The RFK Jr Problem

 

By now, everyone ought to know who RFK Jr is, especially after he was appointed (by Donald Trump) as the head of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

RFK Jr has written a number of books with a similar anti-vaccination theme.  One in particular caught the attention of Malcolm Gladwell, the host of Revisionist History and the author of several books himself, including The Tipping Point and Revenge of the Tipping Point.

The book that caught Gladwell's attention was this one:

The thing that caught MY attention was Gladwell's podcast Revisionist History, and the episode The RFK Jr Problem.  Gladwell's podcast quoted a paragraph from RFK Jr's book which went approximately like this:

"The best evidence indicates that Dr Offit's Rotavirus vaccine causes negative net public health impacts ... almost certainly kills and injures more children in the United States than the Rotavirus disease killed and injured prior to the introduction of the Rotateq vaccine".

Rotavirus causes severe intestinal reactions in very young children.  Following the introduction of a vaccine against this virus, Rotavirus virtually disappeared as a condition similar to what happened to Measles.

Gladwell had, as one of his guests, a drug researcher of many years, and between the two of them they went through the vaccine's package insert which showed the vaccine's trial data.  After looking at the data, Gladwell asked his guest for his reaction to the quote from RFK's book.  "Complete and absolute bullshit" was the response.

The rest of the podcast was spent trying to understand why RFK Jr was so against a vaccine that was clearly so safe and so effective.

The best thing would be to listen to the complete podcast, but I can give away the conclusion Gladwell came to.  The reason RFK Jr is so against the Rotateq vaccine is because it's so successful.

And this is the person responsible for public health in the USA these days.

RFK Jr has been one of the primary purveyors of vaccine disinformation (let's just call them lies, to be clear) since the early 2000s.  More about this person can be found here.  One notable quote from that source:

"An epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, said putting Kennedy in charge of a health agency would be like "putting a flat earther in charge of NASA".^[167] As of January 24, 2025, more than 80 organizations had voiced opposition to Kennedy's nomination."