“I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.” — Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Editor-In-Chief, Chester “Trip” Buckenmaier III, MD, COL (ret.), MC, USA
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made the quoted statement during a May 2025 House Appropriations Committee hearing. The secretary’s comment was made in response to a hypothetical question regarding his willingness today to vaccinate his children for the measles. Kennedy responded, “My opinions about vaccines are irrelevant.”1
I never would have predicted my following editorial comment. I could not agree more with the secretary. Folks, I am bone-tired and clearly repetitive of late when it comes to commenting on the clown-car antics of the present HHS secretary. I would absolutely love to write about anything else. Unfortunately, his ongoing dismantling of the federal healthcare system continues to dominate the medical news cycle and demands our attention. Kennedy should not be ignored, as his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) blitzkrieg tramples centuries of hard-won health policy that was working.
I am not suggesting that the current administration and the appointed health secretary do not have the right to change or try to improve upon the efficiency of one of the nation’s largest and most essential bureaucracies. Usually, though, such an administrative overhaul does not begin by destroying everything that was working. Kennedy’s “it ain’t broke, so let’s destroy it” approach to Health and Human Services has gutted our nation’s tradition of medical excellence in the world.
In the years (oops! It has just been a few months) since Kennedy assumed leadership of the nation’s health, his rash decisions regarding healthcare policy based on pseudoscience have rolled out at a frightening pace. Recently, despite recommendations from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and actual infectious disease experts on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), Kennedy unilaterally announced COVID-19
vaccinations will no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women.
Kennedy, a lawyer, made this decision prior to the CDC’s vaccination advisory panel meeting this month. Before that meeting could happen, in another scorched-earth decision, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the ACIP panel. He stated, “A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.”2 I fail to see how sacking 17 public health experts from the world’s premier health authority is going to improve public confidence in vaccines.
As I have said many times in this column, nothing in modern medicine has saved more lives than vaccination science. Dr. Jonathan Temte, a professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin, served as chair for the ACIP from 2012 to 2015. Dr. Temte noted the ACIP’s reputation as “the paragon of solid, well-thought-out, evidence-based vaccine policy.” Dr. Temte went on to warn that Kennedy’s decision to change the ACIP radically would eventually lead to the United States’ vaccination policy becoming a global laughingstock. I completely agree.
Kennedy has already selected new members for the ACIP panel, who were scheduled to meet on June 25, to discuss new vaccination recommendations. Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, serving as the current American Medical Association president, said in a statement, the AMA “is deeply concerned to learn that new members have already been selected for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) without transparency and proper vetting to ensure they have the expertise necessary to make vaccine recommendations to protect the health of Americans.”3
I have long maintained that the most significant threat to American culture is not from global nation-state threats or natural disasters, but rather the insidious enemy of infectious disease that honors no borders or social status while killing more humans than anything else in history. Our national security depends on science, not politics, guiding vital government functions, such as the ACIP.
These changes wrought by Kennedy have occurred against a backdrop of national and world upheaval from nationwide political demonstrations, American military deployments inside our borders and the wars in Europe and the Middle East. As federal healthcare providers, we cannot afford to let the noise of world events distract us from our mission to provide quality healthcare and health advice to our patients. Most Americans (fortunately) are not listening to the political theater that has consumed our nation’s health system. They are still listening to their healthcare providers. I am confident that, in time, science will trump politics in our nation’s healthcare institutions. In the meantime, federal healthcare providers should take Kennedy’s words at face value and not take any medical advice from him.
- Moniuszko, Sara (2025, May, 14). RFK Jr. says people shouldn’t take his medical advice when asked about vaccines at hearing. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-medical-advice-vaccine-question-hearing/
- Stone, Will (2025, June 9). RFK Jr. boots all members of the CDCs vaccine advisory committee. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5428533/rfk-jr-vaccine-advisory-committee-acip
- Stone, W. and Huang P. (2025, June 12). RFK Jr. names new slate of vaccine advisers after purging CDC panel. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/06/11/nx-s1-5430870/cdc-vaccine-experts-rfk-jr
