Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was featured in The 74, in “‘How Far Will RFK Go?’ 2 Experts Talk Kennedy’s Potential Impact on Child Health,” with Leana Wen, written by Amanda Geduld.
Following is an excerpt:
Amid a flurry of controversial cabinet appointments and nominations, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., still stands out for his unconventional medical and scientific beliefs and a history of spreading conspiracy theories, including around vaccinations.
The former independent presidential candidate has a complicated past as a member of a famous Democratic political dynasty that includes his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, and his father, U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, both assassinated in his youth. He struggled with addiction, and an arrest for heroin possession in the 1980s led him to volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council to fulfill community service hours, which jump-started his career in environmental advocacy.
Then, about two decades ago, Kennedy became interested in vaccine conspiracy theories, including the disproven link between vaccines and autism, which has become a focal point of much of his work since. He has peddled other baseless claims, including that Wi-Fi causes cancer, that chemicals in water can lead to children becoming transgender and that AIDS may not be caused by HIV. In 2021, he was named one of the top spreaders of misinformation about COVID vaccines on social media.
Doctors and advocates have expressed alarm about the impact he could have on the department, while some have applauded his more mainstream views, such as a focus on preventative care through healthy eating and exercise and a commitment to removing processed foods from school lunches.
His beliefs and proposals are particularly relevant for kids, amid heated debates around school vaccination policies and a decline nationally in the percentage of kindergarteners who have gotten state-required vaccinations.
If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy would take control of an agency with one of largest federal budgets — $1.7 trillion — that employs about 90,000 people across 13 agencies, including The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, (the latter pays for a host of health care and in-school therapies for eligible children), the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To better understand the pediatric and school-based health care implications of some of Kennedy’s proposals, The 74’s Amanda Geduld spoke with Leana Wen, an emergency physician and contributing opinions columnist for The Washington Post. The parent of two school-aged kids is also a professor of health policy and management at George Washington University, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and Baltimore’s former health commissioner.
Geduld then spoke with medical legal expert Richard H. Hughes IV about how likely Kennedy’s confirmation is and what kind of power he would wield if confirmed. Hughes is a professor at George Washington University’s law school, where he teaches a course on vaccine law, and a partner at the firm Epstein, Becker & Green. He formerly worked as the vice president of public policy at Moderna — one of the co-producers of the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines — guiding the company’s policy strategy during the pandemic.
