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robert f. kennedy jr
'One Year of Failure': The Lancet Warns RFK Jr.'s Assault on Science May 'Take Generations to Repair'
Kennedy has "made a habit of throwing good money after bad" by promoting "junk science and fringe beliefs."
Feb 27, 2026
A scathing editorial published Friday in one of the world's most prestigious medical journals took US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to task for what it described as "one year of failure."
In its editorial, the Lancet began by listing off several of the broken promises Kennedy made during his first speech after being confirmed to lead the US Health and Human Services Department (HHS), such as his vow to have "open and honest engagement with everyone willing to work towards making the USA healthy again" and usher in "a new era of unbiased science without hidden conflicts of interest, secrecy, or profiteering."
In fact, the Lancet found that it took Kennedy less than two weeks to break a key promise.
"Ten days after his speech about trust and openness," the journal noted, "HHS rescinded a 54-year-old policy of soliciting public comments for new rules and regulations, silencing the voices of many of the stakeholders he pledged to serve."
Things have only gotten worse since then, the editorial continued, as Kennedy has shelved research into mRNA vaccines and "made a habit of throwing good money after bad" by promoting "junk science and fringe beliefs."
The editorial concluded by warning "the destruction that Kennedy has wrought in one year might take generations to repair, and there is little hope for US health and science while he remains at the helm." The journal urged the US Congress to "hold Kennedy accountable for his record, or else accept responsibility for endorsing President Trump's decision to let him 'run wild on health.'"
The Lancet editorial drew a range of reactions from medical experts and academics.
Scott Forbes, an ecologist at the University of Winnipeg, explained the significance of a journal such as the Lancet publishing such an overtly political editorial.
"For context, the Lancet is one of the two most important medical journals on the planet," he wrote in a social media post. "When they put this on their front cover, it is only because there is something seriously wrong. That something is RFK Jr. He is a notorious crank and charlatan. But that's par for the course in the Trump regime."
Forbes' point was echoed by Krutika Kuppalli, associate professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center's Department of Internal Medicine.
"When a leading medical journal uses language like this, it’s not rhetoric," she wrote. "It’s a warning the world should take seriously."
Pediatrician Vincent Iannelli took the Lancet to task for publishing a since-retracted study in 1998 that falsely linked vaccination with the development of autism, which subsequently helped the anti-vaccination movement gain currency.
"Let's not forget that Wakefield's fraudulent paper that was published in the Lancet helped get us on this road," Iannelli said. "RFK Jr. was influenced by mothers who blamed vaccines for their child's autism."
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Polio Survivors Fear a Resurgence as Trump Adviser Suggests Scrapping Vaccine Requirement
"We don’t have a healthcare infrastructure to take care of a polio outbreak."
Feb 23, 2026
After the Trump administration official in charge of immunization policy suggested that childhood polio vaccines should be made optional, experts and survivors of the deadly disease are warning that it could make a furious comeback.
Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who is chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, suggested on a podcast last month ending public schools' vaccine requirements for dangerous diseases, including measles and polio, which would be one of the most dramatic shifts in federal health policy in more than half a century.
Where these diseases once infected millions of people each year, Milhoan noted their dramatic decline in recent years, suggesting they no longer pose the threat they once did and that vaccines were therefore less necessary. However, he ignored the fact that the near-total eradication of these illnesses was due to society-wide vaccination in the first place.
In the first half of the 20th century, tens of thousands of people (mostly children) suffered paralysis from polio. The first vaccine was introduced in the USA in 1955. Notice the trend afterwards.(by @ourworldindata)
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— Information is Beautiful (@infobeautiful.bsky.social) January 26, 2026 at 2:55 PM
The US is already at risk of losing its measles eradication status after drops in vaccination rates caused the highest number of cases and deaths in more than three decades last year.
Measles vaccination rates had already been dipping for years amid rising anti-vaccine sentiment. But it was shifted into overdrive after vaccination restrictions were narrowed by Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who publicly spread doubt about the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine's well-documented safety and efficacy.
At its peak in 1952, nearly 58,000 people became infected with polio. Over a third of them became paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died. A vaccine was introduced for the illness in 1955. Within just two years, the number of cases had dropped by 90%, and the disease was declared eliminated in the US in 1979.
Childhood vaccination rates have dropped across the board over the past five years. Where about 95% of kindergarteners received the measles and polio vaccines in the 2019-20 school year, that number had plummeted to 92.5% in 2024-25.
But because polio is several times less infectious than measles, the current national average coverage still provides substantial protection, though localized outbreaks remain possible in undervaccinated communities.
If childhood vaccination is made optional, however, those who have treated and lived with polio fear it could also come back with a vengeance.
Survivors say US healthcare system not ready for new cases – ‘the only thing to fix polio is the polio vaccine’
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— Guardian US (@us.theguardian.com) February 23, 2026 at 2:13 PM
In an interview with the Guardian published Monday, Grace Rossow, an operating-room communications coordinator, whose leg remains paralyzed from a case of polio as an infant in India, said the vaccine had “absolutely been a victim of its own success."
“People aren’t scared of polio anymore,” she said. “People don’t really see the daily side of living with a vaccine-preventable disease. With polio, you’re never going to fix us, and that’s the problem. The only thing to fix polio is the polio vaccine.”
Polio's status as a thing of the past has not only diminished the public's understanding of why it's important to prevent, but also how to treat it. Rossow said, "We don’t have a healthcare infrastructure to take care of a polio outbreak."
Art Caplan, one of the last remaining survivors of the 1950s outbreak, who has struggled with lifelong weakness in his legs due to the disease, said he's watched as most of the medical professionals who understood how to treat it retired and died. "There’s nobody left. They don’t see it."
