RFK Jr sought ‘Make America Healthy Again’ trademark for vaccine marketing

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist nominated for US health secretary by Donald Trump, recently applied to trademark his own “Make America Healthy Again” slogan for use in marketing potential products including food supplements, vitamins, essential oils – and vaccines.

Documentation filed with the Office of Government Ethics lists $100,000 earned from a “licensing agreement to use Maha brand marks”.

As reported by the Washington Post, on 10 December Kennedy transferred ownership of the trademark application to a company managed by Del Bigtree.

Bigtree is a TV and film producer who was the communications director for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign. He is also the founder of Informed Consent Action Network, an anti-vaccine group which trumpets him as “one of the preeminent voices of the vaccine risk awareness movement around the world”.

According to the trademark application reported by the Post, dated 16 December, Bigtree’s new company is called Maha Worldwide and has a mailing address in Sheridan, Wyoming.

“Maha” is a play on “Maga”, the acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan which has become a descriptor for the president’s worldview.

Earlier this month, as Trump celebrated his return to power, Bigtree hosted a “Maha Inaugural Ball”, “a celebration of health, unity, and the movement led by Robert F Kennedy Jr”, held at the DC Waldorf Astoria.

Between 2015 and 2023, Kennedy led Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit which campaigned against public health programs including vaccination provision. He was nominated for health secretary in mid-November and is now in the midst of a highly contentious confirmation process; on Wednesday, that process produced the spectacle of the widely known anti-vaccine campaigner and conspiracy theorist insisting to senators he was not opposed to vaccines.

Denying accusations of spreading anti-vaccine misinformation in Samoa, which he visited in 2019, shortly before 83 people – mostly children – died there of measles, Kennedy said: “You cannot find a single Samoan who will say, ‘I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy.’”

Kennedy also told senators he was not a conspiracy theorist, saying: “That is a pejorative … that’s applied to me mainly to keep me from asking difficult questions of powerful interests.”

Attending the hearing, Bigtree told the Post he did not know what he was going to use the Maha trademark for, but said: “I have no intention to ever make a vaccine. That’s not something I’m inspired to do.”

Bigtree also said he was looking at a possible venture in cryptocurrency – another possible product listed on the trademark application – but said he would “not be out to sort of make a buck or somehow use people in any way”.

Kennedy and his representatives did not comment about his trademark application and its transferral to Bigtree.

Public health experts expressed alarm.

Peter Lurie of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a former US Food and Drug Administration official, told the Post it was “jarring” that “on the one hand, questions are raised about the safety of vaccines, and on the other you turn around and monetize it”.