Halloween came early this year. For anyone who cares about health care, provides care, or simply wants to keep themselves and loved ones healthy, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivers daily horrors worse than any goblin.
Where to start? Well, with flu season approaching, let’s review how RFK Jr. has spread dangerous misinformation about the annual influenza vaccine. Earlier this year, The New York Times highlighted some of his most outlandish quotes on the subject, including these gems:
For example, “There is zero evidence that the flu shot prevents any hospitalizations or any deaths.”
Or this whopper, “The flu shots transmit the flu, in fact, if you get the flu shot, you’re six times more likely to give someone the flu than if you didn’t get the flu shot.”
The facts say otherwise. For the 2024-25 flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were 610,000 to 1.3 million hospitalizations and 27,000 to 130,000 deaths from influenza. Two-thirds of those hospitalized were unvaccinated. A 2018 CDC-sponsored study found flu vaccination reduced ICU admissions by 82% and general ward hospitalizations by 37%. In the 2023–2024 season alone, flu vaccination saved an estimated 7,900 American lives. The claim that flu shots increase flu transmission is absurd and unsupported by evidence.
Now, in the midst of rising COVID-19 cases, RFK Jr.’s FDA has limited COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to people 65 and older or younger individuals with certain medical conditions. This guidance restricts access, potentially requiring prescriptions even for those who simply want to protect vulnerable family members. A healthy adult living with a bone marrow transplant patient, for instance, would be ineligible.
RFK Jr.’s FDA position contradicts medical consensus. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends COVID-19 vaccination for infants as young as six months, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant and lactating women. Restricting vaccines in this way undermines protection for millions who need it.
Meanwhile, federal health agencies under RFK Jr.’s leadership are in chaos. On June 9, he fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing them with individuals who lack expertise or actively oppose vaccines. In protest, two top officials resigned: Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief science and medical officer, and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Daskalakis warned that RFK Jr. planned to re-litigate the childhood vaccine schedule.
Within weeks, the reconstituted Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices panel recommended against administering the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and varicella (chickenpox) vaccines as a single shot, requiring children to receive two injections instead of one. Splitting doses increases the risk that one will be skipped, reducing vaccination rates against these highly contagious diseases.
That decline is already happening. Vaccination rates among American children have dropped to dangerously low levels. Two-thirds of U.S. counties now fall below the 95% coverage rate needed to maintain herd immunity. In St. Louis, kindergarten MMR vaccination rates have dropped from 90% to 74% in a decade. Earlier this year, Texas experienced a large measles outbreak — a warning of more to come.
The horrors don’t stop there. Recently, we saw President Trump and RFK Jr. promote the long-debunked claim that Tylenol (acetaminophen) use during pregnancy causes autism. This link has been repeatedly discredited, most recently by a 2024 Journal of the American Medical Association study of more than 2.5 million women in Sweden. Nevertheless, Trump advised pregnant women to “tough it out” instead of using acetaminophen for pain. If women follow that advice, they may turn to ibuprofen or aspirin — both less safe during pregnancy.
RFK Jr. is sowing confusion and fear in circumstances where science and clarity are most needed. We don’t need an unstable, erratic ideologue who wantonly disregards the scientific method at every turn. This isn’t just a quirky uncle at Thanksgiving doling out wacky advice. This is the nation’s top health official, undermining evidence-based science with reckless abandon.
Colgan was chief of staff to the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in 2003-2004 and then a political commentator. She now works in the nonprofit sector and lives in La Jolla.