What will Trump's MAHA mean?

Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson Associated Press After abandoning his own campaign for the U.S. presidency, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rallied behind Republican Donald Trump and has consistently conveyed his often misguided beliefs about public health.

Pauline Gravel

Published at 0:00

• United States

By launching the slogan MAHA — Make America Healthy Again — during the election campaign, President Donald Trump wanted to show that he had the ambition to shake things up in terms of public health. In the final days before the election, he clarified some of his intentions on this subject that seriously worry public health experts.

The one that most frightens the scientific community is his intention to entrust control of public health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, which provides public funding for biomedical research, to Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccination activist and conspiracy theorist.

After abandoning his own campaign for the US presidency, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rallied behind Republican Donald Trump and has consistently promoted his often misguided public health beliefs. Kennedy has been peddling the study by British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield that falsely claimed to have found a link between autism and the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. While the results of this study have been clearly disproven, he nevertheless claims that vaccination is associated with an increase in the prevalence of autism and that it leads to developmental delays and other health problems.

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Kennedy has also been adamant about approving any COVID-19 vaccine for all populations. He even petitioned the FDA to block it from using the Emergency Use Authorization, a federal law that has expedited the COVID-19 vaccine approval process that would have otherwise taken at least a year.

Kennedy has repeatedly criticized the FDA’s vaccine review process on social media, an agency whose governance he has promised to overhaul. This raises concerns that he will appoint people who share his scientifically unfounded beliefs to the agency.

Kennedy also announced that President Trump would stop fluoridating Americans’ drinking water because, according to him, fluoride added to tap water causes various diseases. Water fluoridation is one of the flagship public health measures of the 20th century. It prevents tooth decay and its effectiveness is particularly visible in vulnerable communities.

During his campaign speeches, as well as during his victory, Trump suggested that he had full confidence in Kennedy and would give him free rein. “I’m going to let him go wild on the food and on medicines,” he said.

In the Washington Post, Stanford University professor and physician Kavita Patel fears that “this rhetoric will erode public trust in these critical public health measures [such as childhood vaccinations and water fluoridation], and put millions of vulnerable people at risk if these ideas are translated into public policy.”

In addition, Donald Trump has also repeatedly pledged during his campaign to ban all federal funding for gender-affirming care, including sex reassignment surgeries, or even ban them altogether for minors. On his website, he promises that on his first day in the White House, he will issue an executive order “urging every federal agency to cease any program that promotes the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”

Mollyann Brodie, president of KFF, a nonpartisan health care think tank, said, “These anti-public health statements that Republicans made late in the campaign may have been a strategy to win over voters—often young, less-educated men—who were skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines,” she told the Washington Post.

One can only hope that these measures, announced to bait certain categories of voters, will not be implemented.