Without question, the United States of America leads the world in health and agricultural innovation. We have created a system that has room for improvement but overall is recognized as a global innovator. That leadership will fade now that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been confirmed as the new secretary of Health and Human Service (HHS).

This disaster was not on my Dystopia 2025 Bingo Card. Spawned from Democrat royalty, RFK, Jr. and the faux health agency he created, Children’s Health Defense, has become a well-known face of science denialism. He is the global pinup critic of vaccines, those given to children and the COVID-19 shots.

Some of his particularly rich claims are that vaccines cause autism; COVID vaccines have killed more people than the virus itself; 5G technology exacerbates the spread of COVID; and they turn women infertile. As for the origins of the virus, he told a private gathering that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.” It was engineered, he said, to spare Jews and Chinese.

Among his other wackier claims: he has suggested that antidepressants are behind the rise in school shootings and that the use on farms of atrazine, an herbicide, could explain why more young people are identifying as transgender and switching sexes. He has repeatedly maintained that HIV is not the only cause of AIDS. And he’s promoted the baseless belief, popular among the fringiest science rejectionists, that Wi-Fi radiation and 5G cause cancer. And we’ve only scratched the surface of his bizarre and unscientific statements. He kept a lot of those fact-checking organizations busy over the past few years.

Understandably he has faced criticism from almost every legitimate science organization, including:

• American Academy of Pediatrics:
  • *“The spread of vaccine misinformation by groups like Children’s Health Defense endangers children’s health by discouraging vaccination.”
• The World Health Organization (WHO):
  • “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense is one of the most prominent organizations spreading vaccine misinformation online.”
• Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British and American digital fact-checker
  • “Misinformation about vaccines, propagated by organizations like Children’s Health Defense, is as dangerous as the diseases they help to spread.”

And then there is this delicious quote from a source inside the Trump campaign before Kennedy quit the race. In an article in Salon titled “Crackpot fight! Trump is worried about RFK Jr. running for president,” the newly-minted HHS scretary Kennedy was described by a Trump aid as an “anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.”

The transactional relationhip between Trump and RFK Jr.

It’s safe to say that the only thing Trump cares about is whether RFK, Jr. will be a loyal lackey in his administration. Any doubts about that were answered during his Pinocchio-like confirmation hearings. Their political marriage is is as cynical as it is dangerous to the American people. The key thing RFK, Jr. shares in common with his prospective new boss: he makes batty statements about science and files nuisance suit after nuisance suit against those who criticize him. Most are filed by his faux health information, Children’s Health Defense. The British and American project has written that Kennedy’s CHD is “one of the most prominent organizations spreading vaccine misinformation online.”Among CHD’s more notrious suits:

• In 2019, CHD represented parents in a lawsuit challenging New York City’s mandatory measles vaccination order.
• In 2021, CHD filed a lawsuit against Rutgers University challenging its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students. A federal court dismissed the suit in September 2022.
• In 2023, CHD filed an antitrust lawsuit against Reuters, AP, BBC, and The Washington Post, alleging collusion to suppress certain viewpoints.
• In 2023, CHD sued the NIH for failing to produce documents related to correspondence about adverse events following COVID-19 vaccinations.

RFK. Jr. is a dupe for the Church of Scientology

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a run-of-the-mill tort lawyer who has leveraged his family’s notoriety to promote crackpot science. He’s a litigation leach, a settlement shark, a gavel ghoul, a verdict vulture, a courtoom parasite—all these appelations apply. RFK, Jr. amassed a fortune by waging relentless, fear-mongering legal campaigns against companies like General Electric, Exxon Mobil, SoCal Gas, Duke Energy, DuPont, 3M, major pharmaceutical firms, and Monsanto—skimming off billions in settlements while distorting science to serve his bizarre ideological agenda. Masquerading as an environmental crusader, he cynically exploits public fears, twisting risk assessment and chemical safety science. His rejection of sound, evidence-based science—from vaccines to anti-depressant drugs to common chemicals—reveals a pattern of opportunistic, anti-science activism that undermines technological progress and rational policy-making in favor of sensationalism and personal profit.

Other than that he’s a sterling choice for HHS secretary.

