America’s Dangerous Flirtation with RFK Jr.

By Christian Schneider

Thursday, January 30, 2025

 

You may not have heard of Edwin Chadwick, but you most certainly have been affected by his work. As Londoners in the mid-19th century suffered from outbreaks of disease, Chadwick pioneered the idea that the state should be directly involved in protecting citizens’ health and that significant investments in infrastructure could help people live longer. Steven Johnson notes in The Ghost Map, his history of the cholera epidemic, that, “for better or worse, Chadwick’s career can be seen as the very point of origin for the whole concept of ‘big government’ as we know it today.”

 

Though Chadwick sought to improve sanitation — a sewage system that would dump waste into the Thames and an improved water-delivery system — his tenure ended up being a horror show. Obsessed with the “miasmatic” theory of disease transmission, or the idea that all disease is transmitted through the air, he failed to understand that cholera was waterborne. He also failed to understand that the river, the city’s water supply, was now a giant cesspool. Thus the water being piped to Londoners courtesy of Chadwick was the exact thing carrying the deadly bacteria making them sick. It turns out the only thing worse than there being no one in charge of public health is a public health czar who is wrong, leading to deadly consequences.

 

As Johnson notes, “a modern bioterrorist couldn’t have come up with a more ingenious and far-reaching scheme.”

 

Nearly 200 years later, the United States is poised to have a nepo crank in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee, is a long-time vaccine denier who has spent a lifetime cashing in on his name in service of notions that make people sicker.

 

Embraced by Team MAGA because he endorsed Trump, Kennedy would be a Chadwick-style disaster as the leader of public health in America. He has a long, distinguished history of scaring yoga moms into believing vaccines cause autism, amid increasing rates of measles, tuberculosis, mumps, and whooping cough. Even polio has also begun its return after Dr. Jonas Salk’s miraculous work in eradicating it.

 

Vaccines work. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the measles shot has prevented over 94 million deaths over the past 50 years. One study by the University of Colorado-Boulder found that more than 1.8 million more Americans would have died of Covid-19 without the vaccine and certain behavioral changes. (This is not to discount the harms done by lockdown policies, particularly keeping children out of school for far too long.)

 

But now it appears President Trump’s supporters have signed on to RFK Jr.’s dangerous nonsense as they try to push him through the nomination process. In many ways, trying to fit RFK into a MAGA box is like trying to squeeze a leopard into a toaster oven — he doesn’t fit and it only makes him crazier.

 

After all, throughout his career, RFK has been the exact type of delusional lefty Trump’s supporters abhor. For decades, conservatives condemned the loopy anti-vax positions of liberal celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and her ilk.

 

And Kennedy has been on the left edge of the lunacy. As recently as 2020, he threatened to sue the first Trump administration in the name of “climate justice,” whatever that is. He is a dedicated pro-abortion Democrat, spending his career in search of fetuses to terminate.

 

And, of course, there is his personal life, which makes Matt Gaetz look like Gandhi. The man who now wants to tell us how to lead healthier lives spent years as a womanizing drug addict, and only recently said that his brain had been infected by worms.

 

During his current nomination process, RFK has tried to back off his lifetime of anti-vax statements. While questioned on Wednesday, he said he was not anti-vaccine, despite declarations he made on a podcast in 2023 in which he said, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”

 

The Wall Street Journal noted this week that Kennedy has raked in truckloads of cash from law firms suing on behalf of individuals referred to them by Kennedy who claim to have been injured by vaccines. As secretary of HHS, he could release proprietary information about vaccine trials that could cripple the vaccine industry via lawsuits. The conflict of interest is glaring.

 

Of course, there have already been plenty of Republicans rushing to RFK’s defense simply because the pick to run America’s top health department was made by Donald Trump.

 

It’s been a whiplash-inducing trajectory. After tweeting in June 2024 that “RFK Jr. 100% buys into the globalist scheme of fear mongering over climate change to limit energy consumption, kill jobs and reduce the quality of life for normal people,” Donald Trump Jr. counseled his followers, “Don’t fall for this fraud!!!” But just months later, Trump donors were offered the chance to “Win a Day of Falconry with RFK, Jr. and Don, Jr.”

 

Evidently some sort of Nepo Yalta Conference was held to secure a truce, as DJTJR recently called out the “disgusting fake doctors” who signed “a fake petition to try to stop @RobertKennedyJr from exposing all the flaws in our healthcare and food systems.” They have seen the enemy, and it is seed oils. “Let him MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) & stop these clowns from making us all, especially our kids, SICK!” Don Jr. bleated.

As Steven Johnson writes about Edwin Chadwick’s disastrous turn as London’s health commissioner, “The first defining act of a modern, centralized public-health authority was to poison an entire urban population.” RFK Jr.’s tenure would be one that makes Americans sicker and could cost many their lives. But his last-minute conversion before the congressional committee may not be enough to save Kennedy’s nomination. Wouldn’t it be something if it was vaccines that killed off RFK’s chances at holding office.