Anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services under the second Trump administration but even some of his advisers are worried that he'll take things too far if he manages to get confirmed.
Politico reports that there is real concern that Kennedy will restrict access to vaccines at the HHS, which could lead to an explosion of diseases among children.
According to Politico's sources, there has been an internal debate among Kennedy's advisers over just how far he should go in revamping America's public health system.
"The people he really trusts are people that obviously are trying to execute a plan to totally take away vaccines," one source told Politico. "The risk of overreach, I don't think is zero."
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Another source tells Politico that Kennedy is "deadly serious" and predicts that "he's going to move on vaccines and I think he feels he has a mandate."
Politico adds that Kennedy anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists are urging him to take "immediate steps" to shut off immunizations, although the report adds that Kennedy "has yet to decide the scope of his agenda."
Regardless, one health expert warns that Kennedy might not have to outright ban vaccines to undermine their effectiveness, as he could appoint allies to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) that could simply discourage Americans from getting shots.
"You can have ACIP questioning certain vaccines and casting doubt in the public's mind about them," Larry Gostin, the director of Georgetown University's O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, told Politico. "That's going to particularly affect state policymakers in red states, who will then loosen childhood vaccination laws."
