RFK Jr.’s “Autism Announcement”

Summary

United States of Kennedy — "RFK Jr.’s 'Autism Announcement'"

Podcast by iHeartPodcasts
Hosts: Lyra Smith, George Civeris
Date: September 29, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of United States of Kennedy examines Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s recent "autism announcement" as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration. The hosts, Lyra Smith and George Civeris, are joined by Julie Rovner (chief Washington correspondent at KFF News and host of "What the Health") to explore RFK Jr.'s deep ties to anti-vaccine activism, the origins and impacts of the new Tylenol-autism claims, and what this moment says about public trust in health institutions, the evolution of the anti-vax movement, and the Kennedy dynasty’s varied legacy in American public health policy.

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Main Topics and Key Discussion Points

1. The Kennedy Health Legacy vs RFK Jr.'s Breakaway (09:05–10:39)

• Julie Rovner outlines the significant health-related contributions of past Kennedys, including:

  • JFK and the push for Medicare.
  • Bobby Kennedy’s advocacy for the poor.
  • Ted Kennedy's legendary health policy achievements (e.g., HIPAA).
  • Patrick Kennedy’s work on mental health parity.

• The Kennedy family historically championed mainstream health initiatives, which sharply contrasts with RFK Jr.'s recent actions as HHS Secretary.

  "Health has been sort of a through line, I think, for all the Kennedys who’ve been in public office." — Julie Rovner (09:53)

2. RFK Jr.'s Emergence as an Anti-Vax Figure (04:34, 10:39–12:48)

• Background: Originally an environmental lawyer, RFK Jr. entered anti-vaccine activism after his son’s allergic reaction, speculating about links between vaccines and a range of conditions (autism, allergies, ADHD).

• Has led Children's Health Defense, conducted high-profile lawsuits (against vaccines and mandates), and earned substantial income from this position.

• Julie Rovner explains that his prominence as a Kennedy helped mainstream and amplify the anti-vax movement:

  “It was easy for him to take this movement and make it even bigger.” — Julie Rovner (12:46)

3. Changes in the Health Sector under RFK Jr. (16:17–19:29)

• Julie lists major changes during his HHS tenure:

  • Downplayed a Texas measles outbreak, questioned vaccines, promoted unproven treatments.
  • Cut funding for major research (including $500 million from mRNA vaccine research).
  • Fired and replaced CDC’s immunization advisory board with vaccine skeptics, resulting in confusing new recommendations.
  • Fired his own CDC head for refusing to pre-approve recommendations, leading to mass resignations.
  • Cut HHS staff by 20,000.
  • Joined President Trump in linking Tylenol use during pregnancy to autism in a high-profile press conference.

  “There was no new science that was unveiled in this big announcement.” — Julie Rovner (21:25)

4. Dissecting the "Autism Announcement" (20:09–22:31)

• Announcement details (09/2025):

  • Trump and RFK Jr. claim Tylenol use during pregnancy causes autism.
  • FDA simultaneously released a fact sheet noting no causal link had been identified—only a correlation.
  • The alternative treatment cited (folinic acid, vitamin B9) is already given to pregnant women; limited evidence exists for its use as an autism treatment.

• Impact: No new science presented; criticized as misleading and overpromised.

  "There was a huge study out of Scandinavia...did not find a causal relationship." — Julie Rovner (21:06)

5. The Real Reasons Behind the Rise in Autism Diagnoses (06:04–07:08, 32:24–33:54)

• Changes in medical guidelines:

  • 2007: Universal autism screening recommended for young children.
  • 2013: DSM redefined and broadened the spectrum, combining multiple diagnoses under "autism spectrum disorder."

• Most new diagnoses are mild; severe "profound" cases have not increased.

• The hosts and Rovner stress that better awareness, not environmental toxins or vaccines, explains the uptick.

  “It’s probably not because of Tylenol or childhood vaccines... it’s because we’re recognizing it more and because we’re applying it to more types of neurodivergence.” — Julie Rovner (33:47)

6. Public Health Communication & Erosion of Trust (24:19–28:41, 36:30–41:11)

• The episode spotlights the Trump/Kennedy approach as fostering mistrust in science and public health authorities.

• Messages like “just talk to your doctor” are often impractical due to doctor access issues.

• A recurring theme: The burden of health decision-making is increasingly shifted onto individuals, leaving them confused and anxious.

  “We've gone from over trusting expertise to under trusting it and putting all the load on individuals. And you shouldn't get your medical advice from TikTok or from elected officials who don't have degrees…” — Julie Rovner (25:08)

• Rovner laments poor public health messaging during COVID and ongoing failure to communicate uncertainty and nuance:

  "This was—we were building the plane while we were flying it. You can say that [...] This is what we know right now. It might change tomorrow." — Julie Rovner (40:01)

7. The Twin Strains of the Anti-Vax Movement (12:02–12:48, 47:33–48:42)

• Rovner splits the anti-vax movement into two groups:

  • Libertarian/‘Don’t tell me what to do’.
  • ‘Crunchy granola’/natural health purists.

• RFK Jr. managed to unify and supercharge both strands under his unique personal and political branding.

