On June 3, 2025, I called for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to resign as Secretary of HHS. Since then, the situation has only deteriorated.

ACIP Shake-Up

RFK Jr. booted all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), falsely claiming they all had serious conflicts of interest. He then replaced them with 8 people (now 7 as one withdrew), several with known histories of promoting misinformation.

Shooting at CDC

On August 8, 2025, 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, killing DeKalb County police officer David Rose before taking his own life. White had written that he blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal.

This prompted 750 current and former HHS staff to sign a letter urging RFK Jr. to stop spreading misinformation, warning that his rhetoric contributed to public mistrust and violence.

“The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization — and now, violence,” wrote the staffers, who emphasized they signed the letter “in our own personal capacities.” Some signed anonymously “out of fear of retaliation and personal safety.”

CDC Firing and Resignations

After a lengthy confirmation delay, Susan Monarez, PhD, was finally sworn in as CDC director on July 31, 2025. Less than a month later, she was fired after refusing to dismiss her senior staff and rubber-stamp vaccine policy changes.

This prompted the following high-ranking CDC leaders to resign:

• Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, Director of the National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
• Daniel Jernigan, MD, MPH, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.
• Debra Houry, MD, MPH, Deputy Director and Chief Medical Officer.
• Jennifer Layden, Director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.

Enough is Enough

My June call for RFK Jr.’s resignation was rooted in concern for public health. As I wrote then, RFK Jr. should never have been confirmed to this position. Since then, his further actions have only validated that concern.

Once again, I implore you to contact your representatives. Our health institutions depend on leaders grounded in science, transparency, and ethics.

Find your representatives here.

Below is a template you can personalize and send to your representatives to demand his resignation.

Dear [Name or “Honorable Member”],

I am writing to urge decisive action: Congress must call upon Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign as Secretary of Health and Human Services. His repeated spread of misinformation and his fundamental misunderstanding of basic scientific principles actively undermine the integrity of the office, erode public trust in our health institutions, and put the health of every American at risk.

Since the start of summer, the situation at HHS and the CDC has only worsened.

In June, Secretary Kennedy dismantled the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), removing respected experts and installing a biased, ideological panel.

In early August, a tragic shooting at the CDC in Atlanta underscored the real-world consequences of sowing mistrust in public health institutions.

And later in August, CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired after refusing to endorse unscientific policies, sparking a wave of resignations among senior leaders who warned of political interference replacing science at the agency’s core.

Effective leadership in public health requires a commitment to evidence, integrity, and protecting lives. Secretary Kennedy’s conduct makes it clear he cannot meet this standard.

Please act swiftly. Our nation’s health, and the public’s faith in its institutions, cannot withstand further erosion. We need leadership rooted in science, ethics, and accountability.

Thank you for your attention and your action.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]

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I’ve followed news of RFK Jr. and his dangerous views for almost 20 years. I never imagined I’d see him appointed as Health Secretary. And yet, here we are.

The conspiratorial health claims of RFK Jr. have been well-documented over the past few decades. He has stated vaccines cause autism (as seen here in a July 10, 2023, episode of Jesse Watters Primetime). He has claimed there are better candidates as a cause of AIDS than HIV (see here). And he helped spark panic in Samoa in 2018 when 2 infants died after receiving measles vaccines (tragically, the nurses mistakenly mixed the vaccine with an expired muscle relaxant instead of water).

I could go on for ages, but let’s cut to the chase and look at what has happened since he was sworn in as HHS secretary on February 13, 2025.

Handling of Measles Outbreak

By late February 2025, the Texas measles outbreak had already surpassed the number of cases from the previous year. There had also already been one death — the first U.S. measles death since 2015. (Currently there are 3 deaths, and the vast majority of cases have occurred in unvaccinated individuals).

Despite this, RFK Jr. downplayed the situation, calling it “not unusual” and falsely claiming that hospitalizations were “mainly for quarantine”.

After receiving pushback from health experts, RFK Jr. backtracked a few days later, stating that the outbreak is now a “top priority”. Yet he also touted vitamin A and cod liver oil as effective treatments for measles and continued to stoke fears by suggesting that vaccines cause severe illness and death.

COVID-19 Vaccine Policy Changes

On May 27, 2025, RFK Jr. posted on X that the COVID vaccine would be removed from the CDC’s recommended schedule for healthy children and healthy pregnant women. Notably, no one from the CDC appeared in this video alongside him.

