SInce taking into account, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services (HHS), has undermined the vaccines each turn. He rejected the entire Consultative Committee on Vaccines against Disease Control Centers and Disease Prevention (CDC), narrowing access to COVVI-19 vaccines in life, has completed scientific advice with conspiracy theorists and dismissed the newly appointed CDC director for refusing to make the rubber his actions.
But his rejection of vaccines is only part of the problem. Secretary Kennedy is not able to be the first public health official of our country because he rejects the fundamental principles of modern science.
For generations, doctors have agreed that germs – such as bacteria or viruses – cause infectious diseases.
In the 1850s, John Snow, known as the father of epidemiology, retraced an epidemic of cholera in London for water contaminated by human waste – not the “bad air” or the so -called Miasmus, which many at the time believed to be the cause.
In the 1880s, Louis Pasteur, the French chemist, in a controlled experience, injected a group of sheep with an anthrax vaccine while another group is doing. Then he injected all sheep with Anthrax bacteria. Vaccinated sheep have survived, not vaccinated.
The theory of germs has led to a revolution in public health and medicine which, over the years, has saved tens of millions of lives.
Just a few examples.
At a time when many women died during childbirth in hospitals, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis found that hand washing by doctors saved lives.
Joseph Lister has shown that the sterilization of medical equipment before surgery prevented unnecessary deaths.
Florence Nightingale, considered the mother of modern nursing care, has considerably improved hygiene in hospitals and has made health care much safer for patients.
Pasteur has made the foods we eat and the milk that we are drinking more safely thanks to a heating process called pasteurization.
And these are just a few examples.
However, incredibly, in 2025, we now have an HHS secretary who has thrown doubt and spray on the very concept of the theory of germs – the very foundation of modern medicine for more than a century.
In his book The Real Anthony Fauci, Kennedy absurdly affirms that the central principle behind the theory of germs “is simply false”. Vaccines are not wrongly affirmed Kennedy, responsible for the massive decline in deaths against infectious diseases. Instead, Kennedy wrongly proclaims that “science actually gives the honor of having defeated the mortalities of the disease in sanitation and nutrition”.
Yes. No one disputes that appropriate sanitation, nutritional food and exercise can lead to healthier life. But no credible scientist or doctor only thinks only a person in the shelter of polio, measles, mumps, covids, HIV / AIDS and other infectious diseases. Otherwise, healthy people can become sick, hospitalized or even die from these terrible diseases and other diseases.
Unfortunately, Kennedy’s dangerous rejection of well -established science is at the origin of its theories of wild conspiracy and its disinformation campaigns.
This is what has led to Kennedy’s false assertion that “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective” despite scientific studies evaluated by peers noting that vaccines have saved more than 150 million lives and reduces infant deaths by 40% in the past 50 years.
It is behind Kennedy’s false said that the polio vaccine “has killed a lot, a lot, many, many more people than polio have never done it”, even if scientific data showed that the polio vaccine has saved 1.5 million lives and prevented around 20 million people from paralyzing since 1988.
He underpins his story of promoting the ridiculous idea that HIV does not cause AIDS, despite rigorous studies that find exactly the opposite. It is believed that this type of denial of HIV / AIDS scandalous caused the death of at least 330,000 people in South Africa who did not receive the vital drugs they needed.
This is what led him to say that the coconusory vaccine was the “most deadly vaccine ever achieved”, that vaccines cause autism, and that the hepatitis B vaccine does not work and should only be used for “prostitutes” and “promised gay men” – lies that have been completely dismantled by scientific data and the medical community.
Frighteningly, this is what made Kennedy say: “I see someone on a hiking track carrying a little baby and I say to him:” Better not to have him vaccinated “. And he heard that of me.
As a private citizen, Kennedy is entitled to his opinions, no matter how wrong they can be.
If Kennedy wanted to swim in water contaminated by raw wastewater and fecal material, as he recently did in the Rock Creek park of Washington DC, he is free to do.
But as a senior health official of our nation, the rejection of science by secretary Kennedy and the actions he has taken as a result of his bizarre ideology endangers the lives of millions of children in the United States and around the world.
Today, Kennedy makes people more difficult for people to get vaccines. Tomorrow, what will he be? Will he tell doctors that they don’t need to wash their hands before surgery? Will he tell hospitals that they don’t need to sterilize their scalpels and other medical equipment?
The American people need an HHS secretary who will listen to scientists and doctors, not conspiracy theorists.
We need an HHS secretary who will listen to medical experts who may disagree with him, not to dismiss them briefly.
Conclusion: We need an HHS secretary who will not engage in a war against science and the truth itself.
Secretary Kennedy must resign.
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Bernie Sanders is an American senator and classification member of the health, education, labor and pensions committee. It represents the state of the Vermont and is the oldest independent in the history of the congress
