RFK Jr.’s first month as health secretary: Touting French fries and
casting doubts on vaccines
[March 14, 2025]
By AMANDA SEITZ and JONEL ALECCIA
WASHINGTON (AP) — There sat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top
health official, at a Steak ’n Shake with Fox News host Sean Hannity,
raving about the fries.
“Steak ’n Shake has been great, we’re very grateful for them,” Kennedy
said, in between nibbles of fries that the Midwestern franchise recently
announced would be cooked in beef tallow instead of common cooking oils
that Kennedy claims — contrary to advice from nutritionists — are bad
for Americans' diet.
It's the kind of endorsement that doctors have implored him to make
about the childhood vaccines used to prevent deadly diseases, like
measles as outbreaks worsened in Texas and New Mexico during his first
month in office.
The secretary of Health and Human Services has, instead, raised doubts
about vaccines, most recently saying in his interview with Hannity that
the shots cause “deaths every year," although he later added that
vaccinations should be encouraged.
In his first month in office, Kennedy, who vowed to “Make America
Healthy Again,” has delivered an inconsistent message that has the
nation's top infectious diseases specialists worried that his tepid
recommendations will undermine access to long-proven, life-saving
vaccines.
Public health agencies cancel vaccine meetings, research under Kennedy's
watch
During his first address to thousands of workers at the federal public
health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention as well as the Food and Drug Administration, Kennedy promised
to “investigate” the childhood vaccine schedule. Days later, the CDC
canceled a public meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization
Panel, a group of doctors and scientists who make recommendations on
vaccines. That meeting has not been rescheduled.
In another case, a canceled public meeting of vaccine advisers who make
recommendations on the flu vaccine every year for the FDA also has not
been given a new date. This week, the National Institutes for Health,
also under Kennedy's purview, began canceling funding for some research
on vaccines.
The CDC also is preparing to research autism and vaccines, planning to
"leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is
happening,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement. Agency
officials did not comment further for this article.
Numerous studies have concluded that there is no link between the two, a
fact the agency states on its website. And studying it again could take
money from other research including into finding the true cause of
autism, noted Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, as he
questioned National Institutes of Health director nominee Dr. Jay
Bhattacharya.
When Bhattacharya suggested more studies could be worthwhile because
some may believe there’s a link, Cassidy retorted: “There’s people who
disagree the world is round.”
“What (Kennedy) is trying to do is scare about the safety of vaccines,”
Dr. Paul Offit, an FDA vaccine adviser and infectious disease doctor at
the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said of Kennedy's first month
in office. “It shouldn't surprise anybody. His agenda has always been to
get vaccines off the market, or to make them less available.”
Offit worries that the cancellation of the FDA’s flu vaccine meeting,
held every March for at least 30 years, is just the beginning. The
committee's June meeting to recommend the COVID-19 vaccine's formulation
has also not been scheduled, he said.
Democrats and Republicans pushed back when Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA
nominee, wouldn’t commit to rescheduling the committee's flu meeting .
“What is lost is the transparency,” said Cassidy, the Louisiana
Republican who chairs the Senate health committee and is also a
physician.
Kennedy rejects ‘anti-vaccine’ label but still echoes the movement
During his senate confirmation hearings earlier this year, Kennedy
seemed to say he would not undermine vaccines. “I support vaccines. I
support the childhood schedule,” he said. He promised Cassidy, who was
unsettled about Kennedy's anti-vaccine work, that he would not change
existing vaccine recommendations.
But in the hearings he also repeatedly refused to acknowledge scientific
consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism and that COVID-19
vaccines saved millions of lives, and he falsely asserted the government
has no good vaccine safety monitoring.
And since his confirmation, Kennedy has repeated his skeptical views of
vaccines in interviews and other public statements.
He's sent “mixed messages” on vaccine safety, even though the U.S. has
“the most elaborate vaccine adverse event surveillance system in the
world,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at
Vanderbilt University. Serious problems, including death, are very rare
and the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks, he said.
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Matt Caldwell, left, a Lubbock Fire Department official, administers
a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to Clair May, 61, at the
Lubbock Health Department, Feb. 26, 2025, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP
Photo/Mary Conlon, File)
 “A simple way to describe this to
the average person is the serious adverse events generally occur at
a rate of 1 to a few cases per million doses of vaccine,” he said.
“That’s a needle in a haystack.”
In an opinion piece on FoxNews.com earlier this month, Kennedy said
the measles outbreak in West Texas that left a six-year old child
dead was a “call to action” but stopped short of recommending that
people receive the vaccine that prevents 97% of cases. Despite the
U.S. registering its first measles death in a decade, Kennedy has
repeatedly downplayed this year's outbreaks, noting that when he was
a child “everybody got measles."
This year's cases — reported at 250 — are on track to far outpace
last year's reports of 286 measles infections.
Pediatricians are fielding more questions from confused parents in
their exam rooms, said Dr. Susan Kressly. Worried about reports of
cancelled vaccine meetings, they’re wondering about their access to
next year’s flu vaccines. Others are asking if they should get doses
of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine earlier. Kressly
said there’s a clear message the government can send to help stop
the rising case count.
“The only way to stop an outbreak is increased coordinated positive
messaging around vaccinating,” Kressly said.
The CDC has assisted with vaccination efforts in West Texas. But
Kennedy himself has publicly advocated for an alternative treatment
for measles: Vitamin A. Under his watch, the CDC’s guidance was
updated to say that Vitamin A should be given to children with
severe measles and prescribed in doses under a doctor’s supervision.
Vitamin A supplementation has been recommended for decades to reduce
pneumonia and death in malnourished children in developing
countries, but the benefits in well-nourished children in countries
like the U.S. are less clear.
“We need to use Vitamin A for those kids who are unlucky enough to
get measles,” said Dr. Andy Pavia, a pediatric infectious disease
expert at the University of Utah. “But it can’t prevent measles and
it can only provide some help in reducing the severity.”
When administered correctly, using Vitamin A in kids with severe
measles will “do no harm,” Pavia said. But if improperly done, high
doses of Vitamin A can be toxic and deadly.
Kennedy's supporters celebrate success on the food front during
first month
Abrupt staffing changes have also dominated Kennedy's first weeks in
office, with CDC pick Dave Weldon withdrawing from the nomination
mere minutes before his hearing, Kennedy's top HHS spokesman
quitting two weeks into the job and the Food and Drug
Administration's newly minted chief counsel departing 48 hours into
the position.
Trump and Kennedy's supporters, however, have dismissed concerns
about the rocky start.
His newfound platform as health secretary and talk of healthier
foods is already affecting change in the American diet, advisers
close to Kennedy and Trump have claimed on social media.
They credit Kennedy with prompting Republican legislators to
introduce bills in Utah and Texas that would seek to ban soda in the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, for example. And then
there's Steak ‘n Shake’s new fries.
“RFK Jr. just ate Steak ’n Shake on live TV, the fast food joint
that’s bravely frying everything in beef tallow,” conservative
podcaster Charlie Kirk said this week in a tweet. “This is the way.”
In fact, nutrition science experts say that decades of research show
that consuming plant-based oils lowers the risk of heart disease and
that there is no evidence to indicate that beef tallow is healthier
than seed oils.
On Wednesday, after a meeting with a handful of executives from the
nation's largest food manufactures, Kennedy released a
slickly-produced video that promised more change would be on the
way, saying companies were taking his “MAHA" movement seriously.
“They understand they have a new sheriff in town,” Kennedy said.
He did not share any details about what was discussed at the
meeting.
—
Associated Press writers Matthew Perrone and Mike Stobbe
contributed.
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