Dear Editor:

A brilliant man of integrity and courage, Navy veteran Robert F. Kennedy fought for civil rights and served as Attorney General and U.S. Senator for seven years. Like his brother, John F. Kennedy, his life was tragically cut short by assassination, just one month after Martin Luther King Jr., was murdered.

Junior, on the other hand, has dedicated much of his adult life to conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination activism, and COVID-19 misinformation. Without any scientific degrees or medical training, he is now Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.

A local letter writer has assured us that “RFK Jr. is 100% right in what he is doing at the CDC.” It would be comforting, indeed, to know that the current head of HHS is a member of the reality-based community with preeminent credentials in medical science and national healthcare.

Manifestly, he is not. According to the American Medical Association and more than 10 other prestigious medical institutions, he is unqualified to lead this important agency and to make crucial health decisions for the American people. Even Trump’s former Surgeon General and Assistant Secretary of HHS, Jerome Adams, has stated that RFK Jr., “is endangering America at large” and should be fired “for the sake of the nation."

What has our Health Secretary accomplished in the last eight months?

Fired 20,000 HHS employees, 2,400 of them from the Centers for Disease Control; eliminated top administrators with invaluable experience and expertise (CDC Chief Dr. Susan Monarez and CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry), replacing them with Trump supporters; cancelled $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccines; cut $11 billion in funding to state and local health departments; triggered a lawsuit from six medical organizations over his decision to revoke COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women; and fired all sitting members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), replacing them with vaccine skeptics and anti-vaxxers.  (My favorite of these picks is Dr. Robert Malone, who claimed that millions of Americans were hypnotized into getting the Covid-19 vaccines and that these shots cause AIDS).

By what conceivable standard is this “100% right?”

Bill Hammond

Boothbay