RFK Jr.’s history of medical misinformation raises concerns over HHS nomination
Keesha Middlemass
February 6, 2025
- During his confirmation hearings, senators revisited his past comments on anti-vaccine rhetoric, unscientific remarks about Black people’s immune systems, and other false medical claims.
- In recent years, RFK Jr.’s focus has been on promoting conspiracy theories, and his claims have earned him a reputation as one of the leading spreaders of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
- Given the health care system’s long history of reinforcing racial stereotypes, Kennedy’s confirmation could lead to greater mistrust from the African American community.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated by President Trump to serve as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). On February 4, Kennedy passed a critical hurdle in a party-line vote, and his nomination was sent to the full Senate. During his confirmation hearings, senators revisited his past comments on anti-vaccine rhetoric, unscientific remarks about Black people’s immune systems, and other false medical claims. For instance, in a 2021 interview, Kennedy proposed that Black people should follow a different vaccine schedule because their immune systems are stronger than white people’s, echoing racist medical tropes that suggest Black people are biologically different from others. Given the health care system’s long history of reinforcing racial stereotypes, Kennedy’s confirmation could lead to greater mistrust from the African American community.
Senator Alsobrooks (D-Md.) called out Kennedy’s false claims and his use of racist pseudoscience while Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) questioned RFK, Jr.’s comparison of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Nazi death camps; although he denied making such statements, credible fact-checkers confirm Kennedy did. These comments should be alarming to all communities across the country, particularly African Americans, given the challenges they have faced with the medical system.
There is a long political, social, and economic history of misinformation shaping the public narrative about Black people, and Senators Alsobrooks and Warnock brought needed attention to this history. Racist discourse, which deemed Africans and their descendants inferior, supported the enslavement of Black people and reinforced white supremacy. This denigration led to racist and dehumanizing medical practices with lasting consequences for Black people. Public health research, led by Ayah Nuriddin and others, shows that racism is a fundamental determinant of health outcomes and disparities, and that racist policies and practices have also been integral to the formation of medical science in the United States.
Nuriddin and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine detail the long history of racial injustice and inequality in health care, including medical segregation, the exclusion of Black Americans from medical training and educational opportunities, and the exploitation of enslaved people’s bodies in medical experimentation—leading to the development of entire medical fields, like gynecology. These racist attitudes toward Black women persisted into the 20th century through eugenics laws and compulsory sterilization practices in several states and Puerto Rico. These practices led to thousands of Black, Latina, and Native American women being subject to involuntary surgeries.
Another example of medical racism is the violation of medical ethics and human rights by the U.S. Public Health Service in the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. The 40-year study, conducted from 1932 to 1972, involved hundreds of Black men who were treated for so-called “bad blood” without their informed consent. Yet, even after penicillin became a known treatment for syphilis in 1945, treatment was withheld from the men.
The egregious nature of the Tuskegee Study led to the development of medical ethics, regulations, and review boards—designed to protect human participants in medical, social, economic, and other research. Another notable violation of medical ethics due to racism is reflected in the story of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman with cervical cancer whose cells were taken without her permission while receiving segregated care at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951. Her cancerous cells, known as HeLa cells, contributed to medical advancements worldwide, but the use of her cells generated financial profits for scientists and institutions without compensation to her or her family until 2023.
Advances in medicine have been accompanied by the development of effective vaccines, which save millions of lives globally each year and help protect communities from preventable diseases. However, in recent years, RFK Jr. has gained notoriety for his anti-vaccine positions, including claims that vaccines cause autism. In 2023, while running for president, Kennedy falsely claimed in a video that COVID-19 was a “bioweapon” made by China, potentially ethnically targeted to disproportionately harm specific racial groups, such as caucasians and Black people, and that Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people were immune due to the virus’s genetic structure.
Doctors, scientists, researchers, and even his sister Kerry Kennedy and cousin Caroline Kennedy have expressed distrust in RFK Jr.’s ability to oversee U.S. health care. Others criticized his past remarks, with epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina tweeting, “Beyond the absurdity, biological know-how simply isn’t there to make a virus that targets only certain ethnicities.” In recent years, RFK Jr.’s focus has been on promoting conspiracy theories, and his claims have earned him a reputation as one of the leading spreaders of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. While he has tried to deny his past anti-vaccine positions during his Senate confirmation hearings, years of documented evidence show his ties to the anti-vaccine movement, which has grown from a fringe subculture to a well-organized network that spreads false information about vaccines on social media.
The intentional sharing of misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccine effectiveness has real-world implications. The COVID-19 lockdowns provided anti-vaccine activists a platform to oppose public health interventions, such as social distancing, school closures, and vaccine trials, which provided an opportunity to discredit the development and evaluation process of the COVID-19 vaccines. This is especially concerning given the critical role trust in the medical system played in vaccine uptake during the pandemic.
Survey data focused on understanding the hesitancy of Americans to become vaccinated against COVID-19 identified racism as a major obstacle for the African American community. More specifically, as reported here at Brookings, more than 40% of Black respondents said they had experienced discrimination in the medical system, including 33% who felt they were not given the best available treatment. Furthermore, 27% of African Americans reported that discrimination from medical professionals made it harder for them to get vaccinated due to lack of trust in the vaccine. Confirming RFK Jr. to lead the nation’s health care system would likely exacerbate existing trust issues across the African American community.
Vaccine hesitancy has contributed to rising cases of whooping cough (also known as pertussis) and measles, as lower immunization rates weaken herd immunity. When vaccination rates decline due to hesitancy, “different vaccine schedules,” or a growing number of unvaccinated individuals, the consequences can be tragic. The World Health Organization warns that vaccine hesitancy and delays in childhood immunization pose a serious threat to global health.
If confirmed as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr. would oversee 13 health-related agencies, including the CDC, Food and Drug Administration, Indian Health Service, National Institutes of Health, Office of Global Affairs (which provides expertise in global health diplomacy), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and other health services.
This article was originally published by The Brookings Institution.