Ember Duke | layout editor

The incoming presidential cabinet is stocked with loons of all sorts. One could be fatal for American health at large.

On Nov. 14 Trump declared Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

A notorious conspiracy theorist, science denier and disinformation machine will be the head authority of all health related matters, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

Kennedy called vaccines a “holocaust” and is one of the main perpetrators of debunked and ableist conspiracies that vaccines cause autism. His anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, published books spreading false information about people dying of COVID-19 vaccines without their permission, according to The Associated Press. They also refused to divest these materials after family members of a deceased teenager asked them to remove his information from the publication “Cause Unknown.”

Kennedy, and frankly every Republican that is similarly hatefully delusional, paints themselves as a protector of the people — a protector of children.

How honorable! We’ll protect the kids by taking away science backed medicine and thus open the doors to increased risk of diseases like polio. I guess all things come back into fashion eventually!

He has also claimed that Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci inflated the truth of the COVID-19 pandemic to promote vaccines, according to Forbes. He claimed the FDA suppresses health advancements, which he used as a way to promote unpasteurized milk, which has a myriad of health risks from bacteria including E. coli and salmonella. He said Wi-Fi causes cancer. He once said AIDS is not caused by HIV, rather it was caused by the use of poppers by gay men. He also said school shootings are linked to the use of psychiatric drugs, like Prozac, which is used most often to treat depression.

In 2019 an outbreak of measles struck the nation of Samoa, killing 83 people, according to The Associated Press. This came just months after Kennedy visited and preyed upon the already vaccine skeptic locals. Officials from the World Health Organization said at the time that the rhetoric made the nation weaker by increasing their distrust of vaccines, therefore more vulnerable to an outbreak.

In the time since his appointment, Kennedy has already pushed to remove fluoride from drinking water, which helps improve the oral health of Americans, and has implied mass turnover of federal employees involved with the National Institutes of Health, according to the Associated Press.

Admittedly, we are not a healthy country. Our centering of capitalism is what kills our health.

Many Americans can’t afford healthy options, either due to lack of time or money. The food industry is based on quantity not quality, littering the majority of our food with corn and other fillers that don’t sustain our health, according to National Geographic.

Kennedy said during a congressional roundtable that instead of Medicare and Medicaid covering drugs like Ozempic — a weight loss drug often used to treat diabetes and abused by self obsessed celebrities — the government should just buy three organic meals a day and a gym membership for every obese American, according to the Associated Press.

Ignoring the glaring lack of recognition that taking away easier access to diabetes medication will not in fact help the diabetes crisis, this plan is a mere pipe dream that would not even guarantee the outcome he wants. Of course, it’s all well and good. Every American should have access to free exercise and organic food that’s grown/raised ethically, but for this to render success you’d have to remove all other contributing factors. We’d have to get rid of fast food and restructure work and family culture to make it feasible for every person to harness these options to their full potential.

It’s just more fodder to the fire that is the unintelligible gibberish that Kennedy spouts. Money and status have made him fundamentally out of touch with reality, like most politicians. He, however, has the backing of a historical name and the conviction to confidently lead the lost and misguided into a light of falsities.

Kennedy does not have a background in health, he was an environmental lawyer — a hypocritical one at that. He’s already been slammed, rightfully, by organizations of people who actually know about health. The American Public Health Association for one released a statement on Nov. 18 stating Kennedy is not suited to the job and is a roadblock in the position.

Kennedy, like so many other ‘Trump-publicans,’ is unpredictable. It’s hard to say what he will push for in the end or even be able to accomplish. With so many political issues, it comes down to a fight against ideology, and Kennedy’s ideology is just too disconnected to what the American people need. He’s manipulative, dangerous and a sign of bad things to come for the future of American health.