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The U.S. secretary of health oversees everything from food safety to medical research and welfare programs.

Considering that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a vaccine skeptic, it’s an open question how qualified he is for the job.

“I believe autism is caused by vaccines,” he said in an interview last year.

America’s national public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is one of the institutions Kennedy will oversee if his nomination is confirmed.

In the Autism Frequently Asked Questions section, he says: “There have been many studies looking at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and ASD (autism spectrum disorder). Studies to date continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD.”

Kennedy is actually a history of deviation from reality and spreading health information that scientists say is wrong.

But he could bring Kennedy’s passion to the role of health secretary when it comes to tackling the nation’s drug addiction crisis.

A heroin addict for 14 years in his youth, he spoke about the issue in 2023. Interview to Daily Mail, external“We’re losing an entire generation of young people. This year alone we’ve lost 106,000 people to fentanyl deaths.” The real figure was even higher Just over 107,500, external.