RFK Jr.’s ‘detachment’ from much of his job
The secretary of Health and Human Services has shown “little interest” in managing his agency, which affects the health of 340 million Americans and provides health care to 40 percent of the population through Medicare and Medicaid, says The New York Times.
Instead, he’s single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful, multiple colleagues tell the Times.
“Deeply mistrustful” of career civil officials, Kennedy has surrounded himself with a close circle of handpicked advisers and stacked agencies with political appointees aligned with his views, the Times says. While major jobs have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists has left, Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department’s top staff.
Kennedy rarely engages with members of Congress, his colleagues say, unless he’s asked to testify. He’s made just one known visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after a gunman opened fire on its headquarters and killed a police officer last August.
Critics say one of the most urgent problems is Kennedy’s failure to address a leadership vacuum. There’s no surgeon general. About half of the 27 institutes and centers at the National Institutes of Health are run by acting directors. The acting chief of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases was recently fired, and so was the nation’s top drug regulator. The head of the Food and Drug Administration quit last month after pressure over tobacco policy.
Kennedy has left the department’s response to Ebola to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a health economist with no prior experience in public health even though he’s leading the CDC.
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which is responsible for pandemic preparedness and for field hospitals and quarantine facilities in Kenya, is being run on an acting basis by John Knox, a former Los Angeles firefighter who founded the group Firefighters4Freedom during the pandemic to fight vaccine mandates.
Kennedy, who usually arrives at about 10 a.m. and leaves by 4 p.m., has delegated broad authority to Stefanie Spear, a longtime adviser who’s been with him since his days as an environmental lawyer and functions as his protector and defender, the Times says.
Kennedy is on his third top spokesman; the first two quit in frustration, the Times reports. Kennedy also has gone through two chiefs of staff.
There’s “no question” that Kennedy is changing the national conversation around health in America, especially healthy eating, says the Times. While his vaccine agenda so far has been stymied by court decisions, he’s scored “wins,” as he calls them, by flipping the food pyramid, persuading medical schools to revamp nutrition education and convincing some food makers to abandon artificial dyes.
Meanwhile, doctors around the country say they’re seeing more cases of serious, sometimes life-threatening illnesses that vaccines long have long kept at bay, including whooping cough and bacterial infections that can cause pneumonia or meningitis, says a separate Times article.
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