Fact Check Robert F Kennedy Jr on Fluoride, Vaccines and Raw Milk

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated to head America’s top health agency, triggering alarm among health experts.

On Thursday, Trump announced Kennedy as his pick for US Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), saying he would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

“The safety and health of all Americans is the most important role of any government,” he wrote on X.

RFK Jr – nephew of former US President John F Kennedy – dropped out of the presidential race at the end of August

If his nomination is confirmed by the Senate, he will oversee a range of health organizations with roughly 80,000 employees and a multi-trillion dollar budget.

RFK Jr.’s selection raised concerns among health experts because of his

Ashwin Vasan, former New York City health commissioner, said RFK Jr’s appointment would potentially have “devastating consequences for the health of Americans.”

“There are aspects of our health that only work when we do things together. . . . While there are always things to improve, from what I’m hearing and what everyone has said publicly, he’s interested in tearing that infrastructure down.”

Here’s just a small list of why Trump’s nomination of RFK Jr. has health experts spooked.

Vaccines and autism

As chairman of the Children’s Health Defense group, known for its anti-vaccination disinformation, Kennedy has aired controversial and unsubstantiated ideas about vaccines.

A 2021 report by the British-American Center for Countering Digital Hate listed Kennedy among the top 12 spreaders of anti-vaccine content online

In 2015, Kennedy linked autism to vaccines.

“They get the shot, that night they have a 103 degree fever, they fall asleep and three months later their brain is gone. This is a Holocaust, what this is doing to our country,” he said.

He later apologized for his “use of the word to describe the autism epidemic” but did not back down from his claims.

In a 2023 interview with Fox News, RFK Jr. said he “believes autism comes from vaccines”.

While signs of autism often appear when children receive the MMR vaccine, many researchers deny any link between the two.

A research paper published in the journal ScienceDirect in 2014 found that “vaccinations are not associated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorder”. A 2004 report from the Institute of Medicine contained similar findings.

In a post on X in October, RFK Jr. said he “will not take anyone’s vaccine away from them.”

“I just want to make sure that every American knows the safety profile, the risk profile and the efficacy of every vaccine. That’s it,” he said.

Fluorine and IQ loss

Kennedy has also promised that the Trump White House will advise all US water systems to remove fluoride from public water.

“Fluorine is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders and thyroid disease,” he said in a post on X.

Fluoridation was first added to the US water system since 1945. Today, it is in the water consumed by two-thirds of Americans.

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral that helps strengthen teeth and prevent cavities, and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has named fluoridation one of the nation’s “Ten Great Public Health Achievements” of the 20th century.

A 2024 literature review published in ScienceDirect found that 12 of 14 studies showed no clear association between fluoride and primary bone cancer.

According to the US National Toxicology Program, there are “insufficient data to determine whether the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for water supplies in the United States has an adverse effect on children’s IQ”.

A 2023 meta-analysis published in ScienceDirect found an “overall indication of dose-dependent adverse effects of fluoride on children’s cognitive neurodevelopment” but said there were “uncertainties about both the causality of such an association and the precise thresholds of exposure involved”.

Emotional and behavioral development, memory and self-control were the same in children who drank fluoridated water and those who did not,

In Australia, fluoride was first added to drinking water in Tasmania in 1953 and is now found in the tap water consumed by 90 percent of Australians

New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Great Britain, Ireland and Canada are just some of the other countries with water fluoridation.

Raw milk

RFK Jr. also advocated the health benefits of drinking raw milk.

“Since I was here last year, I’ve only been drinking raw milk,” he said at the 2022 Children’s Health Defense Conference.

In an October post on X, he accused the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of cracking down on raw milk.

“The FDA’s war on public health is coming to an end,” he said.

Research published by the American Journal of Public Health in 2011 shows that raw milk is related to many foodborne disease outbreaks reported in the United States between 1973 and 1992.

According to the CDC, from 1998 to 2018, in the United States “there were 202 outbreaks linked to drinking raw milk. These outbreaks caused 2,645 illnesses and 228 hospitalizations”.

The sale of unpasteurised milk has been banned in Australia since the 1940s. Only regulated raw goat milk is available in some states.

Antidepressants and mass shootings

In an interview with Turkish state-owned TRT World, RFK Jr. called for research to examine a possible link between mass shootings and antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs.

Recently, he blamed the popular antidepressant Prozac for mass shootings in the United States.

“Before the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events,” he said in a discussion room at X.

Researchers have found no evidence linking antidepressants to school shootings.

Research published in 2019 by the National Library of Medicine in the US, which analyzed information available on educational shootings from 2000 to 2017, found that “most school shooters were not previously treated with psychotropic medications – and even when they were, no direct or causal link was found”.

– Additional reporting from Reuters.

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