Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert F. Kennedy, has recently been nominated as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States. He has recently become a popular topic in the news media, due to the changes he plans to make to the Food and Drug Administration.
Kennedy was originally competing in the presidential race, but towards the end, he decided to drop out and endorse Donald Trump. Trump then nominated him to work with him and reevaluate several aspects of the DHHS, including the FDA. Once Kennedy received the nomination, he began to speak about his ideas for changes in government corruption, especially regarding the health of the country.
Kennedy is qualified for the position of HHS secretary, because he is well-known as an environmental attorney, who has successfully taken on major corporations such as DuPont and Monsanto. This experience may help him understand public health issues related to environmental factors.
Kennedy has claimed that he would, “clean up corruption, stop the revolving door between industry and government, and return our health agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science.” He also said that he “will provide Americans with transparency and access to all the data, so they can make informed choices for themselves and their families.” It is important that the United States has someone looking over the FDA who is open about what is going on behind the scenes in the processing of food and beverages that are put into their grocery stores and then into our bodies.
People in the media have been bashing Kennedy and saying he is anti-vaccine. However, he said in an interview, “I’m not going to take away anyone’s vaccines. I’ve never been anti-vaccine.” He has also claimed, “I’m going to make sure the science and the safety studies and efficacies are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them.”
Kennedy wants to ensure that everyone will have access to vaccines. “People ought to have choice and ought to be informed by the best information,” he said. “So I’m going to make sure that scientific safety studies and efficacies are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them.”
Kennedy is looking out for farmers, especially organic farmers, like farming pioneer Joel Salatin. Kennedy interviewed him in a video posted on his YouTube channel, where Salatin mentioned that, during COVID-19, all the wealth of smaller, family-owned restaurants and farms decreased. By contrast, the revenue produced by fast food and commercial farming increased by a wide margin.
This may be the cause of the recent increase in health problems in the US that are associated with obesity. Kennedy’s goal is to fix this with more support for family-owned farms.
Kennedy mentioned that the “bureaucratic impediments and costs on quality food production” with the USDA and the FDA are “making war on healthy food and organic food.” This has raised the prices of all food, and it has made lower-quality, unhealthy food more widely available, since it is cheaper.
The reason why produce and poultry from organic farms are so expensive is not because of the production costs, but because of the regulations that have been placed on farms. Big commercial farms don’t have a problem with these costs, since they produce tons of goods at a time, with tools such as pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
These costs don’t work out well when it comes to good, quality organic produce, since the production rates are naturally lower for this type of farming. All farmers are charged the same fees, no matter what size farm they own, which isn’t efficient.
In the 1960’s, the rate of chronic illnesses in the United States was 6% and now it has increased to 60%. As a result, 4.3 trillion dollars have been spent on just treatments and drugs for these illnesses, which Kennedy mentioned, in one of his recent speeches. This number is “five times our military budget” in the United States. It is shameful that the health of our country is so poor that this huge amount of money has to be used on healthcare.
Kennedy then mentioned in this same speech that “77% of American kids are no longer qualified for the military because of chronic diseases…[such as] obesity, neurodevelopmental disorders,… ADD/ADHD,… or autism.” Given the expanding rates of chronic diseases like these, it points to a major public health concern for our country. Kennedy will attempt to solve this issue by advocating for laws that will make healthier foods more accessible and restrict access to junk food.
Not many people in the United States bring up these issues pertaining to American health, so they don’t research the root causes of these crises. Kennedy has experience navigating the world of politics as a presidential candidate, which will be useful in his role as HHS Secretary.
Having a person who cares about these issues is a big step in the right direction, and ignorance will only continue this pattern. It is great that a person in a higher position in politics, like Kennedy, will work to solve these issues in the future.
