The main reason RFK Jr. is unqualified to serve as HHS secretary [View all]

There are many reasons to strenuously oppose President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. But this one matters most: his willful disregard for the scientific process.

HHS is a huge bureaucracy with more than 80,000 employees and 13 agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health. It would be ideal if Kennedy had government experience but not essential. President Joe Biden’s first CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, didn’t have government experience, either. And it would be ideal if he were a doctor or health administrator, but plenty of secretaries, including the current one, Xavier Becerra, have been neither.

Kennedy’s views on how to “Make America Healthy Again” aren’t altogether problematic. Plenty of HHS secretaries have come with their own priorities, and MAHA’s premise of focusing on chronic disease prevention is one that nearly every medical professional would agree with. It’s not even disqualifying that he has contrarian views and questions matters that are widely understood as scientific dogma. On some issues — such as water fluoridation policy — he might be right to challenge conventional wisdom.

The reason Kennedy is uniquely unfit compared with past nominees is that his approach to scientific inquiry is as an activist, not a scientist.

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https://wapo.st/410drWG