PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A co-chair of Donald Trump's transition team said Trump supporter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants access to federal health data so he can show vaccines are unsafe and lead to them being pulled from the market in a second Trump administration.
Howard Lutnick echoed a number of Kennedy's debunked anti-vaccine talking points in a CNN interview Wednesday, including falsehoods about the vaccine schedule and the disproven theory that vaccines cause autism. Trump has talked often about how Kennedy, who suspended his own presidential bid and endorsed him in August, will have a big role to play if the former president returns to the White House.
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While Lutnick said Kennedy would not be chosen as secretary of health and human services, he was not specific about what Kennedy’s role might be. Lutnick made the comments the same day that Kennedy told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.
The comments by Lutnick raised immediate concerns among public health experts that giving influence to one of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the world could lead to what one said would be “severe health consequences” for Americans, especially children. They come just days before the Nov. 5 election and as Trump, a Republican, and Democrat Kamala Harris are vying to sway late-deciding voters to their side.
Lutnick, the CEO of the financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald, told CNN that Kennedy wants access to data “so he can say these things are unsafe" and that will stop the sales.
“He says, if you give me the data, all I want is the data and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe. And then if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off of the market. So that’s his point,” Lutnick said.
It was unclear what data Lutnick was referring to since extensive data and research on vaccine safety is publicly available.
The World Health Organization has estimated that global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives in the past 50 years.
In recent days, Trump has said he would let Kennedy “go wild” on health, food and medicines. Kennedy has said repeatedly that he plans to exercise his influence over a wide range of policies if Trump wins and said Trump had promised him control over health agencies and told him he wanted him to reorganize them.
Asked about Kennedy's comments and his role in a Trump administration, Jason Miller, a senior adviser for the campaign said the only thing Trump and his campaign are focused on is winning on Nov. 5.
“Everything after that is after that, and President Trump has made clear that Bobby Kennedy will play an important role,” Miller wrote.
It would be “extremely dangerous” to put Kennedy in a position of power where he could make decisions or have the ability to change regulatory policy, said Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“Removing vaccines from the market would lead to severe health consequences for America," said Sharfstein, a former deputy commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "We go about our daily lives in the United States not worrying about a lot of preventable diseases like measles because of the protection that the vaccines provide. But if there were to be a systematic effort to use the tools of the federal government to undermine vaccination, children won’t be safe. Full stop.”
Even if Kennedy is given a lesser role where he provides input and comments but doesn't have control over policy, it could still be damaging, according to people who have served in public health roles in government.
“Advisers like Scott Atlas have demonstrated the significant influence they can wield without congressional oversight, raising fears of misinformation and harm,” Trump's own surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, wrote in an email, referring to Trump’s former COVID-19 pandemic advisor, a radiologist with no background in infectious disease, who advocated for the widely discredited herd immunity strategy.
Adams said he believed it was unlikely that Kennedy could be appointed to lead a major health agency because he has no medical expertise, it would likely be difficult for him to pass a background check for a top secret clearance and he’d likely lack support in Congress — though Trump circumvented the background check system during his first administration and stocked his Cabinet with acting officials who had not received congressional approval.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
Republican lawmakers have long enjoyed – and reciprocated – support from pharmaceutical companies, even vowing to dismantle a law signed by Democratic President Joe Biden that allows the government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees. Republicans have argued the law will hurt the businesses and stifle innovation in the industry. But vaccine skepticism, growing across the country, has become deeper among conservatives.
In addition to people's health and well-being, the possibility that Kennedy's influence would result in debunked ideas like a vaccine link to autism being again dredged up and wasting time, energy and money disheartened public health advocates.
“Trump helped bring the vaccine to market, and he took the vaccine. ... I don’t know why he’s giving this person this mouthpiece," said Amy Pisani, CEO of Vaccinate Your Family, noting Trump’s Operation Warp Speed helped bring the COVID-19 vaccine to market, though Kennedy has relentlessly attacked it.
Vaccinate Your Family is a nonpartisan group co-founded by former first lady Rosalynn Carter and former Arkansas first lady Betty Bumpers that has worked on vaccine programs with both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations for the past 30 years.
“I don’t want to go back 30 years to fighting the anti-vaccine movement again,” Pisani said. "To go back in time and waste millions and millions of taxpayer dollars on this witch hunt again is just untenable.”
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Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz in Washington contributed to this report.