The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been the national public health agency of the United States since 1946 — an invisible shield preventing disease and promoting health for Americans across the nation. But now, there is a threat emerging to public health, one more powerful and whose effects will be more consequential than any disease that America has faced before: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Since his appointment as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in February, Kennedy has made astonishing changes to U.S. public health policy. Many of these changes have been part of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again initiative, which has mainly questioned the safety of vaccines, despite promises to increase research on chronic disease. Additionally, the initiative has severely weakened research funding for programs studying cancer, heart attacks, strokes, infectious disease and violence.
Several high-ranking public health officials — including former Director of the CDC Dr. Susan Monarez, who was fired in August — have criticized Kennedy’s handling of vaccine policy and reorganization of the HHS’s structure, which saw approximately 20,000 employees laid off — nearly a quarter of the public health workforce. In protest of Monarez’s firing, multiple senior CDC officials also resigned and spoke out against Kennedy’s actions.
“I think it’s been a huge mistake that [Kennedy] … is discarding some of their best scientists,” Founding Director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Global Health Dr. Thomas Quinn said in an interview with Eastside. “These people devoted their lives to improving the public health of the United States, and when they disagree with him, they get fired.”
Furthermore, Kennedy ousted all 17 scientific professionals on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June in favor of appointing unqualified individuals who share his skeptical and unscientific views on vaccines.
“I have served on FDA boards, and believe me, you can’t own any stock in any health field or anything to get on those boards,” Quinn said. “Very rigorously, conflicts of interests are taken care of… Yet, [RFK] fired all 15, saying they were biased and they didn’t agree with him.”
Kennedy does not have a formal background in health care and lacks both a medical and public health degree. In fact, he has never even worked in a medical profession. It’s disconcerting that someone with so little experience can be appointed to run the national agency that determines the health and welfare of our country.
Kennedy’s inexperience is particularly evident in his promotion of baseless misinformation that directly contradicts scientific evidence. In 2023, he made unsubstantiated claims that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people and that Jewish and Chinese people were the most immune to it. On multiple occasions, he has stated his rejection of the scientific consensus that HIV causes AIDS, instead attributing the disease to “a gay lifestyle” and recreational drugs. Among his most controversial claims was that vaccines cause autism, an assertion that he has made in several books and articles.
Beyond his lack of medical experience, Kennedy has championed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that will cut over $1 trillion in health care budget and terminate health insurance for up to 15 million people by 2034, with the most affected groups being low-income, elderly and disabled people. Kennedy also plans to cut CDC funding by $5 billion and defund global vaccination programs like Gavi, which has vaccinated over a billion children, averting nearly 19 million deaths across the world.
“The greatest impact [of public health] is to ensure that all Americans and people worldwide have access to the best healthcare that can be achieved within the particular country they’re living in,” Quinn said. “And if we can improve that, then that is our obligation and commitment to do so.”
According to a survey study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, 64% of survey respondents conveyed confidence in the CDC, an 8% decrease from last year. In the same time frame, confidence in the National Institutes of Health dropped from 74% to 62% and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from 73% to 63%.
Ultimately, this decline in confidence only further proves that Robert F. Kennedy cannot be depended upon when it comes to the field of public health. His unprofessionalism and lack of scientific experience have ultimately culminated in his complete overhaul of U.S. public health policy that will severely impede the country’s ability to prevent disease, respond to pandemics and provide equitable healthcare to all citizens.
To better understand the effects of Robert F. Kennedy’s leadership on public health, Eastside interviewed Founding Director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Global Health Dr. Thomas Quinn. According to his website, Quinn is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and School of Public Health, and he has served as advisor on HIV and STDs to the World Health Organization, Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (PEPFAR), UNAIDS, and the FDA. He has authored over 900 publications on HIV, STDs, and infectious diseases. Quinn was one of the first scientists to identify the AIDS epidemic and its cause HIV, and he has since studied the disease in 29 countries across the world. Here is what he had to say about Kennedy’s actions as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Q: How would you best describe the impact that public health has on our society?
A: I would say vaccines in general have saved millions, if not billions of lives, and have afforded the world’s population to be protected against many scourges that have maimed or killed people over the years. Smallpox was one of the worst infectious diseases that mankind faced for millennia. The vaccine was developed, the WHO put together a plan to disseminate that vaccine worldwide, and in the 1960s, smallpox was considered not just eliminated, but eradicated. This is all part of public health. It’s the discovery of what protects people against certain diseases and then implementing that protection. That’s public health.
Q: RFK’s Make America Healthy Again initiative has prioritized questioning the safety of vaccines, which has severely weakened research funding in other areas like programs studying cancer, heart attacks, and infectious disease. How do you think this shift in focus might affect public health and our ability to respond to some of these issues?
