5 Of The Wildest Ideas Floated By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral that has been added to much of the nation’s drinking water for decades and has been proven to dramatically reduce tooth decay. A 2017 study also found the fluoridation program saves Americans more than $6 billion in dental costs.

Fluoridation has proven so successful that the CDC lists it as one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century, alongside vaccination and the recognition of tobacco as a health hazard.

While Trump has expressed support for Kennedy’s stance, the president does not have the ability to ban fluoride in all public drinking water, which is under local, not federal, purview.

Kennedy is one of the nation’s leading skeptics of vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories and junk science while claiming “no vaccine” is safe and effective. He is the founder of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense and has peddled debunked claims that inoculations cause autism. Kennedy has also linked federal vaccination programs to the Holocaust.

All of those statements have been rejected by career health officials, who point to vaccines’ efficacy to eradicate smallpox, prevent millions of deaths from transmissible disease like measles and see the rates of polio fall 99% since 1988, according to the World Health Organization.

Trump himself couldn’t singlehandedly ban a vaccine, although he could exert pressure on federal agencies that approve them. And installing Kennedy as the head of the agency that oversees the CDC and the NIH has worried health advocates.

Kennedy has insisted he has not specifically called for an end to vaccination, and he has pledged not to ban them. But his longstanding claims that federal officials have muddled safety data has troubled health officials.

Mandy Cohen, the director of the CDC, told The Washington Post she was deeply concerned by his selection.

“I don’t want to go backwards and see children or adults suffer or lose their lives to remind us that vaccines work,” she told the paper.

Kennedy has made broad pledges to remove processed foods from school lunches and limit the use of food dyes. He recently went on MSNBC to lambast colorful breakfast cereals, asking: “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?”

That’s not correct: Froot Loops in Canada have a similar number of ingredients to those sold in the U.S. But Canada has limited the use of certain food dyes. Regardless, the FDA says the artificial food dyes it’s approved are safe based on a “totality of scientific evidence.”