Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with

hearings today before the U.S. Senate for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to become the next Secretary of

Health and Human Services, which was preceded by a video and letter sent to the senators by

RFK Jr.'s cousin Caroline Kennedy, which provided a devastating portrait of a predator, a fraud, a grifter, and a hypocrite

who got his own younger brother hooked on heroin causing his death.

Joining us to discuss how Kennedy is poised to become the purveyor of death for a Trump

administration that will bring death and destruction to the country and the world is Dr. Amesh

Adolja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.

His work focuses on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness and biosecurity,

and he has served on U.S. government panels tasked with developing guidelines for the treatment

of plague, botulism, and anthrax in mashed casualty settings and the system of care for infectious

disease emergencies and as an external advisor to the New York City Health and Hospital Emergency

Management High Infectious Disease Training, as well as on a FEMA working

group on nuclear disaster recovery. He is also a member of the National Quality

Forum's Infectious Disease Standing Committee and the U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services National Disaster Medical System. Then we'll discuss the spread of medical disinformation and conspiracy theories

and speak with Dr. Peter Katerna, a clinical professor of medicine and infectious diseases

at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He has worked in the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention and as an EIS officer studying viral diseases and

doing epidemic investigation and has held appointments at Louisiana State University's National

...