  “He's taken things that are fairly popular among a bipartisan group [...] None of those things are particularly controversial unless you're the pesticide industry or the food dye industry or somebody who's making money from that side of it.” — Julie Rovner (49:22)

8. The Influence of Media and Celebrity (34:15–36:30)

• High-profile personalities like Jenny McCarthy helped promote vaccine skepticism.
• Having the Kennedy name gave RFK Jr. extra gravitas and a larger platform.
• The anti-vax movement’s PR savvy is significant; Congress and agencies often respond to constituent lobbying sparked by media campaigns.

9. Money and Interests Behind Anti-Vax Sentiment (45:52–47:33)

• There are commercial interests: Supplement sellers and “alternative health” marketers profit from medical skepticism.
• Rovner notes RFK Jr. himself has benefited financially from this space.
• She also disputes the blanket claim that “everyone” in public health is conflicted: “Not every single person is as conflicted as some of the conspiracy theorists say they are” (46:56).

10. The Power—and Frustration—of the Kennedy Name (50:26–51:57)

• Despite being at odds with his family’s political and health legacy, RFK Jr. still wields extraordinary influence because of his surname.
• His relatives are public in their disavowal:

  "The biggest frustration are from his own family, his siblings, who are constantly saying, please don't listen to our brother. He's crazy." — Julie Rovner (50:59)

• The hosts reflect on America's cultural “need” for Kennedys to be right and legitimate, which RFK Jr. leverages even as he departs from the family tradition.

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• [04:45] RFK Jr.: "We've launched a massive testing and research effort...By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic..."
• [16:23] Julie Rovner (on HHS changes): "Starting with downplaying the measles outbreak in Texas...doctors found his behavior cringeworthy..."
• [20:09] Lyra Smith: "...this image that was floating around, it was just a giant FOX News image that just said 'autism announcement'..."
• [25:08] Julie Rovner: "We’ve gone from over trusting expertise to under trusting it and putting all the load on individuals."
• [33:47] Julie Rovner: "It’s probably not because of Tylenol or childhood vaccines... it’s because we’re recognizing it more and because we’re applying it to more types of neurodivergence."
• [40:01] Julie Rovner (on COVID comms): "We were building the plane while we were flying it. You can say that [...] This is what we know right now. It might change tomorrow."
• [50:59] Julie Rovner (on RFK's family): "The biggest frustration are from his own family, his siblings, who are constantly saying, please don't listen to our brother. He's crazy."
• [49:22] Julie Rovner: "He's taken things that are fairly popular among a bipartisan group of people. We should not have pesticides in food. That's a bad thing. Autism. If we can figure out how we should prevent kids from getting autism, vaccines should be safe..."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:41: Clip of RFK Jr. and Trump laying the groundwork for the “autism announcement”
• 09:05–10:39: Review of Kennedy family’s health legacy
• 16:17–19:29: List of major HHS changes under RFK Jr.
• 20:09–22:31: Dissecting the White House "autism announcement"
• 25:08: On the erosion of trust in health institutions
• 32:24–33:54: Medical/scientific community on the autism spectrum and rise in diagnoses
• 36:30–41:11: Problems in public health communication
• 44:07–47:33: What’s next for RFK Jr. and the money/politics behind anti-vax sentiment
• 50:26–51:57: The Kennedy name’s enduring influence, and family frustration

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Conclusion

• RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary has reshaped American health policy, largely by mainstreaming anti-vaccine and anti-establishment views, wielding both his legal background and Kennedy reputation for vast influence.
• The “autism announcement” marks a new level of politicized, unscientific public health communication, with confusing, sometimes dangerous, impacts for individuals—especially pregnant people.
• The episode closes with reflection on how the Kennedy legacy, the power of celebrity, and America’s complicated relationship to scientific authority drive both heightened fascination with, and anxiety about, public health.
• The hosts preview next week’s topic: the blood feud between RFK Sr. and Jimmy Hoffa.

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This summary encapsulates all major content from the episode, with speaker attribution and direct quotes where most impactful. Breaks for ads and unrelated content are omitted.

Transcript

[Julie Rovner]

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[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I mean, there's a rumor and I don't know if it's so or not that Cuba. They don't have Tylenol because they don't have the money to fight Tylenol and they have virtually no autism. Okay, tell me about that one. And there are other parts of the world where they don't have Tylenol where they don't have autism. That tells you a lot. So I'd like to ask Bobby to come up and say a few words. I hope I didn't ruin his day, but that's the way I feel. I've been very strong on this subject for a long time. Today, the FDA will issue a physician's notice about the risk of acetaminophen during pregnancy and begin the process to initiate a safe label change. HHS will launch a nationwide public service campaign to inform families and protect public health. FDA also recognized that acetaminophen is often the only tool for fevers and pain in pregnancy, as other alternatives have well documented adverse effects.

[Julie Rovner]

Foreign.

[Lyra Smith]

I'm George Severis. I'm Lyra Smith and this is United States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week we go into one aspect of the Kennedy story and today we are talking about RFK Jr. And the latest health department claims about Tylenol.

[George Severis]

We haven't really covered RFK Jr. Yet. Bobby Kennedy's son, currently he's in the Trump administration. He's the Secretary of Health and Human Services where he oversees the cdc, the FDA and a variety of other health related agencies and offices.

[Lyra Smith]

And since we started working on this show, he has been the Kennedy most consistently in the news. So he's pretty much the elephant in the room during any conversation we have about the Kennedy family over the last few years.

