The new Republican war on science

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The writer is a science commentator

If I owned a string of pearls, I would be clutching them at the prospect of Robert F Kennedy Jr taking the top health job in a Trump cabinet. Kennedy has, over many years, voiced an assortment of unorthodox or conspiracist beliefs: that vaccines are linked to autism; that the Covid-19 virus was engineered to target some ethnicities more than others; and that US government agencies suppress treatments that cannot be patented.

The nomination as head of the Department of Health and Human Services is a transactional thank you to Kennedy from Donald Trump for giving up his rival presidential bid, though the Senate will need to confirm the pick. Public health officials are in despair; pharma and vaccine stocks have slumped in response.

Kennedy’s proposed appointment emphasises Trump’s disdain for many consensus positions in science and health, particularly those that clash with his deregulation agenda. The incoming president has threatened purges, to be overseen by campaign donor Elon Musk, at federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

Whether it is through new drugs, disease alerts or hurricane forecasts, these acronyms represent the coalface of American science — and they have been variously disparaged by Trump and his acolytes as wrong, woke, bloated or anti-business. The president-elect would like them to bend more loyally to his whim: he famously argued with Noaa over the path of a hurricane and battled with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci over Covid.

Researchers across the world will now need courage and resolve in the face of a new Republican war on science, which may lead to the US exiting the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization. It is also a moment for scientists to reflect on how they can nurture constructive relationships with politicians and voters who are instinctively hostile.

That Kennedy is a strange choice to head public health is clear from a tirade the former environmental lawyer posted on X last month. In it, he accused the FDA, which would fall under his new remit, of being corrupt and of “aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that . . . can’t be patented by Pharma”. Kennedy has questioned whether HIV causes Aids; repeated debunked claims that childhood vaccines may be linked to autism; and suggested that vaccines undergo inadequate testing.

He has also campaigned to remove fluoride from water, a decades-old measure that helps to prevent tooth decay. While there has been some debate about what level of fluoridation is needed, given fluoride in toothpaste and research on a possible link between high fluoride levels and neurotoxicity, the consensus is that current, low levels do more good than harm. And while Kennedy finds some common ground with public health experts in his opposition to ultra-processed foods, which he blames for the obesity epidemic, his unevidenced solutions, such as going after seed oils, leave him isolated. 

How have we got here? In a world where few can agree on facts and where the “truth” depends on tribal affiliation, expertise no longer matters. Jonathan Berman, a scientist at the New York Institute of Technology and author of the 2020 book Anti-vaxxers, wrote recently of “hostility to expertise being framed as democratic resistance to authority”. It is precisely Kennedy’s pushback against scientific and medical expertise that Trump relishes.

It is a pact that, for all the liberal tears to be enjoyed, the president-elect may come to regret. Trump can count Operation Warp Speed, the rush to produce Covid vaccines, as something of a success during his first presidential stint. That will count for little if, during his second, old diseases make a comeback. As Gloria Butler, the minority leader in Georgia’s state senate, said of Trump’s pick: “If you like rotten teeth, polio and measles spreading through our children like wildfire, Robert F Kennedy Jr is your man.” There are internal contradictions to be managed too: Kennedy’s anti-pharma posturing is at odds with Trump’s regulation-slashing crusade.

In Kennedy and Musk, Trump is also handing leverage over the federal agencies of a science superpower to two known spreaders of misinformation. The slogan for the incoming administration writes itself: Make America Gullible Again.