A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
When you have a question about something, what do you do? You ask an expert. In the Trump administration, being an expert in something doesn't necessarily get you very far - in fact, quite the opposite. For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the health secretary, despite a history of endorsing a variety of conspiracy theories that have been proven false, including that Wi-Fi causes cancer and that HIV does not cause AIDS. So how has distrust in experts defined how Kennedy runs the federal health agencies? NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin is here to explain. So, Selena, just recap for us a little bit of what Kennedy has done since he was sworn in.
SELENA SIMMONS-DUFFIN, BYLINE: Well, weeks after assuming the role, Kennedy undertook a dramatic shakeup of HHS staff. Those are the in-house experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. About 20,000 staff are gone, and that includes rank-and-file employees as well as leadership and top scientists. It has been a chaotic process. Some teams were brought back. Some firings are on hold because of legal challenges. And as he's done all of this, Kennedy has disparaged HHS employees, blaming them for the American population's relatively poor health. He suggested they're not just ineffective; they're maliciously warping the truth. At other times, he's said they are sock puppets for industry. Here he is explaining why he fired CDC's panel of outside vaccine experts. He's talking with Tucker Carlson.
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ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: We fired that board because they were - it was an utterly - it was just an instrument. It was a sock puppet for the industry that it was supposed to regulate.
MARTÍNEZ: So, Selena, I mean, how does Kennedy's distrust play out in terms of how he runs the agency beyond staffing?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: It underpins many of Kennedy's actions - making policy, canceling grants to researchers around the country. He talks a lot about the ideological capture of scientists, and he'll cast doubt on a whole body of evidence this way. He says he wants more, quote, "gold-standard" science, implying that what has come before was not up to snuff and that he is the arbiter of the science that counts.
MARTÍNEZ: And just to be clear, Kennedy is an attorney.
KENNEDY: Yeah, that's right. He's not a scientist or a doctor. You know, I often think about a moment during Kennedy's confirmation process. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia mentions Kennedy's history of endorsing conspiracy theories, and here's what Kennedy said.
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KENNEDY: And my father told me when I was 13 years old - he said people in authority lie and that the job of a citizen in every democracy is to maintain...
TIM KAINE: You're an authority.
KENNEDY: ...A fierce skepticism.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: You know, survey research tells us the public already has trust issues with public health agencies like CDC and FDA. Kennedy embraces that distrust and cultivates more of it even as he leads those agencies. You know, probably the most prominent example of that is on vaccine policy - changing COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, firing those CDC vaccine advisers and more.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So tell us more about that.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: You know, when he was going through the confirmation process, Kennedy promised to temper his actions to make them more in line with the scientific consensus and public opinion, and that doesn't seem to be what he's doing. So far, members of Congress who voted to confirm him based on those promises aren't holding him to it - at least not publicly - although Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana did say on social media that it was unfortunate that Kennedy recently canceled about $500 million in research grants into mRNA vaccines. Experts in infectious diseases and biosecurity used words like baffling and dangerous to describe that decision. But deriding those very experts has driven Kennedy's career, and now he's in a position to make policy that defies them.
You know, I should say we have asked HHS many times for an interview with Secretary Kennedy, but he hasn't taken us up on that invitation as of yet.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin. Thanks a lot.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: Thank you.
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