[George Severis]

Last week was the long awaited announcement of his findings after he pledged to find the cause of autism by September. Here's RFK Jr. And President Trump this past April.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

We are going to know by September. We've launched a massive testing and research effort that's going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world. By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures. So you think you're going to have a pretty good idea. We will know by September. There will be no bigger news conference than that. So that's it. If you can come up with that answer where you stop taking something, you stop eating something, or maybe it's a shot, but something's causing it.

[George Severis]

So not only the answer, but Trump is already promoting the big press conference for the announcement.

[Lyra Smith]

So how exactly did we end up here. RFK Jr spent his early career as an environmental lawyer, but he has been a famous face in the anti vax movement since the mid 2000s. It all started when his son Connor had severe anaphylaxis from a peanut allergy. And through Kennedy's own research, he speculated about a correlation between the CDC's expanded vaccine schedule and the rise in allergies, autism, ADHD, and other health issues. He has spent the last two decades spreading the message that vaccines are one of the root causes of the continued rise in the numbers of autism diagnoses.

[George Severis]

In reality, two big categoric factors contribute to the rise in autism cases. In 2007, autism screening was recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics as part of regular checkups for children between 18 to 24 months. Before then, it was only if the doctor decided to do so. And then, in 2013, the fifth edition of the DSM combined four conditions. Autistic disorder, Asperger's disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder into one Autism spectrum disorder. These changes had a huge impact on the numbers. And just to note, we are constantly learning new information about the autism spectrum.

[Lyra Smith]

But you wouldn't know that from listening to RFK Jr. Whose views have been very consistent for years. Earlier this year, RFK Jr. Falsely described the latest cases as severe. In reality, the majority of recent diagnoses are described as mild. And in fact, the number of quote unquote, profound cases has largely stayed the same.

[George Severis]

Today we have Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for KFF News and host of the podcast what the Health. She's here to unpack RFK Jr. S announcement and walk us through his impact as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

[Lyra Smith]

Julie, welcome to the United States of Kennedy. Before we get into it, I unfortunately will have to have you repeat everything you just told us Affair, which is that you actually have. Other than having the great fortune of covering RFK Jr. S current tenure in the Trump administration, you have various other Kennedy connections as well that are relevant to the podcast.

[Julie Rovner]

I do. I go back my entire life pretty much with the Kennedys. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is the first news event that I remember. I was five. My dad actually worked in Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. I also grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, which is not too far from where the Shrivers lived. So I have been over to their former little compound, which is no longer there anymore, and, you know, met the Shriver kids. And then, of course, I covered Capitol Hill for 40 years, years, including an awful lot of time spent with Ted Kennedy. This senator, in fact, one of my favorite ever memories is after they finished passing HIPAA in 1996, he turned to me after the parting press conference and he said, whatever will you do with your time now that we're done? And I said, senator, I'm sure you'll think of something. Maybe the only snappy comeback I've ever had in my entire life. Very proud of that.

[George Severis]

It's so funny. Kennedy's pop up everywhere. They pop up in so many conversations where I'm not expecting them to come up. So it gets very personal. And while it's also at the core of, like you said, it's like hipaa, Huge, monumental pieces of American history and politics.

[Julie Rovner]

My best claim to fame about the Kennedys is that Senator Kennedy's dog, Splash, knew me and used to come up to me at press conferences and drop his very disgusting tennis ball at my feet because he knew that I was a dog person. So I guess the Kennedy I was closest to was Splash.

[Lyra Smith]

Well, there we go. Since we have you here and since you have an interest in the Kennedys, I'm wondering, before RFK Jr. What was the legacy that other Kennedys had specifically in the health sector as politicians and as people in government?

[Julie Rovner]

Oh, my goodness, so many. If not for John F. Kennedy, we wouldn't have Medicare. That was pushed over the finish line by Lyndon Johnson, but it was pushed in the campaign by John F. Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy was obviously a huge champion for people in poverty, and that was a big part of his campaign. Ted Kennedy books have been written about all of the things that he did for healthcare. His achievements as the chairman of what became the Health, Education, labor and Pensions Committee are legendary. His son, Patrick Kennedy, helped push the legislation to require parity in mental health and physical health. That was a huge effort. We've had several Kennedys. We had Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, RFK Jr. Sister, was the lieutenant governor of Maryland, where I live. You know, any number of Kennedys now who've been in Congress, mostly in the House, and health has been sort of a through line, I think, for all of the Kennedys who've been in public office.

[Lyra Smith]

So that brings us to RFK Jr then. Obviously, he breaks from the family tradition in many ways. Can you sort of give us a brief history of his involvement in the health sector and in the anti vax movement? Because he's obviously not a doctor by training. He sort of came into it via his own family experiences and quote unquote, doing his own research. So what is his history in health?

[Julie Rovner]

Well, he's a lawyer and he came into it as a lawyer and he was a very prominent environmental lawyer in the 90s, which is where I think he gets his interest in pesticides and food additives and things that are more environmental than health related. And I think in the early 2000s someone basically brought him concerns about the problems with vaccines and he just got into it. So since the early 2000s he's been sort of one of the prominent anti vaccine crusaders. He's been involved in an of lawsuits. He's made a lot of money and he's headed this organization called Children's Health Defense from which he's also made a lot of money. He was very active in fighting the COVID vaccine mandate. He's got a big lawsuit challenging Gardasil, the anti cancer vaccine. So it's been sort of his crusade really for the last 20 some years.

