Nicholas Florko

For Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “Make America healthy again” is far more than a nice slogan. His cosmic purpose in life, he has said, is to fix the country’s health woes. “The first thing I’ve done every morning for the past 20 years is to get on my knees and pray to God that he would put me in a position to end the chronic-disease epidemic,” Kennedy told senators during his confirmation hearing in January. As health secretary, he has continued to emphasize his commitment to that goal.

Every five years, America’s top nutrition experts jockey to be part of a rite of passage in the field.

It’s easy to forget that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assault on vaccines—including, most recently, his gutting of the expert committee that guides American vaccine policy—might have been avoided. Four months ago, his nomination for health secretary was in serious jeopardy. The deciding vote seemed to be in the hands of one Republican senator: Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

The surgeon general, America’s doctor, is the public face of medicine in the United States. The job is more educational than it is technical. Vivek Murthy, who was appointed as surgeon general during both the Obama and Biden administrations, went on Sesame Street to stress the importance of vaccinations and put out a guidebook to hosting dinner parties as a cure for loneliness.
In many ways, Casey Means is the perfect person for that job.

When you think of food poisoning, perhaps what first comes to mind is undercooked chicken, spoiled milk, or oysters. Personally, I remember the time I devoured a sushi boat as a high-school senior and found myself calling for my mommy in the early hours of the morning.
But don’t overlook your vegetable crisper. In terms of foodborne illness, leafy greens stand alone. In 2022, they were identified as the cause of five separate multistate foodborne-illness outbreaks, more than any other food.

Unless you make a habit of closely reading nutrition labels—or watching Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s YouTube channel—you might not realize just how much tartrazine you’re ingesting. Kennedy, the U.S. health secretary, is fixated on the chemical, otherwise known as Yellow 5. Many Americans are unknowingly eating this and other “poisons,” he warned in a YouTube video posted last fall.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is finally getting his wish of sucker punching the federal health agencies. This week, Kennedy began the process of firing some 10,000 employees working under the Health and Human Services umbrella. Even before he took office, Kennedy warned health officials that they should pack their bags, and on Tuesday, he defended the cuts: “What we’ve been doing isn’t working,” Kennedy posted on X.

If there was a mascot to represent everything that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sees wrong with food, it would be Big Daddy’s Primo Pizza. A staple of school cafeterias, Big Daddy’s pizza bills itself as an “over-the-top exceptional slice to entice students” that’s made with whole-wheat flour. It’s mass-produced in a factory with industrial additives so that it just needs to be reheated right before serving.

Leading the FDA has long been one of the greatest professional achievements in American health. At the start of every administration, doctors jockey for the role, hoping to steer an agency that regulates 20 cents of every dollar spent in the United States. To be the FDA commissioner who presides over the approval of a cure for a previously intractable disease, or who launches an investigation into a product that is sickening Americans, is to etch your name into the annals of modern medicine.

In a little over a month, the Trump administration has started to hollow out America’s federal health agencies. Roughly 2,000 probationary workers have been fired en masse, by virtue of the fact that they were relatively new to their jobs. But the long-term impact of those terminations could pale in comparison to a lesser-noticed spate of departures that has recently roiled the health agencies. In the past two months, the FDA, CDC, and NIH second in commands have all resigned or retired.

Americans have plenty to worry about these days when it comes to infectious-disease outbreaks. This is the worst flu season in 15 years, there’s a serious measles outbreak roiling Texas, and the threat of bird flu isn’t going away. “The house is on fire,” Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at CUNY School of Public Health, told me. The more America is pummeled by disease, the greater the chance of widespread outbreaks and even another pandemic.

From inside the room, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings felt at times more like an awards show than a job interview. While the health-secretary nominee testified, his fans in the audience hooted and hollered in support.

No drug is quite like nicotine. When it hits your bloodstream, you’re sent on a ride of double euphoria: an immediate jolt of adrenaline, like a strong cup of coffee injected directly into your brain, along with the calming effect of a beer. Nicotine is what gets people hooked on cigarettes, despite their health risks and putrid smell. It is, in essence, what cigarette companies are selling, and what they’ve always been selling.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s personal health-care routine is perplexing in its inconsistencies. He decries seed oils, despite near scientific consensus that they’re harmless; drinks raw milk, which has been proved to get people sick; and takes testosterone as part of his anti-aging routine while insisting he’s not on anabolic steroids.
Some of his routines, such as downing raw milk for its purported health benefits, are based on bunk science.

Updated: Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024 at 10:58 p.m. ET
Two very ugly, uniquely American things happened yesterday: A health-care executive was shot dead, and because he was a health-care executive, people cheered.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered yesterday outside his hotel in Midtown Manhattan by an unknown assailant. The identity of the killer is unknown. His motive is not yet clear.

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here.
The allure of smoking has proved hard to stamp out. Despite the fact that cigarette use is at an 80-year-low in America, smoking has, unfortunately, become cool again. At the New York Fashion Week show in February, some models accessorized their runway outfits with a cigarette.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is wrong about a lot of things in public health. Vaccines don’t cause autism. Raw milk is more dangerous than pasteurized milk. And cellphones haven’t been shown to cause brain cancer. But the basic idea behind his effort to “Make America Healthy Again” is correct: America is not healthy, and our current system has not fixed the problem.
Joe Biden entered office promising to “beat” the coronavirus pandemic, cure cancer, and get more people health care.

The reelection of Donald Trump might seem like doomsday for America’s public-health agencies. The president-elect has vowed to dismantle the federal bureaucracy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., potentially his next health czar, wants to go even further. As part of his effort to “Make America healthy again,” Kennedy has recently promised to tear up the FDA and its regulations, including those governing vaccines and raw milk. But that effort is going to run into a major roadblock: the “deep state.

The loaf in my fridge is the furthest thing from Wonder Bread. Each slice is made of organic whole-wheat flour and has four grams of fiber and just two measly grams of added sugar. It’s studded with so many seeds that I’m always worried about them getting stuck in my teeth. The only service this bread can provide is as a hummus sandwich; it tastes too healthy for a grilled cheese, an egg sandwich, or any other handheld creation.

Presidents always seem to have a crisis to deal with. George W. Bush had 9/11. Barack Obama had the Great Recession. Donald Trump had the coronavirus pandemic. Joe Biden had the war in the Middle East. For America’s next president, the crisis might be bird flu.
The United States is in the middle of an unprecedented bout of bird flu, also known as H5N1. Since 2022, the virus has killed millions of birds and spread to mammals, including cows. Dairy farms are struggling to contain outbreaks.