What RFK, Jr., Could Mean for Public Health, and How Tobacco Use Has Dropped Unevenly

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Donald Trump has nominated RFK, Jr., to run the Department of Health and Human Services, a position that includes oversight of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. Senior health and medicine editor Tanya Lewis explains what that would mean for antivaccine policies, food safety and unproven therapies that Kennedy backs. Tobacco use is down across the U.S., but the drop has been uneven across groups. Astronomers have released the first-ever close up image of a star—and scientists are excited over an unexpected ring. Plus, studies of chimpanzees explore the role of social contagion on their behaviors and point to play in adult chimps. Recommended reading: RFK, Jr., Is a Bad Prescription for U.S. Public Health | Opinion Chimps Share Knowledge like Humans Do, Spurring Innovation E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest senior health and medicine editor Tanya Lewis. Our show is edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:27.8	slash UK slash AI for people.
0:36.8	Happy Monday listeners.
0:38.5	For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.
0:42.0	Let's kick off the week by catching up on the latest science news.
0:48.9	First, we've got a brief update from Tanya Lewis, a senior editor covering health and medicine at Scientific American.
0:55.2	She's here to unpack the news that President-elect Donald Trump plans to put Robert F. Kennedy,
0:59.8	Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. What follows is a brief conversation
1:04.7	Tanya and I recorded a couple days back. Tanya, what is RFK Jr's background in regard to health?
1:11.8	RFK Jr. is an environmental lawyer by training, but he has no medical background.
1:16.7	And he has very strong anti-vaccine views. He's argued that vaccines cause autism, which is, of course, debunked.
1:24.1	He's also made lots of false and exaggerated claims about the dangers of water fluoridation.
1:29.5	He's argued for unproven and potentially dangerous therapies like hydroxychloroquine and
1:34.5	ivermectin for COVID and chelation, which is a method of removing heavy metals from the body
1:40.2	for autism.
	...

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