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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he did not think there have been any “successes” among US health agencies Sunday, claiming the infiltration of pharmaceutical companies have led to a “series of bad decisions.”
Asked during an interview with “Fox and Friends” what the last great success of federal health agencies was, the secretary responded, “I don’t think there have been successes.”
“We’ve seen a 30- or 40-year decline in the agency because, you know, it’s been infiltrated by the pharmaceutical companies, and they’ve made a series of bad decisions,” he said, while highlighting the opioid crisis.
“What we want to do now is put an end to it, to end those entanglements, those corrupting entanglements with the pharmaceutical industry, and make this again a gold standard science agency that is protecting the American public,” Kennedy added.
His comments on the conservative cable network show came following a testy hearing before the Senate Finance Committee Thursday during which Democrats and Republicans pressed Kennedy on his vaccine skepticism and decision to fire the newly-installed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director.
Kennedy decried his intense grilling by senators from both parties over major shakeups at the top health agencies as “theater” and defended his leadership in the Fox News interview.
“I’ve come to realize that those hearings are performative. They’re theater. And, you know, they’re not the kind of debate or open conversation that democracy would give us at its ideal,” he said Sunday.
Kennedy also accused senators on the panel that played a role in his confirmation of being beholden to pharmaceutical companies, without citing evidence, saying “they don’t want to hear the answers to the questions that they ask me. They want to make a little speech and then shut me down.”
Defending his ousting of Dr. Susan Monarez as director of the CDC, which led to the resignation of several other top health officials, Kennedy told Fox News “we need new blood, and we need new people who are committed to public health and integrity and gold standard science, and the Trump administration is going to make sure that happens.”
The CDC has long spearheaded work in public health both in the US as well as worldwide. Its efforts include vaccination campaigns to fight preventable infectious diseases, helping to eradicate smallpox across the globe and working on prevention and research efforts to stop the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The agency has also linked federal and state efforts to combat foodborne illness, and worked to decrease childhood lead poisoning as well as promote education on tobacco control to reduce levels of smoking.
Last week more than 1,000 current and former employees of HHS called for Kennedy’s resignation, arguing that his leadership has “put the health of all Americans at risk.”
“Secretary Kennedy continues to endanger the nation’s health,” the employees wrote, citing actions including the facilitation of Monarez’s firing, the resignations of key, longtime CDC leaders, the appointment of what they called “political ideologues” to influential roles in vaccine policy, as well as the rescinding of emergency use authorizations for Covid-19 vaccines without, they said, “providing the data or methods used to reach such a decision.”
Kennedy was also asked Sunday about news that an upcoming HHS report is likely to link the development of autism in children to Tylenol use during pregnancy, which he called “preliminary.”
“We are trying to get the information to the public as soon as we have it. There are years and years of studies about that we are looking at today for the first time, and we’re finding a number of different indicators, a number of different signals,” he said, later adding, “any speculation about what’s in those reports, at this point, is speculative.”
Also Sunday, the World Health Organization made a public show of support for the CDC, with Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, saying in a social media post that the US agency’s work is “invaluable and must be protected.”
“When I was Ethiopia’s Health Minister, I sent a team to Atlanta to learn from the US CDC, and a significant part of what the Ethiopian Public Health Agency does is based on these best practices,” Ghebreyesus wrote. “The establishment of the Africa CDC, which I proposed at the African Union summit in Abuja in 2013 when I was Foreign Minister, was also inspired by the US CDC.”
CNN’s Nadia Kounang contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional information.