[George Severis]

When you say he's made a lot of money, wouldn't you mean settlements or raising money?

[Julie Rovner]

No, in litigation. I mean he's made a lot of money in being a lawyer and suing some of these companies. Also was paid a lot of money from children's health defense. So he's done very well basically from his work as an anti vaccine crusader.

[Lyra Smith]

And did he sort of become a leader in an existing movement or was he truly behind it as the, you know, did he, for lack of a better term, popularize it?

[Julie Rovner]

I think he helped popularize it. I mean, I've been covering the anti vaxx movement since the mid-1990s and it's interesting that Kennedy, as a Kennedy and everyone would think as a Democrat, the anti vaxxers fall into sort of far left and far right. They're sort of the far left I call the crunchy granola types, I mean, that we would see in the Pacific Northwest and in California who just didn't want to put artificial anything into their children. And then also the sort of very strict individualists, if you will, who say you the government aren't going to tell me what to do. So those have been sort of the two strands of the anti vax movement all along with the name Kennedy. And he was already fairly prominent as an environmental lawyer. It was easy for him to take this movement and make it even bigger.

[Lyra Smith]

We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.

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And we're back with United States of Kennedy.

[George Severis]

So what changes have you seen since he took over at the hhs?

[Julie Rovner]

Well, I spent a little time making a list because I wanted to remind myself of all the things that have happened in the last eight months. And there are a lot of them, starting with downplaying the measles outbreak in Texas. This is the largest measles outbreak we've seen in the United States in a couple of decades at least. And there were a lot of doctors who found his behavior cringeworthy, to use a phrase that they have used. You know, basically doubting the vaccines and talking about untested and unproven treatments for measles, which can cause very serious complications and does cause very serious complications. As secretary he cut off funding for enormous swaths of research. Part of that was the administration wide cutting off funding to universities because of their DEI policies. Some of it was about the research in general. He canceled $500 million in research on MRNA vaccines. That was of course the foundation for the COVID vaccine. Scientists worried that it would also be the foundation for a vaccine that we would need to fight a future pandemic because it is much quicker to make vaccines using the MRNA process. And also it's being looked at as possibility to develop a CANC vaccine. So that was very upsetting to a lot of scientists. He promised the current chairman of the Senate help Committee, Bill Cassidy, who is a doctor, that he would not mess with the childhood vaccine schedule. He has indeed messed with the childhood vaccine schedule. He fired all of the members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replaced them with vaccine doubters and skeptics and anti vax people. They met for the first time just last week and made not huge but some major changes to vaccine recommendations that have created more confusion I think than anything else. They have both he as secretary and then the rest of the administration have basically cut the staffing of the Department of Health and Human services from about 80,000 people to about 60,000 people through layoffs and early retirements. And basically he's been trying to clean house. In August he fired his own hand picked head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because she testified to Congress that he told her that she needed to approve in advance whatever recommendations the advisory committee on Immunization practices would make her being able to review the science first. She refused to do that. She was eventually fired and most of the senior scientific staff at the cdc, then resigned after she was fired. And then of course, this week, he was part of this big White House announcement about autism where the president said basically without offering any scientific evidence that taking Tylenol in pregnancy is a cause of autism as well as president cast a lot of doubt on vaccines. So it's been a busy eight months for everybody who covers the Department of Health and Human Services.

[Lyra Smith]

As with so much Trump related stuff, part of the issue is this bombarding of information so that you just become confused and can't really tell what is a big deal and what's not. What is simply an announcement that has no actual bearing in our day to day lives versus what is a policy change for the average person. It just becomes very confusing. So along those lines, could you maybe just walk us through this specific announcement, this latest announcement, which I don't know if you saw this image that was floating around, it was just a giant FOX News image that just said autism announcement, which almost is so decontextualized to become like comical. So what was the big autism announcement?

[Julie Rovner]

Well, of course, the big autism announcement this was they had promised the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And President Trump had promised that by September, and it is now the end of September, they would unveil the cause of autism and a treatment for autism which everyone who's been studying autism for decades says said was unrealistic, if you will, but they plowed ahead anyway. And so basically, you know, the president said that there's a causal relationship between taking Tylenol, acetaminophen. It's the generic most people take like the generic's true causal relationship between acetaminophen and autism if it's taken in pregnancy. Even the fact sheet that was put out the same day by the Food and Drug Administration said there's no causal relationship identified yet. There's an association that women who took Tylenol in pregnancy are more likely to have children who are autistic. But as many doctors point out, one of the reasons you take Tylenol in pregnancy is for a fever. And one of the risk factors for autism is fever. So it may well be the fever and not the Tylenol that causes it. There was a huge study out of Scandinavia that looked at a couple of million moms and babies and basically did not find a causal relationship. There was no new science that was unveiled in this big announcement. The other part of this announcement was a possible treatment, basically a drug that's folinic acid vitamin B9, which is already prescribed to most pregnant women. Because there's concern. I see nodding going on. Women do take folic acid. Pregnancy. Anyway. There have been some very small studies that suggest that perhaps there is promise for some autistic children with this drug. But again, the work is very preliminary. The researchers who were doing the work are worried. They don't want to over promise. They were very unhappy that basically the President said, we have found the treatment and this is it. Because that is clearly not the case yet. Could it be? Possibly Much more research needs to be done so I can say that I've been covering healthcare almost 40 years now. I have never seen a press conference like that. And I watched all of President Trump's press conferences during COVID when he talked about bleach and all kinds of things. This was something new entirely.

