Happy Monday listeners.

For Scientific Americans Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Felton.

Let's kick off the week by catching up on the latest science news.

First, we've got a brief update from Tanya Lewis, a senior editor covering health and medicine at Scientific American.

She's here to unpack the news that President-elect Donald Trump plans to put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services.

What follows is a brief conversation, Tanya and I recorded a couple days back.

Tanya, what is RFK Jr's background in regard to health?

RFK Jr. is an environmental lawyer by training, but he has no medical background.

And he has very strong anti-vaccine views. He's argued that vaccines cause autism,

which is, of course, debunked. He's also made lots of false and exaggerated claims about the dangers of water fluoridation.

He's argued for unproven and potentially dangerous therapies like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for COVID,

and chelation, which is a method of removing heavy metals from the body for autism.

And, of course, it doesn't work for that.

He also wants to end what he calls the FDA's, quote, war on public health, which includes

regulation of raw milk and some unproven stem cell treatments.

He also wants to stop the, quote, revolving door between industry and

government and regulate ultra-processed foods, although it's not really clear how he would actually

do those things. And so what does it actually mean that he's been nominated into this role?

I think his nomination suggests that the Trump administration has very little regard for established medical science.

His views on vaccines and fluoride just really go against the consensus of most public health experts and decades of research on their safety and efficacy.

And it's not yet clear that he will even be confirmed by the Senate.

So he may not even have a chance to implement this agenda.

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