Gareth O'Callaghan: Will RFK Jr’s health policies be as dangerous as his conspiracy theories?
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Looks can be deceiving. My impression of Robert F Kennedy Jr is that he doesn't look well. He's clunky and moves slowly. His face and neck appear weather-beaten, shrivelled. He rarely smiles. He's 70, but he appears like a man in his late 80s who hasn't looked after his health.
He’s not helped by a condition he was diagnosed with 28 years ago called spasmodic dysphonia, a chronic neurological vocal disorder which gives his voice a strangled sound, a choking raspy growl. It’s often difficult to hear distinctly what he’s saying, and it’s obvious that it frustrates him at times.
In February 1984, Kennedy pleaded guilty to possession of heroin aboard a flight to South Dakota, where — his lawyer whose name coincidentally was John Fitzgerald told the judge — he was travelling to for treatment. He was sentenced to two years of probation and community service. He kicked the deadly habit and got to live.
For a man who is officially the incoming US Health Secretary, serious questions remain unanswered regarding his own health. Apart from the vocal disorder, he has a recurring heart problem which required hospitalisation twice. Add to that cognitive problems which, he said, were “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” Is a man who admitted to “short-term memory loss” and “longer-term memory loss” when he was 58, and more recently declined to share his medical records, the best candidate to steer the health of 335m people?
Robert Jr is controversial. He bears the cross of the Kennedy curse as it has become known. Assassinations, plane crashes, accidents, and scandals have plagued the most famous political family of all time since the 1960s.
Last July, during his own disastrous presidential campaign, he was asked about an allegation made in a interview that he had sexually assaulted a former family babysitter, Eliza Cooney, who was 23 at the time. She claimed that Kennedy had groped her in the family kitchen. He apologised to her shortly after her story was published.
When questioned about the accusation, Kennedy told podcaster Saagar Enjeti: “I am not a church boy. I had a very very rambunctious youth. I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”
Most people suspect the reason for his turbulent youth was the shocking death of his father, Robert Snr, the US senator and former attorney general, who was assassinated in 1968 when his son was aged just 14.
His father’s death was like an anchor line snapping on a boat for the young teenager, and ever since — like the descendants of generations of Kennedy — he has been the subject of gossip and a target for the paparazzi. So it’s not surprising that controversy haunts him.
Kennedy’s father, like his two brothers John and Ted, is considered an icon of modern American liberalism; but Kennedy Jr has taken a very different route in his pursuit of political success; and it appears he has found it at last as Donald Trump’s new health czar, a gargantuan role he will assume in 51 days time.
America’s burning question right now is will his term as health secretary be as weird and dangerous as his conspiracy theories have been?
To say that he is a pioneer of controversial ideas is an understatement. Apart from being the quintessential covid protestor, he believes the US media has been infiltrated by the CIA, that pesticides in drinking water are creating “sexual dysphoria” in young men, as evidenced in a frog study, and that wifi “radiation” causes cancer and “cellphone tumours”. According to the American Cancer Society, there is no scientific proof connecting wifi or 5G to any illnesses.
He has promoted the theory that Aids is not caused by HIV, whereas major scientific research has proved that it is. Prior to his appointment, he repeated his intention to remove fluoride from all public drinking water systems. In a tweet in November, he said that “fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” These are all scientifically baseless claims. Fluoride is a mineral, naturally present in many foods.
Decades of research have proved that adding a limited amount of fluoride to public drinking water supplies is a safe and effective way of reducing tooth decay. A synthetic form of fluoride has been added to toothpaste since 1956.
At a Madison Square Garden rally in New York in October, Donald Trump told supporters he intended to allow Kennedy to “go wild” on health. That appears to be his intention.
Kennedy has said he will commence a fluoride removal process on January 20 even though his plan will likely be prevented legally. His background is as an environmental lawyer. He is not a doctor, nor does he have any formal qualifications in medicine. He’s about as qualified as an inexperienced tightrope walker wearing a blindfold.
He blames school shootings on drugs, including anti-depressants. “Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events,” he told Elon Musk during an X Spaces discussion. Once again, there’s no scientific evidence to show that psychiatric medication is linked to mass violence.
No doubt the most destructive and misleading comments Kennedy Jr has made have been about autism, and his ongoing rants that vaccines are the cause of the spectrum disorder, a round-the-bend theory popularised by the discredited gastroenterologist and fraudster Andrew Wakefield, who wrote a scientific paper in 1998, later retracted by medical journal, linking autism to the MMR jab.
Wakefield was struck off the medical register in 2010 and run out of Britain. His claim was debunked as myth but the seeds of doubt had been sown in the minds of parents, many of whom as a result shunned the vaccine.
He fled to the US where it’s believed he went to ground, but he hadn’t. He continued quietly to stoke support from his Texas base for his batty theories. It was during a Trump post-inauguration ball in 2017 that Wakefield surfaced like a Belgorod submarine, spouting the chilling words: “What we need now is a huge shakeup at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — a huge shakeup. We need that to change dramatically.”
It wouldn’t be a surprise if Kennedy were to offer Wakefield a federal role in his new anti-establishment health department — possibly assisting Dave Weldon who Trump appointed last week to head up the CDC. Weldon is a physician.
He’s also a conspiracy theorist who pushed the false claim that thimerosal — a preservative used in vaccines — is linked to autism.
Wakefield is making quite a name for himself in celebrity-toxic America, with its renowned anti-vaxxers revered by millions. Trump has given Kennedy a license to “clean up” America’s ailing health, while also overhauling the pharmaceutical industry, an order which has sent chills through the medical profession. Kennedy intends to smash what he believes is a cosy cartel between the FDA and big pharma.
Three months ago, barely one fifth of Americans knew who Robert F Kennedy Jr was. He is now about to become one of the most influential men in the world of medicine, due to his popularisation of some of this generation’s most discredited health conspiracies.
Adverse publicity as a result of his dangerous dotty beliefs is ironically about to make him America’s supreme health ruler. What’s even more terrifying is to think that in four years he could be the next president. Or, as he might call it, the king of the world.