RFK Jr. is an unserious man. But his misinformed vaccine policy will be deadly.
It has been a little over two years since the end of the pandemic public health emergency, but it's astonishing how quickly we have moved on from the devastation wrought by COVID-19.
As a front-line doctor, I cannot forget the sick, the dying and the panic from that time. Roughly 350,000 Americans died before our country created and deployed the first mRNA vaccines in December 2020. These proved to be a powerful weapon against the virus and greatly decreased the rate of death and suffering. But a new enemy emerged in parallel: misinformation and mistrust in public health and science.
The backlash against what our own nation's brightest minds had produced, with evidence to back up vaccination, was astounding. Unvaccinated patients would be cursing Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the vaccines to my face ‒ even as they were dying on large amounts of oxygen.
This legacy of distrust continues and is unfortunately being borne out in the Trump administration's policies under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., top vaccine skeptic and head of the Health and Human Services Department.
In his latest shocking attack on proven science and medicine, he has fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine advisory board. These are experts in the field of medicine, tasked with making recommendations on vaccine deployment.
This should concern us all.
Opinion: Please stop letting RFK Jr. make vaccine policies. His new COVID plan is deadly.
RFK Jr. claims firing vaccine experts will Make America Healthy. It won't.
In his reason for firing these 17 experts, Kennedy claimed that they have never denied a vaccine – which is not their job, by the way – and that they are beholden to corporate interests.
Unlike other members of the administration, this has not proved to be true. Some advisory board members have even recused themselves in cases that could suggest a conflict of interest. The integrity of these professionals stands in stark contrast to Kennedy's unfounded accusations.
Introducing skepticism into sound scientific recommendations without proof can have dire consequences.
Just look at the recent measles outbreak in Texas among unvaccinated populations as an example. Healthy and vulnerable children are being put at risk due to misguided beliefs and shadowed skepticism by our governmental agencies about what is generally considered sound science.
Look at Kennedy's endorsement of dubious science that vitamin A is an effective preventative to measles – a message that has led to cases of vitamin A poisoning in children.
I'm a doctor. Trump's crusade against universities undermines the future of your health. | Opinion
What is emerging is a troubling pattern of RFK Jr. and this administration spreading doubt of evidence-based public health recommendations. His motto is to 'Make America Healthy Again.' This is a pleasant sound bite, but the administration's actions and polices are doing the opposite.
Cutting National Institutes of Health funding and crippling research into cancer and heart disease cures is not making us healthier. Neither is laying off critical staff at the Food and Drug Administration, especially when we are having outbreaks of salmonella and other foodborne illnesses.
MAHA misinformation will cost lives.
How will the proposed federal spending cuts to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which could reduce access to the more than 70 million Americans enrolled, make us healthier? How is any of this making America healthy again?
It's not. In fact, it's breeding ignorance by culling from the table the actual experts in public health, science and medicine. RFK Jr. is all about solving chronic disease, but he seems to be listening to his gut (which by the way does not have a PhD, MD or any medical background) rather than people who have knowledge in this area.
It's akin to firing car safety experts because you don't believe that seat belts and airbags save lives.
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At a time when we need informed guidance, we are instead cultivating an environment where political agendas eclipse scientific truth.
It is only a matter of time before we face another COVID-like health crisis. At the rate we are proceeding, we will be ill-prepared to respond. Our public health infrastructure is already frail, and with the brain drain of qualified experts being systematically replaced by unsound ideologies, we set ourselves up for extraordinary vulnerability. The stakes are too high to play this game.
RFK Jr. needs to get more serious, or we need to replace him with actual experts in public health who know what they're doing.
Dr. Thomas K. Lew is an assistant clinical professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and an attending physician of Hospital Medicine at Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley. All expressed opinions are his own. Follow him on X: @ThomasLewMD
You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
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