American Public Health Association (APHA) executive director Dr Georges C. Benjamin has called for Robert F Kennedy, Jr (RFK Jr) to “resign or be fired” from his position as secretary at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
In the few weeks that RFK Jr has been at the helm of the HHS within the Trump administration, the initial concerns APHA held over his appointment “have been realised”, Dr Benjamin wrote in a statement.
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He adds: “The recent implementation of massive reductions in staff at key health agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), among others, along with acknowledgement since that many of these people shouldn’t have been fired, is the latest example of poor and thoughtless management that will only undermine the work of our nation’s top public health agencies to keep us all healthy.”
Dr Benjamin’s allusion to RFK Jr’s apparent ignorance over the potential impact that job cuts across the health agencies nested under the HHS refers to remarks the HHS secretary made in a televised interview with CBS News on 9 April.
When asked about last week’s job cuts, which are set to slim the workforce at the combined HHS agencies from 82,000 to around 62,000, Kennedy said: “What Elon [Musk] said is that, when you do a disruption of this, a lot of times, 80% of the people that get cut … You may make mistakes, as much as 20[%], and then you go back and remedy that.”
Dr Benjamin also pointed out that during his nomination hearing, RFK Jr was presented with multiple studies and responded with a small and unsupported study that reinforced his position as a vaccine sceptic, despite promising that if he were shown the data regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, he would be “the first person to reassure the American people that they need to take those vaccines”.
The remainder of Dr Benjamin’s statement highlighted multiple other instances in which RFK Jr had amply demonstrated his ‘explicit bias’ and ‘complete disregard for science’.
Actions that call into doubt RFK Jr’s suitability for the role, as highlighted by Benjamin, included the health secretary’s initially cavalier attitude to the ongoing measles outbreak in West Texas, and his suggestion that vitamin A may prove a suitable alternative treatment to measles than a vaccine.
The APHA’s executive director also highlighted that under RFK Jr, the US’s capacity to respond to public health threats, including the current measles epidemic, had been stymied due to ‘precipitously cutting funding’ from state and local public health by clawing back $11bn (approximately $34 per person in the US) in approved funding.
Closing out his statement, Dr Benjamin wrote: “Americans deserve better than someone who is trying to impose his unscientific and judgmental view of public health and science. We deserve better than RFK, Jr. He demonstrated his incompetence in only a few weeks.
“As a physician, I pledged to first do no harm and to speak up when I see harm being done by others. I ask my colleagues to join me and speak up. Secretary Robert Kennedy is a danger to the public’s health and should resign or be fired.”
