I Will Never Trust R.F.K. Jr. But I Want to Trust Public Health.

New York Times

3 days ago

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on June 9, I was devastated but not surprised. He is a longtime vaccine critic, and it was clear to me that he was gunning for the panel, which gives recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines.
Though there has been public mistrust of new vaccines, this is not a group that has historically been politicized. In fact, this is the first time that a health and human services secretary has dismissed the full panel. The voting members of the advisory committee are highly vetted experts who typically meet three times a year, and they consider the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, as well as the feasibility of their recommendations. There's a legitimate fear that if the committee stops recommending certain vaccines, they won't be covered by insurance, and Americans will have to pay out of pocket to get them.
On June 10, Kennedy posted on X that he was going to handpick the new panel and that 'none of these individuals will be ideological anti-vaxxers.' He then appointed eight members to the committee, one of whom posted this month, 'The term 'anti-vaxer' it is not a slur, but a compliment. Embrace it. Own it. and be proud to be a part of this fight.' Oy.
As I was processing this information with new horror, I had a possibly perverse response: the urge to listen to a four-hour-and-27-minute 'Huberman Lab' podcast interview with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, because the episode was called 'Improving Science & Restoring Trust in Public Health' and was recorded before the advisory committee overhaul.
Bhattacharya, who was a professor of health policy at Stanford University and has an M.D. and a Ph.D., was one of the creators of the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, which argued that 'current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short- and long-term public health.' His skepticism of mainstream public health during the Biden administration undoubtedly helped Bhattacharya get his current job.
From what I know of Andrew Huberman, he can communicate some scientific concepts quite well, but I am suspicious about his supplement recommendations, his coziness with advertisers and his softball interviews with people like Casey Means. Still, neither Huberman nor Bhattacharya is a vaccine ideologue like Kennedy, and they both have expertise.
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