A running list of RFK Jr.'s controversies

The man atop the Department of Health and Human Services has had no shortage of scandals over the years

Photo collage of RFK Jr.'s profile, cut in half to reveal a large pink worm between the two halves of the photo
Though Kennedy insists he is not anti-vaccine, his record suggests otherwise
(Image credit: Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images)

From his beginnings as an acclaimed environmentalist to his transformation into a purveyor of vaccine denial and conspiracy theories, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent a lifetime in the public eye. Throughout it all, the scion of the fabled Kennedy political dynasty has courted controversy; enough to prompt his own family to publicly denounce his more extreme positions as spreading "dangerous misinformation" that leads to "heartbreaking consequences" in an essay for Politico. Nevertheless, those familial red flags did nothing to dissuade President Donald Trump from naming Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, placing a man whose positions on firmly-established science are in direct odds with the overwhelming majority of the medical community atop one of the largest, most consequential federal bodies of its type.

Having wasted little time since his narrow Senate confirmation in putting his science-skeptical imprimatur on the department he now leads, Kennedy continues to court controversy amidst multiple national health crises including a measles outbreak and the threat of a wide-scale bird flu epidemic. And as he further entrenches himself in the Department of Health and Human Services' bureaucracy, the once-theoretical questions of how his past comments might shed light on his future decisions have become decidedly more pointed and more urgent in equal measure.

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Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.