THURSDAY, Nov. 14, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- In a move guaranteed to alarm many, President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
, a vocal opponent of vaccines and other tenets of mainstream health care, to head the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The department encompasses numerous key agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.
S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, Medicaid and Medicare. Trump's nomination, which came Thursday, shifts the 70-year-old Kennedy from a fringe character railing against many long-accepted medical practices to one of the most powerful people in the federal government, charged with overseeing Americans' health care and safety.
In a statement, Trump, who has already said he'd let Kennedy "go wild on health," reinforced his would-be appointee's image as a maverick. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the nomination. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!” It's been a dramatic arc for Kennedy, whose namesake father was assassinated in 1968 in the midst of a campaign to become the Democratic Presidential nominee that year.
Kennedy Jr. was himself a Democrat until he campaigned in this year's presidential campa.