15

For the third day running, one of the most active threads was about a cabinet nomination by President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. This one was titled, "RFKjr Tapped to Head HHS" and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. As noted in the title, Trump announced that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was his choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services. I consider this choice a little unusual for Trump. His previous cabinet choices emphasized loyalty. Kennedy is a bit of a loose cannon whose loyalty might be in question. Putting Kennedy in charge of HHS is not just putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, it is more like putting someone who denies the moon landing at the head of NASA. The chances of Kennedy completely destroying the department are fairly high. At first glance, I can see several categories of damage that Kennedy might do. One is messaging. MAGAs especially tend to believe Trump and his top people rather than experts. The more that Kennedy deemphasizes important health measures and, instead, highlights unproven quackery, the more that public health is likely to suffer. Second is interference with important research projects that he simply doesn't understand. It is common practice to track down some esoteric research project that, at first glance, sounds ridiculous and highlight it as a waste of money. The problem is that you never really know where these projects might lead. For instance, the popular weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy had their origin in research into lizard venom. The flip side of this coin is that Kennedy might direct research into areas that aren't productive. A poster in this thread suggests that Kennedy might put significant funds into stem cell research which the poster believes would be a waste of time and money. I don't have the knowledge to comment on that in any way, but Kennedy has plenty of off-the-wall ideas that I could easily see him prioritizing that either lead nowhere or make things worse. Additional damage could be by simple neglect. HHS is huge, encompassing the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and much, much more. It is going to take a while for Kennedy to simply learn all this is under his purview. If he gets lost trying to reform the FDA, for instance, what will happen to the rest of the Department? One specific threat that Kennedy presents is his attitude toward vaccines. Kennedy has falsely linked vaccines to autism and has equated the use of vaccines to the Holocaust. Any steps Kennedy takes to discourage the use of vaccines could have a profound negative impact on health, especially of children. Kennedy also promotes discredited theories such as his claims about the benefits of raw milk. This is particularly concerning because the United States is currently experiencing an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus in dairy cattle. The H5N1 virus can be spread through unpasteurized milk from infected cows. If the H5N1 bird flu continues to spread during the Trump administration, having at the head of HHS a man who promotes a mechanism for spreading it and who will likely interfere with vaccines meant to combat it will be, to say the least, problematic. Kennedy even supports some of the leading MAGA theories from Trump's first term, such as believing that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are effective COVID treatments. It is hard to pin down exactly which of Trump's cabinet picks presents the most threat to our well-being, but a very strong argument can be made for Kennedy.