USA, 75 Nobel laureates against the confirmation of Bob Kennedy Junior as health minister
An open letter urges senators not to confirm the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that President-elect Donald Trump's choice to lead the health department is detrimental to public health
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More than 75 Nobel Prize winners have signed an open letter urging senators not to confirm the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that President-elect Donald Trump's choice to lead the health department is detrimental to public health. The missive, obtained by the New York Times, marks the first time in recent times that Nobel laureates have united against a government 'nominee', according to one of them, Richard Roberts, winner of the prestigious 1993 Medicine Prize, who helped draft the letter.
"Considering his past, entrusting Kennedy with responsibility for the Ministry of Health would pose a risk to public health," write the 77 Nobel laureates in medicine, physics, chemistry or economics in this letter to US senators.
Among the signatories is Drew Weissman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2023 for his work on the development of messenger RNA vaccines, decisive in the fight against Covid-19. "These political attacks on science are very damaging," he said. "We have to take a stand and protect it," he added.
The motivations
.The signatories of the letter questioned whether Kennedy, who they said has 'no credentials' in medicine, science, or administration, is fit to lead the department that protects public health and on which biomedical research funding depends. 'Putting Kennedy in charge of the department will jeopardise public health and undermine America's global leadership in the health sciences,' the letter reads. If confirmed, Rfk's opposition to established public health tools, such as vaccines and drinking water fluoridation, would pose a risk to the country's well-being, the missive continues.
The Nobel laureates also criticised Kennedy's promotion of conspiracy theories, which falsely linked vaccines to autism, dismissed established science demonstrating that HIV causes AIDS, and suggested, without evidence, that the coronavirus targeted or, depending, spared certain ethnic groups. The petitioners also noted that the nominee was a 'belligerent critic' of agencies that would fall under his purview, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.
