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(WASHINGTON) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to go before the Senate on Wednesday in his confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under President Donald Trump.
Kennedy has frequently promoted views at odds with the consensus of public health researchers and the mainstream scientific community, including falsely claiming that certain vaccines cause autism and calling for fluoride to be removed from drinking water, claiming it harms adolescent development.
The environmental attorney has vowed to crack down on dyes in the food industry and has called for restrictions on ultra-processed foods.
During a charity dinner last year in New York City, Trump pledged Kennedy would “go wild on health” and that Kennedy “wants healthy people, he wants healthy food.”
Here’s a look at where Kennedy stands on several health issues:
Questioning vaccine safety
Although Kennedy has denied he is “anti-vaccine” and has said his children have been vaccinated, he has promoted views on vaccines that experts have refuted.
During a 2023 interview on Fox News, Kennedy said he believes autism comes from vaccines, a myth born from a now-debunked paper from the U.K. in 1998 that claimed the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine caused autism.
The paper has since been discredited by health experts, retracted from the journal in which it was published, and its primary author, Andrew Wakefield, lost his medical license after the paper was discredited and an investigation found he had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in conducting his research. More than a dozen high-quality studies have since found no evidence of a link between childhood vaccines and autism.
Kennedy has also spread what the medical community has considered to be vaccine misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, falsely claiming the COVID-19 vaccine is dangerous.
During a December 2021 Louisiana House of Representatives meeting discussing a proposal to require schoolchildren to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, Kennedy falsely called the vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
In the same year, Kennedy petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to revoke its authorization of all COVID-19 vaccines. The FDA denied the petition three months later.
Health officials say COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective following clinical trials that involved tens of thousands of people, and have since helped save millions of lives.
Removing artificial dyes from foods
Kennedy has been vocal about his opposition to artificial dyes, calling for them to be removed from foods and beverages.
“The first thing I’d do isn’t going to cost you anything because I’m just gonna tell the cereal companies: Take all the dyes out of their food,” about actions he’d take as a member of the Trump administration, according to a social media post from the non-profit Children’s Health Defense, of which Kennedy is a founder.
Kennedy has frequently cited Froot Loops as an example of a food with potentially harmful dyes, saying the version of the Kellogg’s cereal sold abroad is healthier and has fewer ingredients compared to the U.S. version.
Kellogg’s has insisted its products are safe for consumption, saying the ingredients meet the federal standards set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Kennedy was wrong about the number of ingredients — Canadian Froot Loops have 17 ingredients compared to 16 in the U.S. However, the two cereals differ when it comes to the use of dyes.
American Froot Loops contain artificial food dyes such as Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6 and Blue 1 while Canadian Froot Loops are colored with concentrated watermelon juice and blueberry juice.
A 2018 report from New York University and the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Environmental Health and Climate Change found artificial food colors may affect children’s behavior and exacerbate symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Recently the FDA said it was moving to ban the use of Red 3 dye in food products, beverages and ingested drugs, in response to a 2022 petition from health groups and activists.
Processed foods and chronic disease
Kennedy has criticized the U.S. food industry and the proliferation of ultra-processed foods, blaming them as one reason for the rise of chronic disease in the U.S.
“Hundreds of these chemicals are now banned in Europe, but they’re ubiquitous in American processed foods,” he said during a September 2024 roundtable discussion on health led by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc. “We are literally poisoning our children systematically for profit.”
A 2021 joint study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of São Paolo in Brazil found that people who consumed more calories from ultra-processed foods had lower scores on tests measuring cardiovascular health.
Kennedy has also railed against seed oils, calling them “one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic” and has called on fast food restaurants to fry their products with animal fats instead.
Seed oils contain certain types of healthy fats that are good for the heart when used in moderation, decades of research shows.
Claims that fluoride affects children’s development
In an interview with NPR in November, Kennedy doubled down on his promise that the Trump administration will recommend that local governments remove fluoride from their water supplies.
He has claimed that fluoride in drinking water affects children’s neurological development and that other countries that have removed fluoride from their water supplies have not seen an increase in cavities. Some health professionals have expressed concerns about excessive fluoride intake and potential toxicity.
However, high-quality studies show fluoride prevents cavities and repairs damage to teeth caused by bacteria in the mouth. Fluoride also replaces minerals lost from teeth due to acid breakdown, according to the CDC.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud and Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
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