Naturally this created quite an uproar. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), for example, immediately released a statement from its president, Steven Fleischman, MD, FACOG.

It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families. The COVID-19 vaccine is safe during pregnancy, and vaccination can protect our patients and their infants after birth…In fact, growing evidence shows just how much vaccination during pregnancy protects the infant after birth, with the vast majority of hospitalized infants less than six months of age — those who are not yet eligible for vaccination — born to unvaccinated mothers.

Two days later, HHS appeared to backtrack again, with more carefully worded versions of this policy appearing on the CDC website.

Prohibiting Scientists from Publishing in Leading Journals

On a recent podcast with Gary Brecka, RFK Jr. stated, “We’re probably going to stop publishing in The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they’re all corrupt.”

While there are indeed valid critiques to be made about the scientific publishing industry, barring government-affiliated scientists from submitting research to respected peer-reviewed journals hardly seems like a move promoting transparency or academic freedom. I’m not sure how forcing scientists to publish in state-run journals will support the “gold standard” science RFK Jr. claims to be pursuing.

One more bit of irony: the MAHA Report cites those very same journals 55 times. That’s based on the version I reviewed on June 2, 2025 (it has been revised multiple times since its release).

And That Leads Us to the MAHA Report

Whew. What a doozy.

By now, you’ve probably heard something about this report. To sum it up quickly: several citations in the original version were found to not exist. Not typos. Not broken links that worked at one time. Entirely made up sources.

The report appears to have been generated at least partially using a large language model, or LLM. (The AI tool ChatGPT is one example of an LLM, for those that may not be up to date.) This particular detail seems to have drawn the most media attention. And while it blows my mind that someone would use an LLM to generate citations but then fail to actually check them, that’s not the only problem in the report. Many of the citations that do exist don’t even support the claims the report makes.

Let’s look at just one example (though you can find many elsewhere). On page 17 of the current version, the report states:

Stimulant prescriptions for ADHD in the U.S. increased 250% from 2006 to 2016,⁶³ despite evidence they did not improve outcomes long-term.⁶⁴

And here is citation 64:

64 Jensen, P. S., Arnold, L. E., Swanson, J. M., Vitiello, B., Abikoff, H. B., Greenhill, L. L., … & Hur, K. (2007). 3-year follow-up of the NIMH MTA study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 46(8), 989–1002. https://doi.org/10.1097/CHI.0b013e3180686d48.

(Tip: Don’t copy and paste that doi link with the period at the end — it won’t work.)

The abstract is located here, and you can find other versions (including a pdf as of June 2, 2025) here.

Unsurprisingly, if you browse this paper, you’ll find that it says nothing close to what the MAHA Report claims. The authors took care to explain the nuance of the data, discuss context and possible confounding factors, and clearly outlined limitations of the study. Notably, the paper emphasizes the following:

It would be incorrect to conclude from these results that treatment makes no difference or is not worth pursuing. Indeed, the 14-month intensive medication algorithm yielded significant advantage for the first 24 months, although not to 36 months. Intensive medication management may only make a persistent long-term difference if it is continued with the same intensity as during the MTA’s initial 14-month period.

He Needs to Resign

This subheading says it all. RFK Jr. should have never been confirmed to this position. Time and again, he has shown himself to be deeply misguided and uneducated when it comes to science, health, and research.

So what can be done? If you’re a US citizen, my suggestion is simple. Start contacting your elected representatives and urge them to demand his resignation.

Find your representatives here.

Find your senators here.

Not quite sure what to say? Use ChatGPT. Just make sure any references you include actually exist.

Kidding!

If you want a quick template to copy or tweak, Doctor Mike has kindly provided a sample letter in his own video about RFK Jr. (which is well worth watching), located here.

Dear [Representative Name],

I am writing to urge you to join me, Doctor Mike, and other concerned Americans in calling for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign from his position as Secretary of Health and Human Services. His repeated spread of misinformation and demonstrated misunderstanding of basic scientific principles undermine the integrity of the office and endanger public trust in our health institutions. The Department of Health and Human Services requires leadership grounded in evidence-based science and public responsibility. Secretary Kennedy’s conduct and rhetoric make it clear he is not fit to serve in this critical role. Please act swiftly to restore credibility and keep our nation happy and healthy.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

[Your City, State]

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Thanks for reading!