RFK Jr.s vaccine quackery has no place in modern America

If Robert F.Kennedy, Jr., had been born with a different name, he’d probably be peddling miracle mushroom cancer cures on YouTube right now.Instead, our French fry-slinging presidential hopeful Donald Trump has, according to Kennedy, “promised” to give him “control” of all of Washington’s public health agencies, “which, you know, is key to making America healthy.”Kennedy has wiggled his way into the hearts of MAGA by (rightly) opposing the public health establishment’s abuses during COVID — and, of course, by endorsing Trump.And there’s nothing inherently wrong with Kennedy’s stated goal of encouraging Americans to be healthy “again.”Though, if he had his way, we’re all going to end up eating tofurkey with spelt stuffing while praying for the sun to shine so our solar panels will kick in.The bigger problem is that he’s proven a scaremongering authoritarian and dangerous Luddite whose ideas would make life considerably worse for everyone.The other day, Trump-Vance transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick explained that Kennedy doesn’t want the Health and Human Services secretary’s job, he merely wants access to federal data — allegedly hidden from the public — to prove vaccines are dangerous so we can take them “right off, off of the market.’”Granted, I’m not a scientist, but I suspect assuming what the data will tell you isn’t how it’s supposed to be done.But Kennedy doesn’t want Americans to have vaccine choices; he wants to deny them the right to use them.And after spending an entire “2½ hours” with the man, Lutnick had embraced all his anti-vax nuttery, spreading the pernicious claim that vaccinations are linked to autism, for which there is zero scientific evidence.As proof, Lutnick made the preposterous claim that we “know so many more people” with autism these days as compared to when he was young.Now, I’m a bit younger than Lutnick, but we grew up in the same area.

Surely, he can recall kids bei...