One can often judge a person’s character by his or her partnerships. Sadly, in the case of RFK, Jr. many of his bizarre views on health, chemicals and agriculture are welcomed by influential left but increasingly wacky environmental organizations, like Environmental Working Group and its paid-by-tort lawyers lackey, former journalist Carey Gillam—fired by Reuters for ethical lapses because she willfully distorted science in her “reporting”—who also writes for The Guardian (without dislosing her financial ties to tort lawyers who fund her columns), US Right to Know, Organic Consumers Association, Union of Concerned Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council and other extremist activists that have become water bucket carriers for tort lawyers shaking down corporations that make safe but controversial products.

RFK. Jr.’s key partner in his tort escapades is the Church of Scientology, more specificaly its law firm Wisner Baum. Wisner Baum is among the most notorious ambulance-chasing tort litigation firms in the United States. It has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in settlment fees by targeting Pfizer, the maker of Zofloft, alleging that the company concealed evidence regarding the drug’s efficacy and potential risks, and Merck, the makers of Gardasil. Most notoriously the Scientology law firm partnered with RFK, Jr. in targeting Monsanto, the maker of the weedkiller Roundup (generically known as glyphosate), claiming it causes cancer in farmers. Not one independent risk agency has concluded that glyphoate is a carcinogen—Health Canada wrote after two recent reviews of Roundup that “No pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed”. Yet Kennedy and his Scientology compatriots bambazooled jurors into shaking down the agricultural industry for hundreds of billions of dollars in damages.

RFK, Jr. celebrating Roundup victory with attorneys at Wisner Baum, the Church of Scientology tort firm

The US tort system is broken when it comes to adjudicating science risk and chemicals, which is why it has become the go-to venue for legal leeches like RFK, Jr. and the Church of Scientology. Other countries, such as Canada and Australia, do not countenance such legal shenanigans. For example,

The Kennedy—Lysenko connection

RFK, Jr. is also poised to usher in a dark chapter of food and farming agriculture. His views mirror the early days of the Soviet Union after Stalin picked the renegade scientist Tofrim Lysenko to lead agricultural and health efforts. Lysenko rejected mainstream Darwinist ideas. He jailed and executed scientists, His agricultural policies were based on bad science and magical, misdirected hypotheses that led to mass starvation and a permanent setback in Russian agriculture. The suppression of free inquiry and the politicization of science left a legacy that undermined Soviet agriculture for decades. Lysenko’s reign is directly linked to millions of deaths in the late 1940s and ‘50s, all because of his rejection of the scientific consensus on medicine and health.

Trofim Lysenko measures wheat at a collective farm near Odessa Credit: Hulton, Deutsch, Corbis

The parallels between Kennedy and Lysenko are uncanny, but unlike the Stalin-Lysenko relationship, Trump and Kennedy have voiced starkly contrasting views on numerous issues. Kennedy has claimed he wants to impose strict regulations over what he calls Big Ag and Big Food; Trump campaigned on a promise to deregulate everything, and has been hailed by the far right as a champion of Corporate America. It will be interesting to see how two titans of disinformation work through starkly opposite positions. Our guess: opportunism of the worst kind will help them find common ground, science and the public interest e damned.

RFK, Jr also maligns crop chemicals, all of which are tightly regulated by the agencies that he is now attempting to hobble. His stated intentions to “provide an off-ramp” to large-acreage agronomic farmers and promote organic and ‘regenerative’ methods has a catastrophic parallel. In 2019, under the guidance of Indian philosopher Vandana Shiva, the government of Sri Lanka abruptly banned synthetic fertilizers and many crop protection chemicals. Within two years, ag production dwindled, exports dried up, rioting erupted, and the economy crashed. It’s still in a depression.

There is little doubt that RFK, Jr. will fan the tinfoil rejection of the science that truly makes America great. His simplistic contrarian views are simmering among the masses, apparently content with blowing up so much that works in American science to satisfy the blood lust of those purportedly concerned about corruption and waste. While Kennedy pushes bans and restrictions on food and farm chemistries based on baseless claims that they are responsible for cancers, autism, bizarre illnesses and chronic disease, science research and innovation will suffer, imperiling public health and America’s global agricultural superiority.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is far more than a dangerous distraction and perfect target of ridicule by late-night comedy talk shows. He is not an expert poised to solve America’s health problems; he is a public menance, poised to usher in a scary, science-rejectionist era when Infowars, Food Babes and the Church of Scientology will have more influence on agriulture and public health policy than scientists, farmers and physicians.

Kevin M. Folta is a professor in the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida. Twitter: @kevinfolta

Jon Entine is the founder and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, author of 7 books, and winner of 19 major journalism awards, including two Emmys. Twitter: @JonEntine