Alexandra Sifferlin, a health and science editor for Times Opinion, hosted an online conversation on Wednesday with the Opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci and the Opinion writers David Wallace-Wells and Jessica Grose about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first of two confirmation hearings for secretary of health and human services.
Alexandra Sifferlin: A challenge for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in this hearing was convincing senators that he is not a conspiracy theorist who is going to take away everyone’s vaccines. In his opening statement, he stated that he was not “anti-vaccine,” though numerous examples were provided of his longtime vaccine criticism — including a fiery exchange with Senator Bernie Sanders over Kennedy’s former nonprofit selling anti-vaccine baby onesies.
Did Kennedy succeed in offering that assurance?
Jessica Grose: I’m going to have to agree with Senator Ron Wyden, who said, “The receipts show that Mr. Kennedy has embraced conspiracy theories, quacks, charlatans — especially when it comes to the safety and efficacy of vaccines.” Kennedy’s responses did not do much to quell the profound doubts that anyone paying close attention would have. It was especially bad when he had to admit that he “probably did” once say that Lyme disease was a “military-engineered bioweapon.”
David Wallace-Wells: I don’t think he persuaded anyone of much, though I don’t think he really set out to, either. He was working from the playbook of Pete Hegseth and Brett Kavanaugh — defensive, standoffish, evasive and ready to be memed. He didn’t really repudiate past statements, just deflected and counterpunched. More striking to me: He said almost nothing about how to actually make America healthy again.
Grose: David, I also found it telling that he was already referring to President Trump as his “boss” and saying there’s nothing wrong with loving Big Macs. We know that Trump likes fighters. Kennedy has an audience of one that he really cares about.
Zeynep Tufekci: He is obviously good at punting the questions and came prepared to do so. When he was asked if he was a conspiracy theorist, for example, he just said no and claimed that he was called a conspiracy theorist for saying Covid vaccines don’t prevent transmission. But that’s not the real reason. For example, he has falsely claimed that the H.P.V. vaccine increases rates of cancer — and he even stands to potentially benefit from a lawsuit against that vaccine. Meanwhile, the evidence shows that the H.P.V. vaccine is eliminating deaths from cervical cancer. But he didn’t get pushed on that.
Sifferlin: He argued the label didn’t fit him because his past claims were later validated: “I was called a conspiracy theorist because I said red dye caused cancer, and now the F.D.A. has acknowledged that and banned it.” His comments are simplifying things, but do you think this narrative is appealing to his followers?
Tufekci: There is a lot of understandable frustration over some aspects of how the pandemic has been handled by leaders, as well as with the power of pharmaceutical companies and the way industrial agriculture influences food policy. Unfortunately, though, someone who can deny the most basic, strong evidence on something straightforward like the benefits of the H.P.V. vaccine will not be a strong opponent of those interests, either. They will run rings around him.
Grose: There’s no denying that most people have terrible interactions with our health care system, because it doesn’t work well. At best, you get 15 minutes with a harried provider, and it’s expensive. It’s telling that Kennedy’s message has found a big audience among moms, particularly conservative Christian moms, because he embraces the idea that individual families can control their own health better if they divest from these broken systems. It makes them feel like they are heard and empowered.
Wallace-Wells: A disengaged normie viewer watching the hearings probably would’ve come away thinking that Kennedy has some serious questions about what seems to many like an obviously broken system. The points he raised were often contradictory and poorly informed, sometimes even non sequiturs. This is not the guy you want shaking things up, even if you really do want to shake things up. But the basic anti-establishment, anti-institutional vibes are one reason he’s a popular political figure.
Sifferlin: Wyden put it pretty well when he said, “If there’s one word to describe Americans feelings toward the health care system, it’s ‘disillusioned.’ At every single turn, people feel like they’re rolling loaded dice when they try to get health care. Americans are justifiably angry, fed up and tired of a system that puts profits over patients.” There’s agreement there. But Kennedy seemed to stumble over questions about policy specifics, referring to Medicaid’s premiums and deductibles, even though most Medicaid recipients pay neither type of fee. What do you make of his grasp of how the levers of power and regulation at H.H.S. work?
Wallace-Wells: In general, it was notable the way that Kennedy, often seen as a kind of alien figure in the MAGA midst, was in testimony embodying Trumpworld’s know-nothing anti-expertise. You don’t even really need to know the details of the agencies you’re being put in charge of, whether it’s the Pentagon or H.H.S. You just need to emphasize that the establishment is bungling everything.
