Vaccine critic RFK Jr. confirmed as health secretary

WASHINGTON: The Republican-controlled US Senate approved Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary on Thursday, disregarding alarm from the medical community over his history of promoting vaccine misinformation and denying scientific facts.

Known widely as “RFK Jr,” the 71-year-old nephew of the late president John F. Kennedy secured the nomination by a vote of 52-48, becoming the latest contentious addition to President Donald Trump´s cabinet.

Former Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell voted no, standing as the sole Republican dissenter. Kennedy now leads a department overseeing more than 80,000 employees and a $1.7 trillion budget, just as scientists warn of the growing threat of bird flu triggering a human pandemic, while declining vaccination rates mean once vanquished childhood diseases are re-emerging.

He was previously an environmental lawyer who sued chemical giant Monsanto and accused climate-change deniers of being traitors. But he has spent much of the past two decades touting conspiracy theories from linking childhood vaccines to autism and suggesting the Covid virus spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, to casting doubt on whether germs cause infectious diseases.

Yet it was his shift toward Republican positions -- particularly on abortion, which he once supported but has since signaled a willingness to further restrict -- that ultimately won over conservative lawmakers wary of his past.