Is America's health secretary RFK Jr a danger to public health?
Americast
BBC
4.2 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Monday’s White House announcement made headlines worldwide when Donald Trump - flanked by his health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior - said taking Tylenol, also known as paracetamol, during pregnancy was linked to a "very increased risk" of autism in children. Medical experts have strongly pushed back on the claims, saying there is not strong enough scientific evidence to show a link, with some calling the president's comments dangerous.
In the past few months, several of the main scientists in charge of public health in America have either been sacked by the health secretary, or have resigned in protest at what they say are decisions based on ideology, not scientific data.
In today’s episode, Anthony and Marianna chat to Dr Debra Houry, a former chief medical officer at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, who spent a decade at the organisation before resigning in protest over RFK Jr’s leadership. She tells us about the events that pushed her towards resignation, the differences between working with Trump’s first and second administrations, and why she believes RFK Jr poses a risk to public health.
HOSTS • Marianna Spring, Social Media Investigations correspondent • Anthony Zurcher, North America correspondent
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | On Newscast, we are not in the business of telling you how to think. |
| 0:11.5 | We get the brightest minds from across the BBC to chat through the biggest stories. |
| 0:16.1 | You should leave feeling smarter about all the bonkers things in the news. |
| 0:19.7 | Listen to Newscast every day on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:23.0 | Okay, we're going to be talking about some big questions in today's episodes. |
| 0:26.6 | We always talk about big questions, but these are particularly big ones, |
| 0:29.3 | ones about science, about health, about disease, about medicine, and the role of public health |
| 0:35.8 | in America, and particularly what has been happening |
| 0:38.9 | recently with vaccines. At the center of all of this is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is the |
| 0:46.3 | Secretary of Health in the Trump administration, and he has been promising a radical transparency |
| 0:52.4 | in his department. We will scrutinize the chemical additives in his department. |
| 0:55.0 | We will scrutinize the chemical additives in our food supply. |
| 0:59.0 | We will remove financial conflicts of interest from our agencies. |
| 1:04.0 | We will create an honest, unbiased, gold standard science at HHS, |
| 1:09.0 | accountable to the president, to Congress, and to the American people. |
| 1:14.7 | We will reverse the chronic disease epidemic and put the nation back on the road to good health. |
| 1:21.0 | But critics say he has been delivering something very different. In fact, some of the main scientists |
| 1:26.3 | in charge of public health in America |
| 1:28.7 | have either been forced out or directly sacked by RFK Jr. in recent weeks. And they say that |
| 1:36.6 | they are being forced out because RFK Jr. is making decisions based not on public health, on |
| 1:42.2 | science, but on ideology. |
... |
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