The spectacle of anti-vaccine nonsense coming from Florida last week would be hard to top but it was more than matched on Capitol Hill, where U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. engaged in serial science denialism before a combative chorus of Senate critics.
In a continuing political attack on the foundation of American health care, Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Lapado stood beside Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sept. 3 to announce their intention to end all vaccine mandates. The Republican chief executive nodded and smiled smugly as his Black appointee consigned a generation of Sunshine State schoolchildren to heightened risks from diseases like polio, smallpox, measles and tuberculosis that had all been virtually wiped out by vaccine science over the last 60 years.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” asked Lapado. “Your body is a gift from God.” He said of vaccine mandates, “Every one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”
The reference to bondage is a false, overused Republican talking point geared to elicit support from African Americans by associating vaccine skepticism with liberation. Lapado’s enthusiastic regurgitation of this right-wing political propaganda clearly illustrates that his focus is not on serving his constituency but is on pandering to his white, Republican overseers.
In fact, by all credible measures, vaccines have unshackled billions of people around the world from early death and debilitating diseases. The next day, in an appearance that led to calls for his resignation, Kennedy cranked up his litany of conspiracy theories to defend his dismissal of vaccine experts from federal service and replace them with like-minded buffoons. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda has included massive firings of National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control personnel, canceling billions of dollars in health research grants and limiting access to COVID vaccines.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump, who promised to let “Bobby go wild on health,” has watched satisfied from the sidelines, reveling in the further erosion of public trust in what he perceives as the uncaring elites from academia and health care institutions. The sideshow of bringing down doctors and researchers is just another page from the authoritarian playbook, shifting confidence of the public from non-partisan experts to political leaders who care little about facts and only about power.
When Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez the week before the Senate hearing, nine former heads of the agency — who served under Democratic and Republican presidents — spoke out in an opinion piece condemning Kennedy for endangering America’s health. “He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep America safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements,” they wrote. “And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage.”
The radical restructuring of American health care under the Trump administration has led to a number of states, including Massachusetts, deciding to go their own way to bolster public health. In the wake of an agency under Kennedy’s control, the Food and Drug Administration, limiting approval of updated COVID shots to people over 65 or those with severe medical conditions, Gov. Maura Healy has moved to make those shots available and covered by insurance. On the other side of the continent, California, Oregon and Washington formed the West Coast Health Alliance to provide immunization guidance. Hawaii subsequently joined the group, which pledges to safeguard public health policies based on “safety, efficacy, transparency, access and trust.”
The fracturing of public health from national to regional policies does not bode well for the health of the body politic. It’s just another sign of division and the breakdown of comity and cooperation needed to address challenges across state and regional boundaries. You can only imagine what would happen in the case of another pandemic, with some states shielded by vaccine science and others facing widespread medical disaster. Such dystopia, made for cinematic showdowns between the protected and the infected, would only lead to further social and political alienation.
The destructive role that Kennedy is playing in this drama is especially sad for those who admired his work to protect the environment and speak out for communities of color disproportionately burdened by the location of toxin-spewing factories and transportation arteries filling the air with exhaust. He has turned his back on the landmark public health advances made under his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, who promoted vaccine access; and his father, Robert F. Kennedy, who set in motion the movement to create community health care centers around the country. The first such center was opened in Columbia Point in Dorchester. Now operating as the Geiger Gibson Community Health Center, it has provided essential services to a largely minority and low-income clientele since 1965. But cuts to Medicaid, endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., endanger its future along with other centers working in over 8,000 sites in the United States.
As a medical mecca with world-renowned hospitals, medical schools and research institutions, Boston is better prepared than other cities to respond to federal withdrawal from sensible public health policies. But we are in no way immune to the viral impact of diminishing resources and trustworthy guidance from the federal government. The real tragedy is that turning health care into another front in Donald Trump’s war on normalcy has not just political consequences but real costs in human lives and suffering.
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
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