Read in full: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mzk2y41zvo
'Robert F Kennedy Jr has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US health secretary, a post that oversees everything from medical research to food safety and public welfare programmes.
'Speaking in an NPR interview, external this week, Kennedy said Trump had given him three “instructions”: to remove “corruption” from health agencies, to return these bodies to “evidence-based science and medicine”, and “to end the chronic disease epidemic”.
'Some of Kennedy’s own stated aims for government are bound up with misinformation - and many medical experts have expressed serious concerns about his nomination, citing his views on vaccines and other health matters..'
'One of his main false claims - repeated in a 2023 interview with Fox News, external, was that “autism comes from vaccines”.
'This theory was popularised by discredited UK doctor Andrew Wakefield. But Wakefield's 1998 study was later retracted by the Lancet medical journal. Multiple studies since, across many countries, have concluded there is no link between vaccines and autism, external.'
'Dr David Elliman, a consultant in community child health at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, said RFK Jr has perpetuated myths around vaccination with “an utter disregard for the evidence”.
“If he is appointed and continues in the same mode, I fear not just for the vaccination programme in the US, but similar programmes around the world, and for healthcare in general," says Dr Elliman.
"Vaccination has probably saved more lives and is better researched than most, if not all, aspects of healthcare. RFK Jr could set this back and be responsible for the death and disability of myriads of people, particularly children.”
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org