Nobel laureates urge US Senate to reject Robert F Kennedy Jr’s nomination

Seventy-seven Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging the US Senate to reject Robert F Kennedy Jr as Donald Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary, arguing that he is unfit and would put American public health “in jeopardy”.

It is believed to be the first time in living memory that Nobel prize winners have united against a presidential cabinet pick, and comes against a backdrop of Kennedy’s public support for discredited theories, including a claim that childhood vaccines cause autism.

In their letter, prize winners in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics and economics castigate Kennedy for a “lack of credentials” and point out that he has been “a belligerent critic” of some of the agencies that he would oversee, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The proposal to place Mr Kennedy in charge of the federal agencies responsible for protecting the public health of American citizens and for conducting the medical research that benefits our country and the rest of humanity has been widely criticised on multiple grounds,” the laureates say in the letter, first obtained by the New York Times.

They also point to Kennedy’s vocal opposition to the measles and polio vaccines, his support for ending fluoridation of the water supply and his promotion of conspiracy theories over the treatments for Aids and other diseases.

Kennedy has threatened to fire employees of the FDA, which he has accused of “waging war on public health”, and has said he will replace hundreds of NIH employees on his first day. He has also said many vaccine scientists should be in jail.

“The leader of DHHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) should continue to nurture and improve – not threaten – these highly respected institutions and their employees,” the laureates write.

“In view of his record, placing Mr Kennedy in charge of DHSS would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in health sciences, in both public and commercial sectors.”

Signatories include Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, who won this year’s Nobel prize for physiology or medicine for their discovery of microRNA.

The letter comes after Trump – who has previously spoken of letting Kennedy “go wild on health” – suggested in an interview with NBC that his health and human services nominee could investigate the supposed link between vaccines and autism, a theory that Kennedy has repeatedly peddled but that numerous studies have comprehensively debunked.

One of the letter’s drafters, Richard Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine, said scientists had felt the needed to respond to attacks by Kennedy and others.

“These political attacks on science are very damaging,” he told the New York Times. “You have to stand up and protect it.”

In response, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team said: “Americans are sick and tired of the elites telling them what to do and how to do it. Our healthcare system in this country is broken, Mr Kennedy will enact President Trump’s agenda to restore the integrity of our healthcare and Make America Healthy Again.”