Michael Bloomberg Said Putting RFK Jr. In Charge of Vaccines Would Be 'Medical Malpractice'

Michael Bloomberg hopes Senate Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump will “rethink” the selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.

Speaking Tuesday at the Bloomberg American Health Summit in Washington D.C., Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, said putting Kennedy in charge of the nation’s public health agencies would be “beyond dangerous” and “medical malpractice on a mass scale.”

Kennedy has long spread the debunked idea that vaccines lead to autism in children, though he has said he won’t ban them. In 2019, he visited Samoa and lent credibility to anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists. Samoa had a measles outbreak a few months later that killed 83 people, most of them children.

Bloomberg said it is “beyond comprehension” that Kennedy would be nominated with such a history, and said he “doesn’t care about evidence.”

Kennedy’s own family has also spoken out against him. Last month, his cousin Caroline Kennedy called his views “dangerous” and said most Americans don’t share them.

At the health summit, Bloomberg emphasized how many millions of people, especially children, have been saved by vaccines over the years.

“Making it harder to get vaccines would be one of the most catastrophic mistakes in American history, a travesty beyond measure,” Bloomberg said.

He said America needs leaders who will help parents protect their children, “not conspiracy theorists who will scare them into decisions that will put their children at risk of disease and even death.”

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