2026-03-13
30 分钟For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Peer Lewis, in for Rachel Feltman.
Last February, Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
was sworn in as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The HHS, which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration, is effectively the nation's public health department.
It's responsible for protecting the health of the American people.
And yet, Since assuming their role,
Secretary Kennedy has often taken actions that have contradicted best practices in public health.
The CDC no longer recommends hepatitis B vaccine for all newborns,
and last August, the HHS cut funding for 22 mRNA vaccine development projects.
The Secretary has proffered up unproven treatments for measles and muddied the waters on the effectiveness of the measles vaccine amid one of the largest measles outbreaks in recent memory.
When the health secretary hasn't been undermining vaccines,
he has been propping up fringe health theories, such as that seed oils are uniquely unhealthy.
Seed oils are associated with all kinds of very,
very serious illnesses, including body-wide inflammation.
And the false conspiracy theory that the U.S.
military bioengineered Lyme disease.
Hey everybody, today we're going to talk about Plum Island, the military laboratory, 257.
and the origins of Lyme disease.