From COVID-19 conspiracy theories to confusion on the details about Medicare and Medicaid to refusing to say that vaccines aren’t linked to autism, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s affirmation hearings this week on Capitol Hill had been something however easy for somebody who’s hoping to guide the Division of Health and Human Providers.
Whereas his historical past of anti-vaccine remarks was a serious speaking level all through the hearings, his beliefs had been additionally entrance and heart throughout a heated alternate wherein Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) introduced up a remark that Kennedy as soon as made about vaccinations and the Black group.
In 2021, Kennedy had mentioned, “We should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that’s given to whites, because their immune system is better than ours.”
Alsobrooks requested Kennedy to elucidate what he meant by that comment, and he went on to reference a “series of studies” whereas saying analysis exhibits that “Blacks need fewer antigens.” (For the file, specialists say that this isn’t true.)
“Right now, how vaccine schedules are tailored is based on things like your age, your exposure risk, if you have other chronic underlying health conditions ― but race isn’t one of them, and there isn’t research that suggests that it should be,” Joel Bervell, a latest medical graduate and medical myth-buster on social media, informed HuffPost.
What particularly bothered Bervell about Kennedy’s alternate with Alsobrooks was the truth that he doubled down on his remark from 2021.
Kennedy may have used this as a chance to confess that he must do extra analysis and perceive the vaccine schedule, “but instead, he defended what he said, which I think, for me, that’s where the problem lies in,” Bervell informed HuffPost. “Not necessarily the fact of the misinformation is out there, but the fact that he wasn’t willing to at least confront it or admit that onstage.”
Beneath, specialists like Bervell share their issues about Kennedy’s assertion and the way it displays a bigger problematic image:
Kennedy’s remark may be thought of ‘scientific racism,’ specialists say.
“In medicine, in science, we know that race is a social construct, meaning that you can’t look at someone’s genes and identify what race they are,” Bervell mentioned.
Meaning variations in vaccine timelines simply don’t make scientific sense.
“The comment that [Kennedy] made about the vaccine schedule, it’s basically scientific racism, which has been debunked,” Dr. Oni Blackstock, a main care and HIV doctor who’s the founder and govt director of Health Justice, a racial and well being fairness consulting firm, informed HuffPost.
“He’s really perpetuating this false belief that Black people are somehow biologically different from white people and, in that way, justifying differential and ultimately unequal treatment for Black people versus white people,” Blackstock added.
“By saying that, he was putting on one of the larger stages in health care this notion that race-based medicine should still exist, when that’s actually what many scientists recently have been trying to root out,” Bervell mentioned.
Race-based drugs and scientific racism has led to undertreatment of Black sufferers, dismissal of ache and even demise, Blackstock pressured.
Each specialists pointed to real-life examples of this, just like the false perception that Black folks have better-functioning kidneys than white folks. This made it tougher for Black folks to get the remedy they wanted, like kidney transplants, in accordance with Bervell. And this thought sample isn’t from some faraway time ― a medical equation that bolstered this bias wasn’t modified till 2021, Bervell mentioned.
What’s extra, throughout the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, Black folks had been believed to be proof against yellow fever, which was not true and led to excessive mortality charges amongst Black folks, Blackstock defined.
“The importance of understanding the problem with the myths is that they can literally lead to regulations being written into medicine that treat populations differently just based on race,” Bervell mentioned. “It can actually change the care that people receive.”
Whereas it’s simple to take a look at a specific viewpoint as a one-off, medical racism has real-world penalties that irresponsible feedback could make worse. Selling debunked beliefs “distracts us from really doing the work that we need to do, which is dismantling systemic racism in health care and ensuring that everyone has equitable access to preventive care and treatments that they need,” Blackstock added.
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Such stances might result in extra distrust within the well being care system.
“One thing that is also kind of strange about him [Kennedy] is he’s someone who for a long time has said that he doesn’t support vaccines,” Bervell mentioned. “Apparently, now he’s changed his mind, but for a long time he said he hasn’t supported vaccines, and then he’s also saying that Black people should get a different vaccine schedule. So you have to wonder, what is your goal in saying that if you don’t even believe in vaccines?”
Bervell mentioned feedback like these from Kennedy can sow vaccine hesitancy within the Black inhabitants, which is harmful and might erode belief in evidence-based drugs.
It’s not the primary time that this has occurred, both, Blackstock added. In 2021, Kennedy produced a documentary referred to as “Medical Racism: The New Apartheid,” which Blackstock mentioned promoted misinformation about well being and vaccines to the Black group, together with different marginalized teams.
“It’s interesting how some of his efforts have been focused on taking advantage of [and] exploiting the mistrust that some in the Black community have around vaccines and the health care system because of structural racism and medical racism,” Blackstock mentioned.
With misinformation and scare ways rampant on social media, misinformation from authorities leaders will solely make it tougher to inform what’s actual and what’s faux in drugs. Belief must be paramount for well being care as an establishment, Bervell mentioned.
“The trust is already eroded in health care,” Bervell defined. “We need to have someone that is going to work with scientists, researchers, doctors that are on the ground seeing these problems every day, not someone that’s in an ivory tower watching from above without understanding of what’s actually happening on the ground.”
Consultants say this rhetoric aligns with messaging from Donald Trump.
Blackstock pressured that whereas such false beliefs are very problematic, they observe with a lot of the messaging from Donald Trump and his new presidential administration.
“It echoes some of the rhetoric that [Trump] has shared around eugenics and immigrants,” Blackstock mentioned. “He’s talked about immigrants having ‘bad genes’ or ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ It just speaks to this idea of racial purity or genetic purity, and this false idea that certain groups of people are inherently inferior or predisposed to certain behaviors because of their genetics.”
And, once more, race is a social assemble and doesn’t equal genetic variations. “It’s just really shocking that in the year 2025 we are still dealing with these beliefs being propagated that have been around for several centuries that have been used to justify slavery, used to justify inequitable treatment, used to justify forced sterilization,” Blackstock mentioned.
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Blackstock added that she thinks people get away with this type of rhetoric as a result of folks grow to be accustomed to outlandish feedback and dangerous conduct.
“But we need to really flag this and say this is really dangerous and really concerning rhetoric that can have real health implications,” Blackstock mentioned.
