In simple terms, pediatricians save children, while Bobby Kennedy kills children. And so the dangerous quack Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now attacking the American Academy of Pediatrics, which dared to issue guidance recommending that children under age 2 be given the COVID-19 vaccine, in contrast to the fatally compromised CDC under Kennedy, which had rescinded that earlier recommendation.

The secretary accused the AAP of kowtowing to corporate benefactors while ignoring the clear evidence that such vaccines are safe for children and can prevent serious illness. Once again, RFK Jr.’s rabid antivaxxer outlook is dictating the direction of HHS that is determinantal to public health.

Part of the problem with RFK and his Make America Healthy Again movement is that he is talking about some things that can be legitimate concerns for the American public, such as diet. It is true that the pharmaceutical industry is a profit-driven one that can engage in abuses for business reasons — look no further than the infamous case of Purdue Pharma pushing opioids on the public despite knowing the risks, to disastrous effect.

Having a government bureaucracy that can think critically about the incentive structures of our health system could be a good thing.

The issue is that the solution to a system incentivized to occasionally misuse science for its own ends is not to simply reject science altogether. What RFK is ultimately insisting is not just that we examine potential conflicts of interest, but throw out the research and scientific method practices that undergird our entire understanding of public health, which is the exact opposite of his job.

The anti-vaccine scion embarrassment to his famous political family is also conflating pharmaceutical corporations with professional organizations of medical practitioners and researchers that exist separate and apart from the industry.

Yes, Big Pharma certainly has over the years bankrolled a lot of of its own research and propped up independent-seeming front groups to ward off scrutiny, but it is an example of the deeply conspiratorial thinking of the nation’s top health official that he cannot envision anyone but his conspiracy friends acting in good faith to help us make better decisions about our health.

People have had public debates about the proper approach to safeguarding health since before modern medicine, but RFK is not a fringe academic or internet poster who can argue to his heart’s content without actually hurting anyone. His position atop the nation’s public health infrastructure means that he is actually tasked with overseeing as close as we can get to the right answers.

Even people who are not all in on his wacko alternative health movement will listen to his advice by simple virtue of the position that he’s in, one that is meant to convey authority on these matters.

It also confers literal authority; the exclusion of a recommendation for child vaccinations means that they are much likely to not be covered by insurers, which means that even people that want to immunize their children will not be able to do so. In that way, Kennedy is moving away from his supposed concern with parental choice; he is making his choice on behalf of the parents, not just now but in the long term as he axes funding for crucial vaccine research.

The results of all this are both predictable and depressing, as we said at the outset: children and many adults will get sick, and many of them will ultimately die, in ways that were entirely preventable.

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