What alarms health experts most about RFK Jr. is what he’s leaving out of his health policy proposals

“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” former President Trump promised Sunday at his rally at Madison Square Garden. “I’m going to get him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”

“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” former President Donald Trump promised Sunday at his rally at Madison Square Garden. “I’m going to get him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.” Trump was talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former political rival who Trump has increasingly been promising will take a health role in his administration if he’s elected to a second term. Trump’s plans have been met with alarm in the public health community, not so much for the specific policy proposals Kennedy has communicated as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” platform as much as for the key issue he’s been leaving out: vaccines. “I think we’re seeing an effort at rebranding himself in the weeks before the election, but it shouldn’t be taken seriously,” said Dr. Jason Schwartz, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health. Kennedy, who founded the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, which promotes anti-vaccine material such as the recent documentary “Vaxed III: Authorized to Kill,” has more recently been focused on chronic disease, not mentioning his signature issue in a September opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal or in an appearance Tuesday on “Fox and Friends.” Instead, Kennedy has advocated for regulating chemicals in food – including an idea to swap tallow fat in for seed oils to make McDonald’s french fries healthier – and limiting access to soda and processed foods through school lunches and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.