Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University Medical School, says that American doctors should embrace the reform agenda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s controversial pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the next presidential administration.
In an article for UnHerd, a nonpartisan website that aims to “test and retest assumptions, without fear or favor,” Bhattacharya wrote that critics of Kennedy focus too much on his belief in conspiracy theories. They fail to recognize his vows to bring together top experts to end the United States’ chronic disease epidemic and clean up perceived corruption in the medical and pharmaceutical industries.
Following the decision by the president-elect, many medical professionals were left aghast that a man who has previously been accused of amplifying conspiracy theories—most notably about the COVID vaccine—could potentially be in charge of the health of 350 million Americans from January if he is confirmed by the Senate. Newsweek has emailed Bhattacharya and Kennedy’s press contact for additional comment.
“The central argument against Kennedy from the medical establishment pertains to some of his scientific claims, for example about vaccines, wireless radiation and cancer, raw milk, and neurodevelopmental disorders caused by water fluoridation,” Bhattacharya acknowledged in the UnHerd article. It was cowritten by Kevin Bardosh, the director/head of research for the Collateral Global charity.
Kennedy has previously said that vaccines can cause autism in children, and despite denying that he is a vaccine skeptic, in December 2023, he told CNN‘s Kasie Hunt he “would be against mandates” for children in public schools.
Bhattacharya said that medical officials failed during the COVID era by supporting what he says are antiscience policies such as lockdowns, school closures and mandates.
“Medical officials failed badly in the COVID era by supporting lockdowns, school closures, toddler masking and mandates. Their championing of antiscience policies has caused massive health and social harm, which reverberates today,” Bhattacharya wrote.
“The 2024 U.S. election was a vote against the establishment and in favor of fundamental reforms; it is unsurprising that the same establishment which endorsed lockdowns and mandates now fights kicking and screaming against oncoming change.”
Bhattacharya, a public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations, cited a July study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that trust in American physicians and hospitals dropped from 71 percent to 40 percent between 2020 and 2024.
The Stanford professor, who previously wrote for Newsweek that our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic constituted “history’s biggest public health mistake,” said that Kennedy can be a “mirror” for medical officials who deny their own culpability in those COVID statistics.
Kennedy does have some views that top physicians have welcomed, including his calls to remove processed foods from school lunches and his warnings about the food industry’s role in exacerbating the chronic disease crisis. He also advocates for restoring a “gold standard” of science to the health sector, which he believes is overly influenced by large pharmaceutical companies.
One of Kennedy’s focuses is toxic chemicals in the environment, particularly from pesticides and fertilizers used in farming.
“Pesticides, food additives, pharmaceutical drugs and toxic waste permeate every cell in our bodies,” Kennedy said during Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson‘s American Health Crisis Roundtable in September.
“This assault on our children’s cells and hormones is unrelenting. They are swimming around in a toxic soup … We are mass poisoning all of our children and all of our adults.”
Speaking on Fox News in October, Kennedy vowed to get processed food out of school lunches “immediately” if he was appointed by Trump.
In the president-elect’s first speech since election night, on Thursday night at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Trump said Kennedy would “help make America healthy again” and would protect Americans from “harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products and food additives.”
“Kennedy is not a scientist, but his good faith calls for better research and more debate are echoed by many Americans,” Bhattacharya wrote.
“If he remains true to this promise, scientists will be able to work to address the challenges of evidence in ways that previous administrations have not. The status quo is not working for the public interest or patients.
“If the medical establishment becomes obsessed with resistance, it will marginalize itself and lose what little trust the public currently places in it,” Bhattacharya added.
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