[George Severis]

Yeah. The treatment aspect in this announcement, also in April, when they announced and said, we're gonna have these answers in September, almost felt like something Trump threw in at the end. RFK Jr. Seemed to be coming in and he had given himself this deadline of September, which. Do you know where that came from or is that a mystery?

[Julie Rovner]

I don't know where the September came from. Obviously, you know, autism is something, and autism's relationship to vaccines is something that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has been talking about for years and years and years. And President Trump also has a history with autism. He has sort of danced around the vaccine skepticism area for a while. But I think it probably wasn't that hard for Secretary Kennedy to convince the President to go further than perhaps the science would dictate.

[George Severis]

Yeah, I was nodding along so much because this has just brought me back to when I was pregnant. And you are bombarded with warnings and new rules and things you'd never heard of before. And it's a shocking list of things that you cannot have or you're warned against. And the reason why the list is so long is because they don't have the information on a lot of these items. We can't do tests on pregnant women.

[Julie Rovner]

Right. It's unethical to test a lot of these things. So you get lots of these things that this has not been tested in pregnant women. It is an ethical quandary.

[George Severis]

So I guess it just brings me to Trump phrasing of saying, just don't take it, tough it out. What is the danger there in telling pregnant women tough it out when it comes to avoiding Tylenol?

[Julie Rovner]

Well, as I said earlier, it may be that taking the Tylenol is safer than what it is that you're toughing out, particularly if you have a high fever. I mean, even Tylenol says, if you're pregnant, consult with your doctor. Problem is, a lot of people don't have doctors. Even pregnant women don't have doctors. It's hard to get a hold of your doctor for the most part. It's kind of casting off your responsibility as a public official, as a public health official to say, just talk to your doctor, because that's not always doable. And the idea of public health is to sort of do the best we can for the most we can. And I've heard an enormous backlash this week, you know, from the administration saying if anything bad happens, it's your fault, that this is all individual. This is true of vaccines and of the autism announcement, that basically it's up to you to do your own research and make your own decisions. And that's a. It's a real concern to doctors who've spent an awful lot of time talking about things called shared decision making, getting experts to help weigh the risks and the benefits. I think I said on our podcast this week, we've gone from over trusting expertise to under trusting it and putting all the load on individuals. And you shouldn't get your medical advice from TikTok or from elected officials who don't have degrees. But it's hard to find that middle part. And I think what a lot of these things have done is just left people confused and frightened, in many cases uncertain what to do.

[Lyra Smith]

Yeah, I think the declining trust in health institutions more broadly is one of the bigger stories here. And I want to talk a little more about that, but before I do, just to kind of wrap up on the announcement itself, as you mentioned, Tylenol already warns that of course you should not be taking 16 Tylenol a day if you are, or if even if you're not pregnant, it is still something you are putting in your body already. You should be consulting your doctor if you are pregnant. Pregnant and taking it. And this announcement is just basically reiterating that, but a more extreme version of it. I mean, when I think about the possible horrible announcements that they can make, I mean, they get on TV and say we're banning vaccines across the board or something like, it's as the dust has settled, I'm like, well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, saying that Tylenol is dangerous is one of the least harmful things that this administration has said. So what, in your opinion, is the actual material impact of an announcement like this? Like taking the Theatrics aside, just the craziness and weirdness of watching it aside, this isn't some big policy change. It's basically a press conference that is meant to relay a sensibility almost.

[Julie Rovner]

Well, I think you said it at the beginning of your question, which is that this is part of the destruction of trust in the medical community, in public health, in expertise in general. That's a theme of this administration. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Has been very, very in front about saying CDC is hurting people. The scientists don't know what they're talking about. They all have conflicts of interest. I mean, we've been hearing all of this, and basically what it's doing is leaving people uncertain where to turn to resolve difficult issues in their lives and to resolve issues that, frankly, experts have studied and they do know some things about. Tylenol is not all that safe. It can destroy your liver if you take too much of it or if you take too much, don't take Tylenol. If you're drinking Tylen alcohol don't go well together. Just because something is over the counter doesn't mean it's super safe. We know aspirin is not that safe either. All of these medications, as you say, you're putting something in your body and they all have risks and benefits. The trick is to take it only when the benefit outweighs the risk. The confusion that I think is being sown here and the mistrust in scientific knowledge and medical knowledge, I think is really what this is part and parcel of.

[George Severis]

This is one of the most vulnerable groups for this type of confusion. I used to say getting pregnant can be a gateway drug to so many different medical conspiracies and like health conspiracies, because it just unlocks this whole new level of concern and lack of, of information while also throwing a lot of blame and guilt on the individual, like you were saying.

[Julie Rovner]

And when you have the baby, it doesn't get any better. Pregnant women and parents of infants and toddlers are, I think, extremely vulnerable and extremely vulnerable to, as you say, being bombarded with information and uncertain what information to trust.

