FactChecking RFK Jr.’s Other Health Claims During HHS Confirmation Hearings

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. In our earlier coverage of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, we focused on his familiar claims about vaccines and chronic disease, along with his citation of a flawed paper that claimed to identify a link between vaccines and autism. But in his more than six hours of testimony, Kennedy made other incorrect or misleading claims, including on obesity treatments for kids and National Institutes of Health funding. Sparring with Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, Kennedy claimed that research backed up his earlier assertion that Black people need a different vaccine schedule than whites “because their immune system is better than ours.” Scientists say he’s distorting that work. Kennedy impossibly claimed that his 2021 petition to pull authorization of the COVID-19 vaccines was filed because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the vaccines for 6-year-olds “without any scientific basis.” The CDC did not recommend vaccines for that age group until months after the petition was filed — and did so based on positive clinical trial results. He claimed GLP-1 weight loss drugs were being used as the “first front-line...