• Defending Public Health

  Opposition letter

  Posted by BobMorris on January 13, 2025 at 4:52 pm

  January 13, 2025

  Healthcare, Public Health, and Scientific Experts Call on the Senate to Reject RFK Jr. Nomination to Lead HHS

  CONTACT:
  Julie Scofield, 301-455-2558, [email protected]

  Bruce Mirken, 415-846-7758, [email protected]

  WASHINGTON, D.C. – Public health professionals, healthcare workers, community-based providers and scientists from across the U.S. have joined together to call on the U.S. Senate to reject President-elect Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, generating over 3,500 individual letters to senators and over 700 signatures on a public letter opposing the nomination. The letter writing campaign was organized by a new national coalition called Defend Public Health along with Human Impact Partners.

  The letter states, ”Mr. Kennedy is unqualified to lead the nation’s health department with a budget of over $1.6 trillion and over 80,000 employees. He has little to no relevant administrative, policy or health experience or expertise that would prepare him to oversee the work of critical public health agencies… Mr. Kennedy is well known for his conspiracy-driven theories on vaccines, COVID-19, HIV, and fluoridation. His unfounded, fringe beliefs could significantly undermine public health practices across the country and around the world.”

  Among the public health experts signing the letter is Oni Blackstock, MD, MHS, a primary care and HIV physician, founder and Executive Director of Health Justice, and former Assistant Commissioner at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Dr. Blackstock commented, “Kennedy’s potential leadership of HHS is deeply concerning. His history of spreading vaccine disinformation and promoting pseudoscientific theories about HIV undermines public trust in science and could erode decades of progress in HIV and public health more broadly.”

  James Alwine, PhD, a leading American virologist, Emeritus Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine and Visiting Professor at the University of Arizona, noted Kennedy’s potential chilling effect on life-saving research, saying, “Life science and disease research stand between us and emerging pandemic pathogens, as well as the return of illnesses that we can prevent by vaccination. The U.S. has the greatest, most productive pathogen research infrastructure in the world, but it is a fragile enterprise that must be protected. RFK Jr.’s proposals to end infectious disease research, his anti-vaccine stance, and his general disdain for science will damage or halt this research and disable our ability to develop vaccines. In the end we will be left unprotected, and many people will be damaged or killed, especially infants, children and the elderly.”

  Gerald Keusch, MD, former director of the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center, and now Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine added, “The public’s health depends on a complex, interactive ecosystem of research and development, beginning with basic research on biological processes and ending with delivery of its products to the people. It would be difficult to find a nominee to lead the highest-level coordinating and policy center as inexperienced and unqualified to guide this ecosystem as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Rather than increasing trust in our public health and scientific agencies and professionals, RFK Jr. will drive new wedges into it and diminish its effectiveness.”

  Nancy Krieger, PhD, Professor of Social Epidemiology and American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, commented, “Kennedy is ideologically committed to positions and falsehoods that threaten health equity and that will increase profiteering by people selling fake “remedies” and unsafe products like ivermectin and and risky products, including those that can be contaminated by harmful infectious agents, such as raw milk. His anti-vax positions threaten hard-won major reductions in social inequities invaccine-preventable childhood illness due to school vaccination mandates.”

  Jodie L. Guest, PhD, MPH, Professor of Epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, added “Each year, 3 million deaths are averted globally thanks to the measles vaccine, HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, and vaccines are not associated with increased risk of autism. These are examples of settled science. We need public health leaders who will prepare for the next pandemic, work daily to improve health, and support the good work of public health practitioners.”

  Public health advocates fear that RFK Jr. and others nominated by President-elect Donald Trump will endanger the health and well-being of Americans just as we’ve emerged from five years of the worst pandemic in over a century and urge the U.S. Senate to ensure that only qualified candidates assume these crucial federal health posts. “The health of Americans isn’t a partisan issue—diseases don’t distinguish between people by political party. We cannot afford to play politics with human lives,” said Gregg Gonsalves, PhD, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health.

  gmail.us15.list-manage.com

  Public Health Says: Stop the RFK Jr. Nomination

  Please use this form to send a letter to your Senators opposing the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. Once you fill our your information, there will be a draft … Continue reading

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