[George Severis]

We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after this break.

[Health Discovered Host]

This week on a very special episode of Health Discovered, we're taking a closer look at a condition that affects hundreds of thousands of men each year year. Prostate cancer.

[Julie Rovner]

I first found out about my cancer at the age of 45.

[Lyra Smith]

Anything with cancer, you just think death sentence.

[Health Discovered Host]

In this episode, we'll explore the science behind detection along with the practical steps men can take to protect their health. Listen to health discovered on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app, search health Discovered and store Start listening.

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[Cindy Crawford]

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[George Severis]

And we're back with United States of Kennedy.

[Lyra Smith]

I wanted to take us back to the autism spectrum question because all of this is part of both for RFK Jr. And for, as you said, large swaths of both the right and the left is part of an obsession with the so called rise in autism cases. Can you tell us a little bit about the panic surrounding that and how the actual medical community itself talks about it?

[Julie Rovner]

Yeah, well the reason for the rise in autism is not so much because there is more autism it's because there are more things that are now being counted as autism and more of it is being discovered. It used to be we thought of autistic people as those who were basically non verbal and unable to take care of themselves. And now of course, we know that autism is caused by dozens of different things, most of them genetic, some of them environmental, and that it is a spectrum. Now we call it Autism spectrum disorder. And the people who are higher up on the spectrum are much higher functioning. If you do diagnose it early, there are things, behavioral and other things that you can do to help those children achieve even more self sufficiency. There are lots of autistic people who are doing amazing things. One of the things about autism is that often you end up with prodigies. They end up being math geniuses or music geniuses or some other kind of genius. That is not uncommon in the world of Autism spectrum disorder. So it is something that is much more recognized and that's why we're seeing the big increase. It's probably not because of Tylenol or childhood vaccines. One of the things we know is that it's not because of thimerosal, the mercury based vaccine preservative that is no longer in vaccines and hasn't been for 20 years. And yet we still see that the number of cases of autism being diagnosed go up because we're recognizing it more and because we're applying it to more types of neurodivergence.

[Lyra Smith]

And if you were to ask RFK Jr. Why do you think there has been a rise in autism cases, what would he say?

[Julie Rovner]

He's been very firm. That he thinks it's environmental, that he thinks it's from, I think vaccines and Tylenol and pesticides and ultra processed food. Yeah, various toxins. He's very big on various toxins.

[Lyra Smith]

Something that I think is interesting about the anti vax movement is the relationship between the people involved in the movement and the media. I was actually thinking today as I was reading about this topic that the first time I ever heard of the anti vaxx movement was from Jenny McCarthy, the actress and model on Chelsea Lately, Chelsea Handler's old talk show. And I was young and had never considered that there was or was not a relationship between vaccines and autism. And she was promoting some kind of book or promoting some sort of nonprofit or something. And she was very articulate, like she was really forming complete sentences that made sense to someone that did not have scientific expertise. And it really didn't occur to me to question it until I probably talked about it with my parents, where I became older and started doing research or something. I was like, oh, that's interesting. I had never considered that. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the success of the PR campaign, for lack of a better word, around the anti vax movement.

[Julie Rovner]

Yeah, Jenny McCarthy is such a good example. I mean, it's somebody with a big megaphone. That's when we were still talking about mercury preservatives and vaccines mostly, but same thing, RFK Jr. You know, you get the Kennedy name and immediately people sit up and take notice. So whatever it is that he was saying, people are going to pay attention to. And that has helped, I think, blossom the anti vax movement. And this is true. I mean, I get, as a health reporter, constant emails and press releases and requests of people who are trying to get for their particular disease or ailment or whatever I could, if I wanted to do nothing but write about this or that or the other. Because people want more research into the thing that they have and that they think there is not enough research into. The PR machine is a piece of how this works. And then you end up. They go to Capitol Hill and Congress puts a sentence in a report for the funding of the Department of Health and Human Services that says, you will please give this much money to Lyme disease or Long Covid or whatever. There actually is now an entire arm of the National Institutes of Health that looks at alternative medicine. And that was partly because people came to Congress and convinced people in Congress that maybe we should actually look at some of these things.

[Lyra Smith]

So I wanted to talk a little bit more broadly about the difficulty of effective public health communication, for lack of a better word. I think that as someone who in the past has worked in media companies not in any kind of health section or anything, but I have seen firsthand how sensationalist and alarmist stories about health and about specifically scientific studies just do very well and have a staying power in the culture. And I'm thinking about even just basically harmless things like dark chocolate is good for you. A glass of red wine is good for you. There is a sort of recklessness even among journalists that are otherwise very sophisticated and very ethical to frame health information in ways that I think in retrospect can be seen as irresponsible. And I think that during COVID this sort of reached a breaking point where it was often not clear, just as a news reader, what was a hundred % confirmed or 100% true versus something that was still an ongoing Scientific debate. What can people do to make public health communication more effective and to foster a public that is better equipped to think about these things?

[Julie Rovner]

Well, this has been basically my quest for the last 30 years.

[Lyra Smith]

Yes.

