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The US health secretary oversees everything from food safety to medical research and welfare programmes.
It is an open question how qualified Robert F Kennedy Jr is for the job, given his reputation as a vaccine sceptic.
In an interview last year, he said: “I do believe that autism comes from vaccines.”
America’s national public health agency, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of the bodies Kennedy will oversee if his nomination is confirmed.
It states in its FAQs about autism: “Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and ASD [autism spectrum disorder]. To date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD.”
Kennedy has in fact a history of straying from the truth and spreading health information scientists say is false.
Yet he may bring some Kennedy passion to the role of health secretary when it comes to grappling with the nation’s drug addiction crisis.
A heroin addict for 14 years in his youth, he talked about the issue in 2023 in an interview for the Daily Mail, externalsaying: “We’re losing a whole generation of youth. We lost 106,000 people this year alone from fentanyl deaths.” The actual figure was even higher, at just over 107,500, external.
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