Gordon Allan, a surgeon who is the orthopedic residency director and the total joint reconstructive fellowship director at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, said that in the event of a new polio outbreak, most people in his field would have little idea how to treat those suffering from the illness.
“Orthopedics has really changed a lot now from the people who trained me," he said, noting that even those doctors only had experience treating post-polio symptoms.
“No one practicing has first-hand experience," he said. "Orthopedics was quite different because of polio, and all that stuff just faded away."
The last polio case in the United States was detected in New York in 2022 in an unvaccinated adult who became paralyzed from the illness.
None have been diagnosed since. But as measles has shown, outbreaks can spread very quickly in communities with large unvaccinated populations, which are often insular and religious.
Caplan said he was "furious" at Milhoan's contention that childhood vaccine requirements should be reconsidered just because polio is no longer around.
"If you could gather up the kids I saw die or become really severely disabled from 50 years ago, they would want you arrested," he said. "It’s horrifying, and the height of irresponsibility to leave the door open even a crack."
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Stop Tyrant Trump's Lawless Attack on the Regulations Keeping Us Safe
Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections.
Feb 21, 2026
“Deregulation” is an antiseptic word loved by the giant corporations that rule the people. In reality, health and safety “deregulation” spells death, injury, and disease for the American people of all ages and backgrounds. This is especially so with the deranged dictates from the Tyrant Trump, who is happily beholden to his corporate paymasters, who are making him richer by the day.
President Donald Trump’s mindless deregulation mania got underway in January 2025 with his illegal shutting down of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has saved lives in poor countries—by providing food, water, medicine, etc.—for a pittance. USAID spends less in a year than the Pentagon spends in a week. International aid groups predict that the ongoing cuts could lead to 9.4 million preventable deaths occurring in poor countries by 2030 unless the vicious and cruel, unlawful Trumpian shutdown is reversed.
It turns out Trump was just warming up for his illegal violence against innocent American families in both blue and red states. He has abolished requirements for the auto industry to limit its emissions and maintain fuel efficiencies. The result: more disease-bearing gases and particulates into the lungs of Americans, including the most vulnerable—children and people suffering from respiratory diseases.
Trump wants to roll back the regulations that would require auto company fleets to average 50 miles per gallon by 2031. In 2024, the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its proposed vehicle fuel economy standards would save Americans more than $23 billion in fuel costs while reducing pollution.
Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with.
Month after month, Trump is illegally reducing or shutting down lifesaving programs without the required congressional approval. One of his major targets is the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This month, his puppet EPA head, Lee Zeldin, celebrated the elimination of lethal greenhouse gases from the EPA’s regulatory controls. Zeldin and Trump are in effect telling Americans, “Let them breathe toxic air.” Plus, more climate catastrophes.
Smothering wind and solar projects while boosting the omnicidal polluting oil, gas, and coal production is another way Trump is exposing people to sickening gases and particulates. A corporate cynic once joked, “No problem, you can always refuse to inhale.”
Trump’s treachery toward coal miners, whom he praises, is shocking. He cut the funds for free testing of coal miners’ lungs, often afflicted with the deadly black lung diseases that have taken hundreds of thousands of coal miners’ lives over the past century and a half. We worked to pass the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, to control the levels of coal dust causing this disease, but Trump is unraveling it by cutting law enforcement. The Trump administration says it is “reconsidering” the long-awaited proposed silica control regulations. More unnecessary delay. In 2024, Politico reported that “Mine Safety and Health Administration projects that the final rule will avert up to 1,067 deaths and 3,746 silica-related illnesses.”
In his mass firings of federal civil servants, Trump has included the ranks of federal safety inspectors for meat and poultry plants (USDA), for occupational health and safety (OSHA), and specialized areas like you would never imagine—such as nuclear security. Tyrant Trump worsened the potential danger for workers and communities by firing most of the inspectors general—again illegally—who are the powerful watchdogs over federal departments and agencies. Many inspector general positions are still vacant.
In terms of short and long-run perils, Trump’s attacks on scientific research and discovery to reduce or prevent diseases would be enough to give him the grisly record for knowingly letting Americans die. The assault on vaccines, including for contagious diseases, is staggering, led by RFK, Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services.
RFK, Jr. becomes more extreme by the day. His actions go way beyond any legitimate skepticism of the drug companies. He is going along with officials in states like Florida who are about to ban children’s vaccine mandates, even for polio, measles, and whooping cough. He has severely slashed, without congressional authority, budgets for basic and applied science programs underway at universities and other public institutions. His salvos are resulting in the reduction of families getting their children vaccinated, who, if contagious, could infect their classmates. The so-called powerful medical societies have not risen to their optimal level of resistance to what is fast coming, a green light for epidemics—starting with the resurgence of measles now underway in places like South Carolina.
The crazed Menace-in-Chief wanted to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its rescue responses to hyper-hurricanes, floods, and giant wildfires. He recklessly says the states can handle the carnage from such disasters. The real reason is that he doesn’t want to be held responsible for failing to properly respond to such disasters. Remember the criticism of George W. Bush’s response to Katrina?
Again, with Trump, it is all about him, feeding his insatiable MONSTROUS EGO, rather than saving American lives. Recently, tragic events have forced him to reconsider. He is bringing back some of the experts and rescuers he fired from FEMA earlier last year.
Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with—the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the US Institute of Peace, the US Treasury Department’s relief checks during Covid-19, the federal investment accounts, special visas, and a discount drug program. (See the February 16, 2026, article in the New York Times by Peter Baker titled, A Superman, Jedi and Pope).
Chronically lying; threatening violence against his opponents and people abroad; slandering anyone he feels like via the compliant mass media, including journalists and editors; and generally wrecking America as a serial law violator, Trump deserves to be told, “YOU’RE FIRED.” (This was his favorite TV show catchphrase). Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
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