[Julie Rovner]

Every time I talk to a public health professional, I mean, there is an entire branch of public health concerned only with communication, with communicating to the public. I was disappointed during COVID so that a lot of these public health professionals were unable to articulate things that I know they had studied in public health school because I had studied them too. Again, it's about communicating risks and benefits, how the scientific process works, what we know, what we think we know, what we might know, what we don't know. It is difficult. You need to dumb it down, if you will. Not everybody remembers what they learned in fifth grade science about the scientific process and hypothesis and testing and conclusions. Although it would be good if we all went back and reviewed some of the elementary school science that we got. And I assume that they're still teaching this in elementary school science, how this works. I really do think that the biggest failing of COVID was the inability of the health community to communicate understandably to the public. And I think I underestimated how much trouble that would get us into down the line. And now we are down the line and we are in trouble.

[Lyra Smith]

Yeah. I think to me, one of the most challenging things is being both firm and enough about, you know, precautions that the public should take while also allowing for the fact that science is constantly evolving. You can't take on this stereotypical liberal voter stance of, you know, in this house, we believe in science as though that is a very rigid thing, because then you're setting yourself up for failure if you pretend you are more confident than you actually are. But then if you don't express confidence, and that's bad too, because then you don't want to just be going out and being like, well, you know, it might be one thing, it might be the other. Who knows?

[Julie Rovner]

I don't know why it was so hard for public health professionals to say, particularly at the beginning of COVID N95 masks are the best, but not everybody should be able to get those. Surgical masks are not as good as N95 masks, but they're better than nothing. Cloth masks are not as good as surgical masks, but covering your mouth with something is better than nothing. Why they were not able to just say that rather than say, talking about someone? Well, we don't want to recommend N95 masks because there aren't enough and health professionals need them. And Blah, blah, blah, are muttering. It's like, just say what you know and that's what you know. And then we did a lot of, a lot of studies and, you know, it turned out that masking, probably putting masks on little kids didn't do that much, but probably wearing N95 masks for a good while probably did save a lot of people. None of this is perfect. This was. We were building the plane while we were flying it. You can say that we're building the plane while we're flying it. This is what we know right now. It might change tomorrow, but this is what we know right now. And I don't know why they had so much trouble. I think they would have done themselves a big favor by being a little more upfront with their own sort of how you talk about these things to the public rather than trying to just say we need to give advice. And this is the advice. I think there was just so much of that and people just weren't buying it. And now people say that they were lied to. And I won't say that nobody was lying, but I think most of the public health officials were trying their best to communicate what they knew and at the time.

[Lyra Smith]

We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after this break.

[Health Discovered Host]

This week on a very special episode of Health Discovered, we're taking a closer look at a condition that affects hundreds of thousands of men each year. Prostate cancer.

[Julie Rovner]

I first found out about my cancer at the age of 45.

[Lyra Smith]

Anything with cancer, you just. Just think deaf sentence.

[Health Discovered Host]

In this episode, we'll explore the science behind detection along with the practical steps men can take to protect their health. Listen to Health Discovered on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app. Search health Discovered and start listening.

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[Cindy Crawford]

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[Lyra Smith]

And we're back with United States of Kennedy.

[George Severis]

So looking forward now with RFK Secretary of Health, what do you see coming down the line in terms of communication but also just in terms of like, what his goals are?

[Julie Rovner]

It certainly seems pretty clear that his goals are to undermine the vaccine availability. I had a story by one of my former colleagues that I was touting Today, the next thing he's going to go after is the so called Vaccine Court, the vaccine injury compensation program, which I covered when I was a baby reporter in the 1980s. The creation of it, which was basically to keep vaccines being produced because vaccine companies were saying if they're going to sue us into oblivion, we're just going to get out of this business. It's not that profitable. We're going to make other things that make us more money. And plus, vaccines do have, have risks and there are people who get injured by vaccines. So basically this was a way to say, okay, we're gonna collect this tax on all vaccines. And for the people who can show that they have an injury that's commensurate with a vaccine side effect, we're just gonna give them some money. That's essentially what it is. And over the years it's needed some changes. Mostly there's a huge backlog. There just aren't enough administrative law judges to actually give people who are injured the compensation that they are due. But it looks like Kennedy would like to. To take it completely apart. We'll see. It was created by Congress. He's done a lot of things that theoretically, if Congress had raised his hand and said, you can't do that, he wouldn't have been able to do. But for the most part, Congress is just kind of sitting back and letting all of this happen. So I'll be interested to see when Congress stands up and says, co equal branch of government here. We created this program. You can't take it apart. Hasn't happened yet.

[Lyra Smith]

Are you optimistic? Mystic.

[Julie Rovner]

I'm waiting to see.

[Lyra Smith]

Okay, not to get too conspiratorial, but, you know, when you see someone making these grand pronouncements in the highest levels of government, you know, my mind goes to is there money behind this in some way? If a different kind of HHS head was pushing some shady drug or something, I'd say, oh, I bet it's big pharma lobbying. So I'm wondering, for people who are anti vax or for people who have this sort of skepticism, are there larger moneyed interests behind the.

