RFK Jr. delivers on food bans while dismantling the infrastructure that keeps Americans alive
We spent the weekend making fun of RFK Jr.‘s love letters to Olivia Nuzzi - “Thanks to Bobby, I am now aware of something called felching,” wrote her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza, and no, I will not be elaborating - so I thought I would check in on how badly he’s destroying the CDC.
The answer: spectacularly.
Last Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly rewrote its website to contradict the scientific consensus that vaccines do not cause autism. The new language says “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” Three former CDC officials described it as the day the CDC died. Dr. Atul Gawande said the CDC website “has been lobotomized.” Demetre Daskalakis, who ran the CDC’s immunization division before resigning in August, put it bluntly: the CDC “is now a zombie organization.”
Here’s the thing. Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Health Committee, cast the deciding vote in the Senate Finance Committee to advance Kennedy after securing a promise - one he put on the record in a Senate floor speech - that Kennedy would not remove language from the CDC website stating that vaccines do not cause autism. Kennedy kept the header. Then he added an asterisk. The asterisk leads to a footnote explaining that the header remains only “due to an agreement” with Cassidy. The rest of the page contradicts it entirely.
Kennedy admitted to the New York Times that he personally ordered the change. Health secretaries don’t normally order changes to scientific guidance themselves. That’s what career scientists do. Kennedy made an exception for his own pet conspiracy theory.
The pattern here is consistent. Cassidy asked for a promise. Kennedy gave him an asterisk. Six former U.S. Surgeons General, from both parties, warned in October that Kennedy’s actions “are endangering the health of the nation” - and Trump’s own former surgeon general, Jerome Adams, said Trump should fire him. Cassidy’s answer to the website change was a post on X saying vaccines “will not cause autism” and anything else is “wrong, irresponsible” - without once naming Kennedy.
Meanwhile, measles is doing exactly what epidemiologists predicted. The CDC reports 1,753 confirmed cases in 2025, up from 285 total in 2024. Three people have died - two of them unvaccinated kids in Texas. The Americas just lost their measles elimination status after Canada had sustained transmission for 12 months. The U.S. is on track to follow by January if outbreaks in Arizona, Utah, and South Carolina aren’t contained before the holidays. If measles keeps spreading through January 20, that marks a full year of continuous transmission. We earned measles elimination status in 2000. We’re about to lose it because vaccination rates have dropped below herd immunity thresholds.
Kennedy’s response to the Texas outbreak this spring was to visit the outbreak zone and talk up vitamin A supplements.
Anyway, you might have also heard about the food dye bans. The FDA announced it will phase out petroleum-based synthetic dyes - Red 3, Yellow 5, Blue 1 - by the end of 2026.
These chemicals have been in European crosshairs for years while American regulators shrugged. Kennedy is also going after the GRAS loophole, that cozy arrangement where food companies declare their own additives “generally recognized as safe” without FDA review. Health activists on the left have wanted this for decades.
The food dye stuff is popular. But also, 82% of Americans still support the MMR vaccine, even after months of Kennedy undermining confidence in it. The disconnect between what sounds healthy - banning Red 40 - and what actually keeps children alive - maintaining vaccination infrastructure - is exactly where Kennedy operates. He can announce natural alternatives to food colorings in the same month his handpicked vaccine advisory committee considers restricting COVID shots for everyone under 75.
The CDC has lost about a third of its workforce since Kennedy took over. Director Susan Monarez was fired after, her lawyers say, she refused to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives.” Her replacement is Jim O’Neill, the deputy HHS Secretary, who is not a scientist. When asked about the Arizona and Utah outbreaks threatening elimination status, the CDC directed reporters to O’Neill’s statement on X.
Former CDC chief medical officer Debra Houry put it simply: “Scientists were not involved in any of these decisions, and when you remove science from scientific information you get ideology.”
Kennedy often describes his approach as “gold standard science” and “radical transparency.” But transparency is not amplifying fringe studies, and science is not an open invitation to relitigate settled questions because political leadership dislikes the answers. This is decision-based evidence-making.
He can point to states passing laws limiting additives in school lunches while measles spreads through unvaccinated communities in those same states. He calls it restoring trust in public health. The scientists fleeing HHS, the parents of dead children in Texas, and the epidemiologists watching elimination status slip away call it something else entirely.
SOURCES
How RFK Jr., America’s celebrity health secretary, is steamrolling science
Health secretary RFK Jr. abruptly fires CDC vaccine advisory panel
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5428533/rfk-jr-vaccine-advisory-committee-acip
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-removes-members-cdc-immunization-advisory-committee-acip/
https://fortune.com/2025/04/06/measles-outbreak-deaths-rfk-jr-unvaccinated-west-texas-500-cases/
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5372637/food-dyes-ban-fda-rfk-kennedy
https://www.commondreams.org/news/rfk-measles-elimination
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/support-measles-vaccination-drops-amid-growing-confusion-about-disease-us-poll-shows
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.
Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said every living former surgeon general had called for Kennedy’s removal - six of them warned that his actions are endangering the nation’s health, and one, Jerome Adams, said Trump should fire him. It said three children had died of measles - three people died, two of them kids. It said Atul Gawande called the CDC “lobotomized” - he said that about its website. It slightly misquoted the CDC’s new autism wording. And it gave quotes from Demetre Daskalakis, Bill Cassidy and Debra Houry that couldn’t be backed up - those lines now use their own words from KFF Health News, Cassidy’s post on X and CIDRAP.
Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say Cassidy’s vote advanced Kennedy in the Finance Committee and his promise went on the record in a Senate floor speech, that health secretaries don’t normally order these changes, that the vitamin A tour was Kennedy’s answer to the Texas outbreak this spring, and that it’s Monarez’s lawyers who say why she was fired.