At a Make America Healthy Again event, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Vice President JD Vance that artificial intelligence would free Americans from reliance on public health experts. Kennedy claimed AI tools are 'better informed than any doctor' and predicted they would contradict official guidance on masks, social distancing and vaccine transmission. A test of Google's Gemini chatbot on masks contradicted Kennedy's claim, confirming that masks do reduce spread of respiratory infections.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-30
At the Make America Healthy Again Conference, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Vice President JD Vance that AI chatbots are now 'better informed' than human physicians, according to the New York Times. He said AI could let ordinary Americans challenge public health guidance on masks, social distancing and vaccines, and claimed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told him it would be 'malpractice' for a doctor to prescribe without consulting AI first.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-30
The CDC has not finalized procurement decisions allowing states to order this season's COVID-19 vaccines through the Vaccines for Children program, which covers roughly 52 percent of US children who are uninsured, underinsured, Medicaid-eligible, or Indigenous. The delay also affects at least 11 states and one US territory that use VFC contracts to buy vaccines universally for all children regardless of insurance status. HHS, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., confirmed the procurement decisions remain unfinished but did not explain the reason for the delay.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-23
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a crowd at the Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group he co-founded, that his agency is examining aircraft emissions in relation to so-called 'chemtrails.' The crowd applauded as he described looking into potential health impacts from these emissions, echoing a long-debunked conspiracy theory that planes spray chemicals for population control or weather manipulation.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-18
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. named eight new members to the 16-seat US Preventive Services Task Force, the federal panel that grades preventive care services like cancer screenings and statins on an A-to-D scale that determines insurance coverage. The appointments come after Kennedy spent over a year sidelining the panel, canceling meetings and firing two of its leaders earlier this year. Several new appointees share ideological alignment with Kennedy and the Trump administration, including critics of COVID-19 vaccines and gender-affirming care, plus a non-physician health economist.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-17
US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to give a keynote speech at a sold-out Washington, DC conference hosted by Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group he formerly led. He'll share the stage with Andrew Wakefield, the discredited researcher who lost his medical license after publishing a fraudulent study falsely linking the MMR vaccine to autism.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-14
A South Carolina coroner's office confirmed that a six-week-old infant's death was caused by measles, after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had disputed the CDC's inclusion of measles deaths in its official count. Kennedy directed new CDC director Erica Schwartz to remove the deaths from the agency's public data, and while she complied, internal records reportedly still list them.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-04
Reuters and Inside Medicine report that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed CDC director Erica Schwartz to delete two measles deaths—a newborn and a child in Pennsylvania—from the agency's public data, which she did without objection despite staff having already confirmed the deaths were measles-related. Even so, an internal CDC system called One CDC Data Platform, accessible to health officials nationwide, still records both deaths.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-03
Senate Democrats including Ed Markey and Ron Wyden say newly released documents show Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave false statements to the Senate during his 2025 confirmation hearings about his 2019 trip to Samoa, where he was a leading anti-vaccine activist before a measles outbreak killed 83 people, mostly young children. Wyden called the discrepancy a crime and urged the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation, while Markey called it part of a broader pattern of dishonesty.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-08-28
The Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has issued a Request for Information exploring changes to how vaccines are classified as routine, risk-based, or subject to shared clinical decision-making. No formal rule changes have been made yet, but the 10-page document invites public comment through September 20 on potential new labels that could sound more conditional than current designations.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-08-24
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