RFK Jr.’s first month as health secretary: Touting French fries and casting doubts on vaccines

WASHINGTON (AP) - There sat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation's top health official, at a Steak 'n Shake with Fox News host Sean Hannity, raving about the fries.

"Steak 'n Shake has been great, we're very grateful for them," Kennedy said, in between nibbles of fries that the Midwestern franchise recently announced would be cooked in beef tallow instead of common cooking oils that Kennedy says are bad for Americans’ diet.

It’s the kind of endorsement that doctors have implored him to make about the childhood vaccines used to prevent deadly diseases, like measles as outbreaks worsened in Texas and New Mexico during his first month in office.

The secretary of Health and Human Services has, instead, raised doubts about vaccines, most recently saying in his interview with Hannity that the shots cause "deaths every year,” although he later added that vaccinations should be encouraged.

In his first month in office, Kennedy, who vowed to "Make America Healthy Again," has delivered an inconsistent message that has the nation’s top infectious diseases specialists worried that his tepid recommendations of vaccines will undermine access to long-proven remedies.

During his first address to thousands of workers at the federal public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the Food and Drug Administration, Kennedy promised to "investigate" the childhood vaccine schedule. Days later, the CDC cancelled a public meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Panel, a group of doctors and scientists who make recommendations on vaccines. That meeting has not been rescheduled.

In another case, a cancelled public meeting of vaccine advisers who make recommendations on the flu vaccine every year for the FDA also has not been given a new date. This week, the National Institutes for Health, also under Kennedy’s purview, began cancelling funding for some research on vaccines.

The CDC also is preparing to research autism and vaccines, planning to “leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening," HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement. Agency officials did not comment further for this article.

Numerous studies have concluded that there is no link between the two, a fact the agency states on its website.

"What he is trying to do is scare about the safety of vaccines," Dr. Paul Offit, an FDA vaccine adviser and infectious disease doctor at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said of Kennedy’s first month in office. "It shouldn’t surprise anybody. His agenda has always been to get vaccines off the market, or to make them less available."

Offit worries that the cancellation of the FDA's flu vaccine meeting, held every March for at least 30 years, is just the beginning. The committee’s June meeting to recommend the COVID-19 vaccine’s formulation has also not been scheduled, he said.

Democrats and Republicans pushed back when Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA nominee, wouldn't commit to rescheduling the committee’s flu meeting .

"What is lost is the transparency," said Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate health committee who is also a physician.

During his senate confirmation hearings earlier this year, Kennedy repeatedly rejected any notion that he would undermine vaccines. "I support vaccines. I support the childhood schedule," he said. He promised Cassidy, who was unsettled about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine advocacy work, that he would not change existing vaccine recommendations.

But Kennedy's skeptical views of vaccines have emerged during interviews and public statements since his confirmation.

He’s sent "mixed messages" on vaccine safety, even though the U.S. has "the most elaborate vaccine adverse event surveillance system in the world," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. Serious problems, including death, are very rare and the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks, he said.

"A simple way to describe this to the average person is the serious adverse events generally occur at a rate of 1 to a few cases per million doses of vaccine," he said. "That's a needle in a haystack."

In an opinion piece on FoxNews.com earlier this month, Kennedy said the measles outbreak in West Texas that left a six-year old child dead was a "call to action" but stopped short of recommending that people receive the vaccine that prevents 97% of cases. Despite the U.S. registering its first measles death in a decade, Kennedy has repeatedly downplayed this year’s outbreaks, noting that when he was a child "everybody got measles.”

This year’s cases - reported at 250 - are on track to far outpace last year’s reports of 286 measles infections.

Pediatricians are fielding more questions from confused parents in their exam rooms, said Dr. Susan Kressly. Worried about reports of cancelled vaccine meetings, they're wondering about their access to next year's flu vaccines. Others are asking if they should get doses of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine earlier. Kressly said there's a clear message the government can send to help stop the rising case count.

"The only way to stop an outbreak is increased coordinated positive messaging around vaccinating," Kressly said.

The CDC has assisted with vaccination efforts in West Texas. But Kennedy himself has publicly advocated for an alternative treatment for measles: Vitamin A. Under his watch, the CDC's guidance was updated to say that Vitamin A should be given to children with severe measles and prescribed in doses under a doctor's supervision.

Vitamin A supplementation has been recommended for decades to reduce pneumonia and death in malnourished children in developing countries, but the benefits in well-nourished children in countries like the U.S. are less clear.

"We need to use Vitamin A for those kids who are unlucky enough to get measles," said Dr. Andy Pavia, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Utah. "But it can't prevent measles and it can only provide some help in reducing the severity."

When administered correctly, using Vitamin A in kids with severe measles will "do no harm," Pavia said. But if improperly done, high doses of Vitamin A can be toxic and deadly.

Abrupt staffing changes have also dominated Kennedy’s first weeks in office, with CDC pick Dave Weldon withdrawing from the nomination mere minutes before his hearing, Kennedy’s top HHS spokesman quitting two weeks into the job and the Food and Drug Administration’s newly minted chief counsel departing 48 hours into the position.

Trump and Kennedy’s supporters, however, have dismissed concerns about the rocky start.

His newfound platform as health secretary and talk of healthier foods is already affecting change in the American diet, advisers close to Kennedy and Trump have claimed on social media.

They credit Kennedy with prompting Republican legislators to introduce bills in Utah and Texas that would ban soda in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, for example. And then there’s Steak 'n Shake's new fries.

"RFK Jr. just ate Steak 'n Shake on live TV, the fast food joint that's bravely frying everything in beef tallow," conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk said this week in a tweet. "This is the way."

On Wednesday, after a meeting with a handful of executives from the nation’s largest food manufactures, Kennedy released a slickly-produced video that promised more change would be on the way, saying companies were taking his "MAHA” movement seriously.

"They understand they have a new sheriff in town," Kennedy said.

He did not share any details about what was discussed at the meeting.