Many scientists at the federal health agencies await the second Donald Trump administration with dread as well as uncertainty over how the president-elect will reconcile starkly different philosophies among the leaders of his team.
Trump has promised he would allow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “go wild” on medicines, food, and health. With that, a radical antiestablishment medical movement with roots in past centuries could threaten the achievements of a science-based public health order painstakingly built since World War II, some of these scientists fear.
If Kennedy makes good on his vision for transforming public health, childhood vaccine mandates could wither. New vaccines might never win approval, even as the FDA allows dangerous or inefficient therapies onto the market. Agency websites could trumpet unproven or debunked health ideas. And if Trump’s plan to weaken civil service rights goes through, anyone who questions these decisions could be summarily fired.
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“Never has anybody like RFK Jr. gotten anywhere close to the position he may be in to actually shape policy,” said Lewis Grossman, a law professor at American University and the author of “Choose Your Medicine,” a history of U.S. public health.
Kennedy and an adviser Calley Means, a health care entrepreneur, say dramatic changes are needed because of the high levels of chronic disease in the United States. Government agencies have corruptly tolerated or promoted unhealthy diets and dangerous drugs and vaccines, they say.
Means and Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment. Four conservative members of the first Trump health bureaucracy spoke on condition of anonymity. They eagerly welcomed the former president’s return…
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