US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans on Thursday to cut a quarter of his department’s workforce as part of a sweeping restructuring, framed as a push to prioritize chronic disease prevention under his “Make America Healthy Again” initiative.
The plan calls for the elimination of 10,000 positions, reducing the department’s workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 employees after accounting for early retirements and those who accepted buyouts offered by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
It comes as the country experiences its worst measles outbreak in years, and fears grow that bird flu will spark a new human pandemic.
Kennedy has alarmed health experts with his rhetoric, which downplays the importance of vaccines against measles, a once-conquered childhood disease, and suggests that avian influenza be allowed to spread freely among America’s poultry.
According to an official statement, the plans would save an estimated $1.8 billion per year, or 0.1 percent of the Department of Health and Human Services’ $1.8 trillion budget.
“We are not just reducing bureaucratic sprawl,” Kennedy explained. “We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”
The restructuring plan would reduce the Department of Health and Human Services’ current 28 divisions to 15, including a new entity called the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA).
“This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer,” Mr. Kennedy said.
– History of misinformation –
The Food and Drug Administration will suffer the most job cuts, with 3,500, followed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with 2,400 and the National Institutes of Health with 1,200.
The new blueprint promises to shift the focus to “ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins,” according to the statement.
While Kennedy’s push for cleaner food and stricter environmental standards is consistent with health-care concerns, critics point out that his long history of spreading vaccine misinformation and questioning basic scientific principles calls his commitment to evidence-based policy into question.
In 2023, for example, he proposed that infectious disease research be paused for eight years. He has also questioned whether the HIV virus causes AIDS, and whether germs cause illness at all.
Kennedy has recently emphasized treatments for measles, such as Vitamin A, over routine vaccination, claiming that the vaccine causes deaths “every year.”
“He could not do a worse job than he is doing,” said pediatrician and vaccine expert Paul Offit to AFP recently.
The current measles outbreak has sickened 378 people, the vast majority of whom are unvaccinated, and resulted in two deaths.
Kennedy’s suggestion on Fox News that avian flu be allowed to spread unchecked so that “you can identify the birds that survive, which are the birds that probably have a genetic inclination for immunity,” and then breed them, has also been met with strong criticism.
Experts warn that encouraging viral spread may speed up dangerous mutations and increase the risk to humans.
