Robert F Kennedy uses mistrust of US healthcare to push conspiracy theories

Anti-vax politics has already led to a number of preventable outbreaks in the United States

Robert F Kennedy (Picture: Felton Davis/Flickr)

FEATURE

By Frankie Murden  

SOCIALIST WORKER
Friday 14 February 2025

Robert F Kennedy has been sworn in as chief of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Kennedy claims he wants to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), but he is notorious for spreading conspiracy theories. He even questions the germ theory of medicine that birthed modern medicine as we know it.

He wrongly claims that “no vaccine is effective” and compares mandatory vaccinations to living in Nazi Germany. While leading the anti-vax advocacy group Children’s’ Health Defence, he pushed the widely disproved belief that childhood immunisations cause autism.

Anti-vax politics has already led to a number of preventable outbreaks in the United States. In 2000 the US declared measles eliminated from the country.

But in recent years some states have seen a 95 percent rise in measles cases, directly caused by unvaccinated groups.

In 2018, Kennedy sparked a scare campaign against measles vaccinations in Samoa. The following year a measles outbreak infected 57,000 people and killed 83 people, including many children.

Kennedy has also pushed “scientific racism” stating that he believes that Covid 19 was genetically engineered to spare Chinese and Jewish people.

His most recent book is devoted largely to HIV/AIDS denial. He claims that there is no proof HIV leads to AIDS, and that it’s simply a “harmless passenger virus”. This is the same ideology that killed up to 330,000 people in South Africa when then president Thabo Mbeki denied anti-retroviral drugs to AIDS patients.

A growing section of support for Trump in the 2024 election was from “MAHA moms”. They often homeschool their children, restrict processed food, are anti-vax and mistrust mainstream science.

Many people in the US are understandably resentful and mistrusting of a healthcare system which fails them.

Kennedy preys on the despair and mistrust people feel towards the government and healthcare. He poses as an anti-establishment figure while coming from one of the most establishment families in the US.

He is an opportunist who flip-flops on major issues such as abortion to maintain his power.

The US healthcare system is in crisis. That’s caused by insurance giants which profit from illness—a root cause Trump and Kennedy will never tackle.