A recent article in Vanity Fair is alarming enough. Its subtitle sums it up nicely: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency terminated thousands of experienced public health professionals in an April Fools’ Day massacre. We’re all about to pay the price.”
As an example, author Katherine Eban cites Dr. Timony J. Pohlhaus, “one of the FDA’s few leading experts on sterile manufacturing for drugs.” “If you’ve ever used eye drops that didn’t blind you, thank Dr. Timothy J. Pohlhaus,” Eban wrote. “As of yesterday, he’s gone.”
Pohlhaus was one of thousands of public officials let go on April 1.
Eban has more terrifying details:
Relying on algorithms rather than real-world understanding of how the FDA operates, DOGE lopped off key arteries of the public health system, decimating divisions for everything from the approval of new drugs to the regulation of tobacco products. An HHS fact sheet said that no food and drug inspectors were cut. But front-line staff members—who accompanied them on inspections, helped analyze their findings, cleared their reports for public release, and brought unsafe manufacturers into legal compliance—were cut all around them. One source says inspections at overseas manufacturing plants have already been halted due to lack of staff to coordinate travel and arrange visas. The FDA has allegedly reached out to some [terminated] staff asking them to temporarily return to work so that inspectors already overseas are not stranded and upcoming inspections can proceed.
“The people making these decisions, they are clueless about what the FDA does,” says the FDA employee.
It turns out RFK Jr., the person ostensibly in charge of the FDA, is shockingly clueless, too. Anti-vaxxer Kennedy appeared on CBS News Wednesday morning, presumably to rehab his image after the public health cuts and during a mushrooming measles epidemic among the unvaccinated, made worse by Texans taking toxic levels of Vitamin A, thanks to Kennedy’s half-baked advocacy.
Kennedy was asked by CBS’ Dr. Jon LaPook about the cuts made to public health personnel and programs. Kennedy claimed to know nothing about any of them. Nor did he seem at all sorry about his ignorance.
LAPOOK: You propose more than $11 billion in cuts to local and state programs addressing things like infectious disease, mental health, addiction and childhood vaccination. Did you personally approve those cuts?
KENNEDY: I’m not familiar with those cuts. I, I mean – we have to go – we’d have to go –
LAPOOK: There’s like, more than 50 pages of, you know, of cuts that I actually went through.
KENNEDY: Those were mainly DEI cuts, which the president –
LAPOOK: They were not. But I’ll give you, for example, about $750,000 of a University of Michigan grant into adolescent diabetes was cut. Did you know that?
KENNEDY: I didn’t know that. And that’s something that we’ll look at.
LAPOOK: Yeah. So, I mean, that’s – you know, I wonder. Should these be considered DOGE cuts?
KENNEDY: Well, I, you know, I couldn’t speak to that, Dr. LaPook [pronounced “LaPuke”] because I, you know, I just, I’m not familiar with that particular study. There’s a number of studies that were cut that came to our attention and that did not deserve to be cut, and we reinstated them. Our purpose is not to reduce any level of scientific research that’s important.
Sadly, LaPook did not press Kennedy on his astounding ignorance. Instead, he moved on to ask Kennedy about “the basic level of care” he believes all Americans should receive. Kennedy’s alarming answer? “That’s a difficult question because people have a choice about how sick they’re going to be.”
Tell that to the mothers of infants too young to get a measles vaccine but who may contract the disease at a daycare center or supermarket or just about anywhere else.
And speaking of measles, Kennedy had gone on Sunday to Texas, the epicenter of the exploding epidemic and claimed he’s “working to control” the outbreak. In a Twitter post most likely written by someone else, Kennedy said on Sunday that a vaccination is “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles.”
But on CBS, after Kennedy announced, “We encourage people to get the measles vaccine,” he made it clear he doesn’t really believe it. “I’m not going to take people’s vaccines away from them,” Kennedy said. “What I’m going to do is make sure that we have good science so that people can make an informed choice, and we are doing that science today, so that we know the risk of that product, and we also know what the benefits are, and right now we don’t know there is many of these products because they’re not safety tested.” He added that he meant vaccines are not “adequately tested.”
Except that the vaccines have been tested (by people who were just terminated) and they are obviously a lot safer than getting the measles. The illness can not only kill you but also leave you permanently impaired.
Kennedy is not a doctor. He’s not even a scientist or a public health expert, other than in his own mind and in what’s left of Donald Trump’s.
CBS News highlighted on its website Kennedy’s jaw-dropping ignorance about cuts made in his department. But in the video, both LaPook and anchor Gayle King slobbered over the fact that Kennedy engaged in a “civil and respectful” conversation.
As if we should all be grateful for something that should be a routine part of Kennedy’s job.