(SRN NEWS/AP) – To earn the vote he needed to become the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a special promise to a U.S. senator: He would not change the nation’s current vaccination schedule.
But on Tuesday, speaking for the first time to thousands of U.S. Health and Human Services (HSS) agency employees, he vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.
“Nothing is going to be off limits,” Kennedy (AP file photo) said, adding that pesticides, food additives, microplastics, antidepressants and the electromagnetic waves emitted by cellphones and microwaves also would be studied.
Kennedy’s remarks, which circulated on social media, were delivered during a welcome ceremony for the new health secretary at the agency’s headquarters in Washington as a measles outbreak among mostly unvaccinated people raged in West Texas.
ONE OTHER THING:
HHS issued guidance updating its official definitions of terms such as sex, female, and male on Wednesday following President Donald Trump’s executive orders limiting transgender rights.
The guidance reiterates the Trump administration’s stance that male and female are the only two sexes, and that they cannot be changed. It is one of the first actions taken by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. following his confirmation last week as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“This administration is bringing back common sense and restoring biological truth to the federal government,” Kennedy said. “The prior administration’s policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over.”
Trump seeks to end what he says was the government’s promotion of “gender ideology,” a loose term often used by conservative groups to reference ideologies that promote non-traditional views on sex and gender. Rights activists view the term as an anti-LGBTQ trope and dehumanizing.