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THE CONSEQUENCES OF KENNEDY’S WRECKAGE are that fewer Americans will get vaccines, and fewer new vaccines will be developed. The CDC has already narrowed recommendations on COVID vaccines for pregnant women and children. The FDA has approved the latest COVID vaccines for the omicron variant LP.8.1, but only for people over 65 and others at serious health risk. That in turn could affect what insurance will cover and whether pharmacists may give COVID injections. Several states have now begun their own vaccine approval systems, circumventing the CDC and FDA.
Under Kennedy, the National Institutes of Health has illegally withheld billions of dollars in grant funding. One notable NIH decision canceled half a billion in funding for mRNA technology, the same technology that allowed “warp-speed” development of COVID vaccines that saved millions of lives. Operation Warp Speed was one of the very few positive achievements of Trump’s first term. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine policy will deny millions of Americans not just COVID shots, but yet-to-be-developed vaccines against new plagues such as avian flu, and easily preventable ones such as measles.
All this raises the question of what exactly Trump gets out of his alliance with RFK Jr. Trump is proud of the success of Operation Warp Speed, and keeps insisting against all evidence that Kennedy is actually a supporter of vaccines. Some of the MAGA base is libertarian as well as anti-science and opposed to mandatory vaccination. Trump’s support for Kennedy reinforces that theme.
But when ending mandatory vaccination for a range of contagious diseases is actually turned into policy, as was recently done in Florida, the vast majority of citizens are appalled. A recent Washington Post-KFF poll found that 82 percent of Florida parents want mandatory childhood vaccinations to continue.
The simplest explanation for Trump’s continuing support of Kennedy is that both men resist science, because science is evidence-based. And when you habitually make up supposed facts, evidence gets in the way. This is true of everything from global climate change to public health.
A secondary explanation is that the antics of RFK Jr. are part of Trump’s general strategy of creating maximum chaos for the sake of theater and distraction. But while Trump may find this convenient and amusing, it should be a political embarrassment to Republican legislators who have to face the voters.
Even Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative, a blend of fringe ideas and sensible ones, is losing its good ideas because of industry pressure on Trump. After several meetings at the White House with MAHA Commission leaders, agriculture lobbyists secured a private promise that Trump would not permit Kennedy to restrict the use of chemical pesticides. Drug companies will likely come away unscathed as well.
Yesterday, some 400 medical research groups, representing every major clinical specialty and every leading group committed to eradicating particular diseases, took out a two-page ad spread in The Wall Street Journal publicizing a Rally for Medical Research at the Capitol tomorrow, September 18, that will call for full funding of NIH. On July 31, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to increase NIH funding for next year by $400 million, defying Trump’s demand for a 40 percent cut.
What Kennedy is targeting is American science at its finest, a monumental achievement that Kennedy wants to destroy. Trump may go along, but Republican legislators don’t have to. Kennedy will be fired only if key Republicans in Congress demand it.
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