Tufekci: He may well lack understanding of the exact mechanisms of power at H.H.S. Unfortunately, the secretary of H.H.S. does have superpowers when it comes to many aspects of public health, medicine and vaccines. Lack of understanding of the intricacies wouldn’t stop someone who admitted that he tells random hikers it’s better not to vaccinate their kids from taking a wrecking ball to much of it.
Sifferlin: How vulnerable are vaccines if he’s confirmed?
Grose: It’s hard to say how far he will attempt to go. I do think there will be tremendous blowback if he tries to prevent access to the polio, Tdap and M.M.R. vaccines in the United States. They are still incredibly popular among parents, and even though vaccine skepticism is on the rise, vaccination coverage among young children has remained high and stable for most vaccines, according to the C.D.C.
Tufekci: Given both the vast powers he would have and the role just his statements as the official lead of the H.H.S. would have, he will likely do grave damage to vaccine uptake and development — globally and not just in the United States — and in ways likely hard to reverse. As vaccination rates fall, the diseases that circulate will harm children too young to vaccinate or those with weak immune systems, even if people were vaccinated. There is no hiding from this.
Wallace-Wells: One thing that was interesting was the credit Kennedy gave to Trump about Operation Warp Speed. Interesting, given his history and given the partisan dynamics.
Grose: Like I said earlier, he’s really performing for an audience of one — the consistency is the praise for Trump, even if the stance on vaccines is all over the place.
Sifferlin: We are approaching the fifth anniversary of Covid being declared a pandemic. You could imagine an alternate reality in which, because of the success of Operation Warp Speed, Americans’ trust in vaccines was strengthened. Instead, the next H.H.S. leader may be a vaccine critic. David, how do you make sense of this?
Wallace-Wells: Covid was a traumatic experience full of enormous fear, and one way we’ve made sense of it is to pretend that we were never all that vulnerable to the disease and to act, as a result, as though something like an mRNA shot was the greater threat. It’s delusional, pathological and also, in many ways, understandable.
Tufekci: I’ve been pretty critical of many aspects of how the pandemic was handled. And we just learned, for example, yet another intelligence agency, the C.I.A., had been leaning toward lab leak as a possibility based on assessments made during the Biden administration for how the pandemic started, but that information wasn’t made public until the Trump administration. Of course people have lost trust when obviously plausible scenarios got labeled conspiracy theories and misinformation by the authorities simply because they were inconvenient. Regardless of the blame allocations, though, the victims will be innocent children.
Wallace-Wells: My big-picture view of all this is: Public health was not at all perfect through the pandemic, but the leap from there to “the cure was worse than the disease” terrifies me — and seems pretty widespread.
Sifferlin: Jess, do you see a through line in how Kennedy thinks about health? An underlying ideology or understanding of the world that you recognize?
Grose: He’s clearly very interested in the natural world — clean air and water — and in his remarks spoke about the 1960s as more of a golden age of health. There’s a nostalgic, backward-looking gloss to a lot of his beliefs. He connected the health of young people to our military preparedness.
But then again, I don’t know who is making artisanal ivermectin. And his record with animals is … yikes. So honestly, it’s a struggle to find a consistent through line.
Wallace-Wells: And someone might want to show him the air pollution data for the 1960s.
What might be more notable is not Kennedy’s personal bundle of causes but the way that they’ve found a home on the right. As many others have pointed out, “Make America healthy again” was almost literally Michelle Obama’s agenda in the White House — for which she was absolutely vilified by the broader Fox News universe. I used to roll my eyes a bit when I heard climate people suggest that right-wingers should embrace green energy on libertarian grounds. And now I’ve seen a similar transformation unfold, pretty rapidly, on health.
Grose: “My body, my choice.” But only for vaccines, not for abortion.
Sifferlin: Speaking of that issue — Kennedy, who once identified as pro-choice, was repeatedly pressed on abortion. When Senator Catherine Cortez Masto asked whether federal law would protect a pregnant woman presenting at an E.R. when having a miscarriage and needing an emergency abortion, Kennedy responded, “I don’t know.” Do you think he’s struggling to reconcile his stance on medical freedom with reproductive rights and his possible leadership in a conservative party?
