What The Hell America!

Once confirmed as the secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr promised a new era of “radical transparency” — but instead, he’s made the agencies he oversees even more opaque.

In February, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which Kennedy oversees, removed thousands of pages of medical information for doctors, from HIV protocols to guidance on contraception and transgender health care. Then, in April, the agency purged its eighteen-member media relations team and all of its public records team.

Now internal emails reveal how the FDA has been working to suppress scientific communication to the public since January, making it harder for doctors, patients, journalists, and advocates to access public health guidance.

For example, in response to a journalist’s queries regarding the FDA’s proposed rule on nutrition labels on February 7, a health department communications director told the FDA’s communications team, “Let’s ignore this request please.”

In a separate request for information on vaccines for RSV, a respiratory illness that’s the leading cause of infant hospitalizations, department officials told an FDA communications officer to remove part of the agency’s standard response stating that the FDA believes the benefits of the vaccines outweigh their risks.

Then, in March, a reporter from Vox requested information about the FDA’s vaccine monitoring program. A health department press secretary responded with this: “The decision to vaccinate is a personal one. People should consult with their healthcare provider to understand their options to get a vaccine and should be informed about the potential adverse events associated with vaccines.”

Vaccines have been recommended by the FDA since the 1940s as an essential public health measure to protect individuals from contracting debilitating diseases like polio and smallpox — and to reduce the risk of these diseases for the general population. Vaccines are considered by most public health experts to be extremely safe and effective at preventing disease.

According to a 2014 report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a twenty-year vaccination program prevented an estimated twenty-one million hospitalizations and avoided nearly three-quarters of a million premature deaths.

Without regular vaccination schedules, common diseases can come surging back, like the current Measles outbreak, which surpassed one thousand cases in the United States this year as of May 7.

Such responses aren’t just a matter of shifting messaging. Insiders say the obfuscation risks jeopardizing the FDA’s mission of protecting the public’s health.

The Department of Health and Human Services “started taking a heavy hand on editing our responses,” said former press officer Chanapa Tantibanchachai, who was laid off in April.

Another fired press officer, who asked to remain anonymous, noted that the media team was “muzzled on information that needed to go out to the public,” she said. “There’s information that’s not going to get out there that could save lives.”

Kennedy’s crackdown on communications and transparency is forcing other defections within the FDA’s senior staff.

In March, the agency’s top vaccine adviser said he was forced out because “truth and transparency are not desired” by the new administration.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced on May 8 that he will be replaced with Dr Vinay Prasad, an oncologist and outspoken critic of the COVID-19 vaccines, which saved an estimated three million lives in the United States.

The agency’s longtime top internal auditor resigned this week from a thirty-year career after reportedly telling colleagues that he was “miserable” under Kennedy’s tenure.