What Trump’s health pick RFK Jr. could mean for patients, drugmakers

Donald Trump has made one clear promise about who could help take up the government’s health reins if he wins the presidency: notorious vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

The former president said last week that Kennedy, who ended his own independent White House campaign earlier this year and endorsed Trump, will have a “big role” in health care in his administration. Last month, Trump said he would let Kennedy “go wild” on health, food and drug regulation.

It’s unclear what exactly Kennedy’s role would look like, but the possibility is already raising alarm bells in the broader health community. Some health experts said elevating Kennedy, even in an informal Trump administration position, could potentially lead to severe consequences for patients, drugmakers and the nation’s public health overall. 

“I think it would be a world turned upside-down,” Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who has been an open critic of Kennedy, told CNBC. “Things would not be grounded in scientific truth, just grounded in whatever he or his acolytes believe. It would be a free-for-all. It would be uncertainty and instability. It would be chaos.” 

He said “chaos” could potentially look like lower vaccination rates, increases in preventable disease and greater distrust in federal health agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

That could exacerbate the nation’s existing public health challenges, such as declining childhood vaccination rates for several preventable diseases, some experts say. The U.S. also has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases and the highest maternal and infant death rate among other high-income nations, according to a 2023 report by The Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group. 

Kennedy, who does not have any medical or scientific credentials, believes drug companies and the federal health agencies that regulate them are making Americans less healthy. He has suggested that some vaccines should be taken off the market — a stance that Trump did not rule out on Monday. 

The former environmental lawyer may also bring uncertainty to the pharmaceutical industry, which relies on federal health agencies to greenlight new products, keep old ones on the market and, in some cases, fund research and development. It will likely be difficult for Kennedy to change the drug approval process, but experts said he could gain a new platform to politicize certain treatments he opposes and tout others that aren’t proven to be safe and effective.

Top leadership roles, such as the FDA commissioner, require confirmation by the Senate, which…