICA “HEALTHY” AGAIN.
Magatards says
lol they guy is a moron with no background in public health but he does like some conspiracy theories. The only thing he has is the last name. More of a snake oil salesman than a doctor. But hey you voted for imbeciles and you got it.
Deport gop says
Hope the Christian’s will pray for all the people that will suffer from the horrid policies coming their way
David Schaefer says
Please get rid of this POS his brain is full of cement if he gets the job god help us all.