Grose: He probably just did not know the answer to that question. My guess is that he does not want to be seen as publicly disagreeing with Trump, and because Trump has been so wishy-washy on abortion, Kennedy doesn’t want to be seen as taking a strong stance on anything related to the topic.
Sifferlin: Was there any point during the hearing when you found yourself listening to Kennedy and nodding along? One of the complicated things about him is that he can appear directionally or maybe actually correct about issues related to things like ultraprocessed food and chronic disease. And then make false statements about vaccines. Zeynep, you’ve written about this before. How do you think about it?
Tufekci: I can pick many statements he has made — I’m sure prepared — that make perfect sense. For example, he said that peer reviews should be published as well as null results, meaning that even if nothing is found in a study, the findings should be published. That’s a great idea and a frustration shared by many in the academic and scientific communities. But once again, if you read his books and look at his many statements, why would one believe that he actually cares about evidence, as he misrepresents and makes false statements on even the most basic, straightforward topics?
Grose: Zeynep, nobody reads books. I weep. More people probably watched a video of Kennedy shirtless working out.
I am a mother and have covered American parenting for a long time. I think that the American diet stinks and that most people do not get enough exercise. I care very very deeply about the food my children eat and teaching them to prepare their own meals. I have lost sleep over their inevitable exposure to microplastics. So everything he said about the importance of diet and exercise and a cleaner environment resonated. But every doctor under the sun has been saying a version of that for as long as I have been alive. This is not some kind of secret information that only Kennedy can deliver.
Wallace-Wells: Like everyone else, I can’t argue with some of his proposals and propositions. I just don’t at all trust his expertise or sense of proportion to move things, on net, in the right direction. In some ways it’s an illustration of the unfortunate choice facing the country as a whole right now across so many domains: Do we trust the people who seem to embody the establishment or the ones who look ready to burn it all down? These are not good choices.
Sifferlin: Chronic disease was brought up as a major focal point for Kennedy. One of the few specific solutions he put forth to remediating this problem was to improve nutrition and healthy food access. He called for healthier school lunches and decried the fact that 10 percent of SNAP benefits go to sugary drinks. Never mind that SNAP and school lunches are administered by the U.S.D.A. If he focuses his energy on chronic illness, could he do some good?
Grose: Sure, and I would love to see it. But given Republican opposition to feeding low-income kids as of late, I’m not optimistic about it.
Wallace-Wells: The school lunch question illustrates something a bit deeper at work here. My inclination is to say that on matters of health and diet and exercise and environmental contamination, Kennedy has plenty of good instincts — if not necessarily clear ideas or sense of proportion about applying them. But why should pursuing that stuff mean walking away from things like basic childhood vaccination and research into infectious disease?
What we are seeing looks to me less like an earnest exploration of new frontiers in public health than an effort to turn that social project — full of obligations to one another and built on an acknowledgment of shared risks and responsibilities — into something defined and managed entirely through the level of the individual. Yes, your health risks change based on how you live your life, but there’s a whole lot more to it than that. And it’s quite a grim and antisocial message to get from the prospective leader of America’s public health apparatus: Your health is your responsibility.
Sifferlin: If Kennedy doesn’t get confirmed, do you think this is the end of the road for him and “Make America healthy again” politically or just the beginning?
Grose: I’d guess it’s the end for him but not the movement. The ”Make America healthy again” moms are a real coalition. Although it has always been hard for me to gauge how broad and deep their support is, I don’t think they’re exiting the public stage any time soon.
Wallace-Wells: Although Kennedy has a lot of support in Trumpworld at the moment, I’m not entirely sure Trump’s next pick would be nearly as “Make America healthy again.” It’s a funny habit the president has of making deeply ideological picks, with deeply ideological consequences, for what seem to be not very ideological reasons. But whether we got another Kennedy type or someone more like Alex Azar, the movement as such is, as Jess says, here to stay. People are really pretty fed up with the state of health and health care in this country. It wasn’t that long ago that we had a pretty high-profile assassination of a health care C.E.O. and an ambivalent response full of plenty of sympathy for the suspected shooter.
Tufekci: Part of the reason for all this is that medicine and vaccines are a victim of their successes: It’s easy to notice shortcomings and failings of a system when the reality of life under its absence has faded from living memory. In the long run, I hope that we fix the reasons that feed movements like this one, which capitalize on real issues but, instead of offering solutions, just redirect anger in destructive ways. It would be terrible to have to relearn those lessons through great suffering and pain.
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