[Julie Rovner]

In some cases, yes. There are a lot of people who make a lot of money from selling supplements and unregulated things that they say can help your health that have not been, as they always say in the tiny print, not been cleared by the fda. Or sometimes they'll say it's been cleared by the FDA but not approved by the fda because that's kind of weasel words because cleared by the FDA just means that it's not been found to be actively dangerous as opposed to it's been found to work. So yes, there are muddied interests. There are people making money from being anti vax and anti big pharma and anti big medicine. But I don't think that when RFK Jr says that everything is because people are conflicted. I know people who work at Department of Health and Human Services who have very difficult jobs. They don't get paid a ton of money. They do it because they believe in the mission. And frankly, they could be making more money if they were out working for big Pharma. Have there been people who've done the revolving door, particularly from fda? Absolutely. I'm not saying that every single person is a saint, but I'm also saying that not every single person is as conflicted as some of the conspiracy theorists say they are. And that the conspiracy theorists who are saying that it's all about big pharma and big medicine, some of them have their own Conflicts.

[George Severis]

We could just talk a brief general history of the anti vax movement. We talked about RFK's role in it, but just more generally.

[Julie Rovner]

Yeah. And I say it is a combination of people who are anti being told what to do. So they don't like vaccine mandates. And of course that's how public health works, is that vaccines work best by creating what's called herd immunity. That if you get enough people who are vaccinated, then the people who can't be vaccinated, who are too young or who are immunocompromised, they are protected because if there is a random case here or there of a contagious disease, it won't spread because enough people in the herd have been vaccinated. So there are the libertarian side of this that, you know, don't tell me what to do. And then there are the I don't want to put anything artificial in my body. These are the people who also like to drink raw milk, which can be really dangerous because there's a reason we've been pasteurizing milk for 150 years. It kills things that can make you really sick. And this has been. The anti vaxx movement is basically the mixture of those two sides of the people who don't want to be told what to do and the people who do not believe in modern medicine. Yeah.

[Lyra Smith]

I was listening to Rachel Bedard, the health writer who sometimes writes for the New Yorker. She was on some podcast, podcast, and this actually made it click for me a bit. She was saying that RFK's politics are driven by an obsession with purity and contamination. And that really unites his interest in climate change and global warming with his interest in preventing toxins from getting into your body. And of course, those are two poles of the same impulse. One of them, in my opinion, is pro social and the other one is antisocial. But I think an obsession with purity and contamination is both part of the right wing libertarian type of mentality that you're describing and the kind of left wing hippie health food.

[Julie Rovner]

It's funny, he's created a Make America Healthy Again scorecard on the HHS website, which I was looking at what the headings are. And I mean, the other thing that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has done is he's taken things that are fairly popular among a bipartisan group of people. We should not have pesticides in food. That's a bad thing. Autism. If we can figure out how we should prevent kids from getting autism, vaccines should be safe. We probably should revise our dietary guidelines. Ultra processed food is bad for you. Having all these neon colored Fruit Loops is probably bad for you, and you should take it out of cereal. None of those things are particularly controversial unless you're the pesticide industry or the food dye industry or somebody who's making money from that side of it. A lot of the things that he talks about and that we know he feels very strongly about are things that. That are fairly universally popular. I think that's why Trump was so interested in getting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On his side, because he brings along a piece of a movement that Trump didn't otherwise have.

[George Severis]

Well, I think also it's like, yes, who would argue against that? And I think that something that we have collectively seen while doing this podcast is that people really want the Kennedys to be right. And I just wonder if you could speak on RFK Jr being a Kennedy's impact on his ability to push forward on these goals or continue to be a public figure, even though he has separated himself so much from the Kennedy family and the Kennedy history.

[Julie Rovner]

I would say I think the biggest frustration are from his own family, his siblings, who are constantly saying, please don't listen to our brother. He's crazy. I mean, that's literally what they are saying. It really is difficult, I think, for the family because. And I'm a child of the 60s, so I grew up with Kennedys everywhere, and I understand sort of the allure and the immediate magnetism. And I've known many, many members of the Kennedy family, so I get it. And the enormous popularity and the belief. I think even President Trump, who was Democrat for most of his life, is fascinated by the Kennedys. They're the closest that we have in the United States. United States to American royalty. Trump loves the idea that he has his own Kennedy, so I think that's been part of the drivers of this. But as I say, I think the people who are most frustrated are his relatives who don't believe in most of what he's doing and keep trying to.

[Lyra Smith]

Tell the public that, well, this has been really, really great. Thank you for making everything concise and understandable to someone with a very passing knowledge of all this stuff. We really appreciate it.

[Julie Rovner]

Well, now I have to go back and listen to the rest of this podcast because now I'm fascinated.

[George Severis]

Thank you so much.

[Julie Rovner]

Of course.

[Lyra Smith]

Thank you, Julie.

[George Severis]

That's it for this week's episode, and.

[Lyra Smith]

Next week we're going back to our regularly scheduled programming. Digging into the blood feud between RFK Sr. Bobby Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa.

[George Severis]

United States of Kennedy is hosted by me, Lyra Smith and George Severis, research.

[Lyra Smith]

By Dave Roos and Austin Thompson, original.

[George Severis]

Music by Joshua Topolski, edited by Graham.

[Lyra Smith]

Gibson and mixed by Doug Bain. Our Executive producer is Jenna Cagle. United States of Kennedy is a production of iHeart podcasts.

[George Severis]

Subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all things Kennedy every week.

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[Julie Rovner]

This is an I Heart podcast.