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RFK Jr. was recently announced as the nominee for HHS Secretary. As the founder of the prominent anti-vaccination group Children’s Health Defense, he has a long history of questioning mainstream science and public health policies. But even the head of the HHS has limited impact during a four-year term. For our clients, there are two key areas that RFK Jr. might directly affect: food policy and vaccines.
Food Policy
RFK Jr. is passionate about reducing ultra-processed foods, including chemicals and food dyes. The FDA has already been working on this, but there are lots of challenges to regulation, including limited research on the health effects of ultra-processed foods and little consensus on what foods even fall into that category. He’s also expressed interest in limiting seed oils (including canola). Broad regulation is possible, but it’s more likely that he could realistically have an impact on the next version of the National Dietary Guidelines, which is due to be published next year.
Vaccines
RFK Jr. is likely to have the largest impact just through his elevated title and public communication. Even before his nomination, his prominent anti-vaccine stance, well-covered by the media, had an impact on the shifting tide of public opinion against vaccines. He’s told reporters that he won’t ban vaccines outright but consistently shares misinformation, including debunked myths about links to autism and other chronic conditions. In practice, he could put anti-vax panelists on the ACIP, the expert advisory committee that determines childhood vaccine schedules, or even disband it altogether. He could also easily delay FDA approvals, slowing down the process for new vaccines. These actions could lead to further declines in childhood vaccination rates, potentially leading to measles, polio, or other outbreaks that we haven’t seen in years. In our line of work, this could lead to employees refusing vaccinations in the case of a workplace measles or Hepatitis A outbreak.
For more in-depth info, this STAT article is a very thorough review of all of RFK’s views and their potential impact that we highly recommend if you’re interested.
H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in multiple samples of raw, unpasteurized milk from one California brand, Raw Farm. All Raw Farm milk products have been recalled because of the potential risk. We don’t actually know what happens to humans who drink infected raw milk because there haven’t been any cases that we know of - at least not yet. There’s still a good reason to think it can make people sick, though. Cats (who are mammals just like us) have an incredibly high mortality rate after drinking infected raw milk on dairy farms. About half of the cats on each farm died during cattle outbreaks on ranches in Kansas and Texas. Another study fed mice milk with H5N1 virus in it, which made them sick within the day and spread to most of their organs within four days. We don’t know if this applies to humans, as well, but California health officials would rather not find out. If H5N1 did spread to humans through milk, it could raise the pandemic risk overall because more infected humans means more opportunities for mutation. 4.4% of Americans have had raw milk at some point in the past year, so this could be a big number. A new infection route (via the digestive tract versus the eyes and respiratory tract) also introduces more variables that can raise mutation risk. Right now, no news is good news, and we’re happy to report that there haven’t been any reported cases of humans sick after drinking infected raw milk.Sources: YLE, ABC, CDC, NEJM, AP