He claims to have a worm living in his brain. He took a chainsaw to the head of a dead whale and strapped it to the roof of the family car to bring home. He scoops up roadkill and puts it in his freezer. And he has alllll kinds of thoughts on what causes disease, many of which have long been debunked.
This is who is currently in charge of our Health and Human Services department. Bobby Kennedy, Jr. is a full-on crank, but Donald Trump has tasked him with a mission to “Make America Healthy Again.”
During the pandemic, Kennedy made headlines for vilifying Dr. Fauci and stating that the virus had been engineered to affect certain ethnic groups. As Secretary of HHS, he’s more or less ignored a deadly measles outbreak in Texas. He’s gutted important health agencies including the CDC, NIH, and the FDA. Under the Trump administration, Important research into cancer, Alzheimer’s, and HIV has been stopped. And in a move dripping with irony, Kennedy, a longtime heroin addict now in recovery, is moving to stop a program that trains first responders in the use of Narcan to prevent overdose deaths.
Kennedy decries our food supply as a main driver of disease, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. But at the same time, his cuts to the FDA will greatly reduce food and drug safety inspections.
Welcome back, Salmonella and E-coli; make yourself at home in our large intestines.
One of Kennedy’s more disturbing fixations is on the causes of autism. He’s claimed that vaccines cause this condition, even though this is a conspiracy theory. He recently made headlines by describing those with autism as practically helpless (not true).
Seeking a cure for something that affects so many families is not wrong, but his methodology has a scary tone: he wants to create a national registry, which, to this writer, is a tick away from practicing eugenics to avoid “drains on society.” Considering that his aunt, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, started the Special Olympics in 1968, you’d think he’d know better than to “otherize” people with disabilities.
The appointment of RFK, Jr. to the Cabinet is no surprise; he’s just another unqualified weirdo among many in this administration. But the critical role that our federal health agencies play in keeping our food safe and eliminating or controlling disease makes his dismissiveness of experts worrying.
Sadly, we’ll have to play closer attention to our groceries, ensuring that they’re cleaned and cooked more thoroughly. Frequent hand washing (and probably masks) will likely make a big comeback. Because apparently, Bobby’s Brain Worm™ is in charge.
Cindy Grogan is a writer, lover of history and "Star Trek" (TOS), and hardcore politics junkie. There was that one time she campaigned for Gerald Ford (yikes), but ever since, she's been devoted to Democratic and progressive policies.