A war on science: Kennedy's slash- and-burn approach to public health

The US and the world look likely to pay a high price for the policies of Trump's ruthless health secretary

- Andrew Gumbel Los Angeles

Robert F Kennedy Jr says he did not join Donald Trump's cabinet to be another government bureaucrat but to drive change. And on that, at least, he has been as good as his word.

In the five months since he was confirmed as secretary of health and human services, the wayward scion of America's most celebrated political dynasty has decimated the ranks of public health employees, slashed research on everything from future mRNA vaccines to "long Covid", fired all the scientists responsible for making vaccine recommendations and promoted a belief - contradicted by decades of research - that autism is a preventable disease caused by vaccines or by a mercury-based preservative injected with them.

A measles outbreak in rural Texas this year has grown to 159 cases, including 22 people hospitalised and an unvaccinated child who died. New figures from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show 1,319 confirmed cases of measles across 40 states. The outbreak was caused by low vaccination rates, but Kennedy encouraged families to take vitamin A and cod liver oil.

Ostensibly Kennedy came into office with a mandate to "make America healthy again" by concentrating less on infectious diseases and more on chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes and autism, which he cites as powerful evidence that the world's richest country is sick.

Instead of picking fights with food giants about additives in the nation's diet or campaigning to improve school lunches, Kennedy prioritised his personal mistrust of vaccines and turned government doctors and scientists into targets for retribution. It is, say his critics, a war on science.

Fiona Havers, a government epidemiologist who resigned because she could not tolerate a "corrupted" environment around vaccine approvals, said Kennedy had taken a sledgehammer to scientific best practices, and it would end up killing people.