President elect Donald Trump says he plans to give Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a “big role” in health care in the new administration and let him “go wild” on health, food and medicine. Although Trump hasn’t confirmed what that role would be or what precisely “going wild” means, Kennedy could potentially be elected to any number of leadership positions in the administration, including as the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Kennedy — an environmental lawyer with no scientific degrees — has made multiple false or misleading claims about vaccines and once relied on a fringe far-right supporter base. But he is rapidly inching closer toward influencing the federal response to infectious disease, vaccines and public health — which many scientists say would be detrimental to the nation.

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“If RFK has a significant influence on the next administration, that could further erode people's willingness to get up to date with recommended vaccines,” Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as Surgeon General during Trump's first administration, said at a public health conference in Minneapolis last week, as reported by The New York Times. “I am worried about the impact that could have on our nation's health, on our nation's economy, on our global security.”

In the last weeks before Trump won the 2024 election, he made an alliance with Kennedy in a final campaign push under the slogan and super PAC, “Make America Healthy Again.” MAHA is largely centered around the so-called medical freedom movement, which operates on a platform that values personal liberties above the medical establishment and opposes government public health and regulatory agencies.

"He's influenced by conspiracy theories on social media, and he has no fidelity to science and evidence."

In an interview with NPR on Wednesday, Kennedy said Trump had already assigned him three tasks: to reduce the “corruption and conflicts” in regulatory agencies like the FDA, return those agencies to the “evidence-based science and medicine that they were once famous for,” and to end chronic disease with measurable impacts within two years.

“FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Kennedy posted on X, formerly Twitter, in October. “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your........

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