The Trump administration’s former director of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) endorsed Robert Kennedy Jr.because the “right man for the job” to guide a fee on continual childhood illness.
In an op-ed revealed Tuesday in Newsweek, Robert Redfield mentioned he believes in Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
“After more than 40 years in the public health arena, it might surprise some of my colleagues to know I think President Trump chose the right man for the job: Robert Kennedy, Jr,” Redfield wrote.
Redfield mentioned he desires former President Trump to observe by on his promise to ascertain a panel of high specialists working with Kennedy to research the rise of continual well being issues and childhood illnesses.
He talked about processed meals resulting in an increase in weight problems, in addition to pesticides inflicting neurodevelopmental points like ADHD.
“If the next president prioritizes the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify which exposures are contributing to the spike in chronic disease in children, we will finally find out and end what is slowly destroying our children,” Redfield wrote.
When Kennedy formally ended his presidential bid and endorsed Trump, he pledged that if he had been “given the chance to fix the chronic disease crisis and reform our food production … within two years, we will watch chronic disease burden lift dramatically.”
“I believe him,” Redfield wrote. “And I think President Trump will empower him. I support their noble effort to heal our children.”
In an interview posted on his YouTube channel, Kennedy mentioned he was shocked to learn Redfield’s editorial.
“This was breathtaking to me. This is the guy who was head of the CDC that I’ve been criticizing for years,” Kennedy mentioned.
Kennedy, a longtime purveyor of anti-vaccine messaging who based the anti-vaccine group Kids’s Well being Protection to advertise these concepts, has been talking extra insistently in latest months about kids’s well being and fixing the issues of continual childhood illnesses.
As a substitute of specializing in childhood vaccinations, Kennedy has as an alternative been pitching himself as an advisor to Trump on public well being, together with continual illness. He was appointed to Trump’s transition crew and is angling for a high administration position.
However whereas public well being specialists agree that the U.S. is affected by elevated charges of continual illnesses, some have expressed concern that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views would affect how he approaches the issue.
Redfield, who served as CDC director from 2018 to 2021, mentioned he agreed with Kennedy that authorities businesses — notably all three of the principal well being businesses in addition to the Division of Agriculture — are too cozy with particular curiosity teams.
However because the New York Occasions famous in August, Trump’s insurance policies whereas he was in workplace ran counter to nearly the entire priorities in Kennedy’s well being agenda. There was no crackdown on poisonous chemical substances throughout his presidency; in actual fact, Trump ended bans on poisonous chemical substances recognized to pose critical well being threats.