A: I’m a bit confused on why RFK Jr. is diverting funding, because his first and foremost proclamation when he became Secretary of HHS was to go after chronic diseases. It wasn’t to go after vaccines. It was to go after chronic diseases, and I applaud that proclamation. Diabetes needs to be better controlled. Obesity needs to be better controlled. Food supplements and additives need to be looked at and rigorously gone over. I don’t quite understand why somehow the whole public discussion and his directives have moved over to acetaminophen and vaccines. Mental illness is probably one of the very top threats to public health today. Has he said anything about mental health? I don’t think so.
Q: This summer, CDC director Susan Monarez was fired and several senior CDC officials resigned in solidarity with her. On top of that, nearly a quarter of the public health workforce was laid off as part of RFK’s changes to the HHS. Could you tell me a bit about your position on the CDC and HHS restructuring?
A: I have no problem restructuring and getting rid of waste. If you can find waste, you need to get rid of that. The head of CDC is not waste. The head of the centers that then resigned within a week of her being fired: That’s not waste. Those are the leaders. You don’t start at the very, very top that brings the world timeless expertise.
There was some benefit to the restructuring that some waste did get taken care of. They did consolidate some of the places where there was duplication in each institute at the NIH. That saves the taxpayer money, it makes the NIH more efficient, and that’s great. But instead, in addition, they went after our best scientists, mainly because they didn’t quite fit or agree with the policy of the current administration, which doesn’t quite have the expertise to be making that kind of policy.
Q: As someone who studied HIV and AIDS, what’s your opinion on RFK’s belief that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS?
A: Every Nobel prize winner in the history of medicine would agree that HIV is the bona fide cause of AIDS. I don’t understand anyone who would not believe that. And if they don’t believe it, have they looked at the evidence? Have they really scoured the literature? Have they actually taken care of an AIDS patient? Have they seen what the anti-retroviral drugs can do to save that individual? I would say that RFK Jr. has not done any of those. So, if he has raised questions about it, then I invite him to come see patients with us in Africa, actually work in the laboratory like we do, see the virus grow out of their cells and kill other cells, and see a mother infected with the virus pass it on to her baby.
He clearly is uninformed and needs to be better educated. I invite him to come take courses at our school of public health. He doesn’t have that kind of degree, so he can’t really attack that without having the training. He’s being misinformed and doesn’t have the expertise to weigh and value the data that’s out there. He should be relying on the real experts in the field.
Q: The recent legislation that RFK championed will cut $1 trillion in healthcare budget by 2034 and is expected to terminate health insurance from up to $15 million people. What effects do you see resulting from this withdrawal of funding on public health?
A: He will have a sicker America to deal with than a healthier America. Remember, his mandate is to make America healthy. How do you do that? It’s by improving health care. It’s by improving preventive measures. It’s by making sure everyone’s insured and has coverage, whether they’re employed or unemployed. It’s really trying to provide the best healthcare to everyone. If you’re going to take a trillion dollars out of that healthcare budget, I don’t think you’re going to achieve that particular goal.
Q: Could you tell me a bit about the impact of global vaccination programs and what the effects may be now that some of them are being defunded?
A: They’re defunding some of the vaccines for children and that is so sad to see that happening. As we defund those vaccine efforts for children overseas, we will start to see the effects. And what does that mean for America? Those people do come to America, and vice versa, Americans go and work in those countries. The likelihood is that as disease rates start to rise in those countries, you’ll start to see a rise even among Americans that are working overseas. Then, they come back to the U.S., and they are a risk for people here in the U.S. It has a reverberation, an echo effect, that will come back to hurt the efforts to make America healthy again.
Q: What concerns you the most about the current political discourse around health and science?
A: It’s very sad because it’s raising mistrust. People are taking political sides, and public health is not politics. It should be independent of politics, just like religion should be independent of politics. It’s not always, but it should be. Political figures should endorse and emphasize the value of the public health system and what it brings to bear to make people healthy. If they’re weak in a certain area, then strengthen it. Don’t take the money away. Don’t fire the experts. Give them better expertise, better funding, and make sure they can accomplish the job you want them to accomplish, which is to make America healthy. There’s nothing wrong with that goal. But there’s certain steps to getting to that, and they don’t seem to be following those steps.
Q: What do you think public health agencies can do to restore faith in the public health system?
A: I think if we emphasize everything positive about what the public health service does for America and for the world, that will rebuild trust. But, we’re going to have to be loud about it. We’re going to have to use social media. We’re going to have to be in the faces of many people who may not agree. You can have disagreements, but there’s no getting around the fact that public health has brought immense positive attributes to many, many Americans, and it has improved their health.
Look at the longevity of the U.S. population. Back when Social Security was developed and implemented, the life expectancy was like 62. Now it’s in the 80s. We’ve improved life expectancy by 20 years. How do we do that? Public health. It’s better education of our public health experts and our physicians all working in tandem to provide the best healthcare for Americans.
