“There are entire departments like the nutrition department at the FDA … that have to go, that are not doing their job. They’re not protecting our kids. Why do we have Froot Loops in this country that have 18 or 19 ingredients, and you go to Canada and it’s got two or three?” Kennedy said in an NBC News interview.
But despite his opposition to vaccines, “I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines,” he said.
“If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away. People ought to have choice and that choice ought to be informed by the best information,” he said. “So I’m going to make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them.”
Kennedy could seek to influence vaccine coverage or approvals, however.
In the same interview, he said, “I think fluoride is on its way out,” with Trump recently remaining open about a ban on fluoride in drinking water.
But it’s yet to be seen whether Trump will give Kennedy that kind of power — or any at all.
Trump said ahead of the election that he would consider adding Kennedy to his administration’s second term if Kennedy ended his own presidential campaign and endorsed Trump, which Kennedy did a few days later before joining Trump’s transition team.
The Trump team has been reluctant to publicly endorse RFK Jr.’s proposals or to say how he might serve in a Trump White House.
Even Kennedy said the details were unclear when asked during a Fox News interview ahead of the election if Trump would nominate him as secretary of Health and Human Services.
“We don’t know what I’m going to do,” Kennedy said. “I talked to the president about it [Saturday] and he asked me what I wanted, and I said, ‘We’re developing a proposal now.'”
Today, he said his goal was to target what he sees as “corruption” in the HHS agencies.
“To eliminate the agencies, as long as it requires congressional approval, I wouldn’t be doing that,” he said, proposing the potential role of White House health care czar.
Medical Design & Outsourcing: AdvaMed congratulates Trump, but big questions remain for medtech regulation, import taxes and payments
