RFK Jr. addresses food safety, autism and more during CNN interview

And I'm joined now by the HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It's great to have you here. You've just unveiled this new report, and a lot of it focuses on chronic disease in children, which in part, when you read into this, essentially says that you believe a lot of that has to do with ultra processed foods, chemical exposures, lack of physical activity, stress and excessive use of prescription drugs. If people are reading this and say, OK, but what are the solutions to fix that? What would you say? Well, this exercise was really a diagnostic exercise, and it's important because this has never happened in the federal government, where you have all the agencies recognizing we have a chronic disease crisis. And President Biden did his HHS directives that the word chronic disease was never mentioned. And so gathering and my uncle tried to do this in 1962 after Rachel Carson's book came out. And unfortunately, he was killed before that. For 60 years, we've been waiting for the government to to recognize that there's a crisis in chemical exposures and and the increase in chronic disease. This was important for that, but this was just the diagnostics. 60 days from now, we put out the prescription. So we will put out a series of policies to address this issue and to eliminate the chronic disease. Yeah, but I'm sure you've been thinking about this. I mean, a lot of these are things that you've been saying for four years now. Yeah. And we're already doing it. I mean, we we were already getting rid of the food dyes. We're changing the SNAP program so that, you know, we now are handling a tsunami of applications by the states to give them SNAP waivers so to get sodas and candies off of SNAP. We're reviewing the dietary guidelines and we're going to have those up by August. And the dietary guidelines under President Biden were 453 pages, and they were basically a product of the same kind of industrial impulses that put food fruit loops at the top of the food pyramid. But you you're saying in 60 days, people should expect to see concrete solutions of how these things can be solved. We have we're already reviewing the grass standards that generally recognize the safe standards. But we're already doing we've done more in 100 days than my predecessors have done in in decades in terms of redressing the causes of this problem. So and we're going to keep doing that. There's not we're not waiting for this to come out. But we are going to do comprehensive diagnostics across the entire government of what of what each of these agencies need to be doing to end the epidemic. And you're talking about working with other agency heads. The EPA is also on your commission. And as part of this is Lee Zeldin was there in the room. Your report says that kids are exposed to harmful environmental toxins and microplastics. I wonder how you square that with some moves that we've seen the EPA take to to roll back or to weaken rules that limit forever chemicals in drinking water, which obviously would would be one of those issues. We're working very hard on PFAS. A lot of what you read about about EPA's regulations, rolling back regulations on PFAS is not true. PFAS is something I've been working on for years. I was part of the trial team in the first case against PFAS. And it is a priority for my agency. It's also a priority for Brooke Rollins at USDA because the PFAS is now on farm crops. And and we're going to we're going to do everything in our power to limit the proliferation of PFAS in the environment and limited its use as a manufacturing in manufacturing. So it sounds like you don't think that those rules should be weakened or rolled back or postponed, as some of the instances have shown. You know, I can't talk to the details of what's come out out of EPA on that issue. I know that Lee, I've asked Lee about it two days ago, and he said everything that we've been reading about it is wrong, that he's committed to regulating PFAS and PFOAs. Yeah, I haven't seen them say otherwise publicly, but I think it would just raise questions of, you know, the EPA is promising this huge environmental rollback. How does that coincide with what you'd like to see happen here? You know, people may say, is the left hand talking to the right hand on the rollbacks that Lee is trying to is is orchestrating there are designed to restart industrial policy. And he recognizes many people do in this government that economic prosperity in our country is also a social determinant of health. We found that out during the pandemic when we put people out of work and our chronic disease exploded. So we need a strong economy. We need a balance where there's a strong economy, but also those constituents and ingredients and and residues that are hurting American health, that we get rid of them. And that is what the report will do in 60 days on ultra processed foods. And getting into that here, you were born into a privileged background, obviously not something you can control. But I wonder what you would say to maybe a single mom of two kids who's reading this report about how harmful these these cheap but very accessible foods are for her family and saying, well, you know, sometimes that's the best we can do. And and that's why that's what's on the food or at the table at the end of the day, or that's what's in their lunchbox. It's an illusion to think that processed food is cheap because you end up paying for it with diabetes. You end up paying for it with autoimmune dysregulation, with mitochondrial dysfunction, with inflammation. And you end up paying much higher cost in the long run. But they're not paying. There are food deserts in this country where people at this point have a hard time getting access. There are. I met with the technology, health technology companies this week, and it was extraordinary meeting. And one of the statements they made is that there's no place in this country in the lower 48. You can't get access to good food. It's not easy access that has happened in the past. And that's been part of the economic drivers. And also the fact that people don't understand that these processed foods are poison. But they're more and more. And you're watching, you're watching companies now that are changing their ingredients because of this movement that are making good food more available to Americans because they're demanding it. There was no demand for it before. This report is about getting every American to demand the accessibility to good whole food in their neighborhoods. And that, you know, it's going to be a process, but it's already happening. You see these big fast food conglomerates that are switching from seed oils to beef califat. You see them reducing the ingredients. You see Chobani yogurt changing its ingredients because of the demand that has happened because of the Maha movement. We are going to make sure they have apps that mothers who go into the grocery store have an app that they can show and send a flash on the barcode of every product and get a green light, red light or yellow light. That will allow the HHS is creating that we're working with industry to do it. And they're already doing it. You know that Mark Hyman's company has done it. Patrick's on scenes. Company has done it. There are many, many apps out there that I use, one called Yucca. That is very my wife and I considered invaluable. You can go into any grocery store, flash it at any product and you can get a go or a no on it. And as that happens, the market. We're not trying to create an anti state here. We're trying to create more and drive market forces that will drive change and the kind of food Americans get and good information and good science. In anticipation of this report, there was a lot of pushback from farmers, agricultural groups. I know you've heard from some Republican senators up on Capitol Hill who are worried about what it would mean for pesticides, ones that have been approved already by the EPA. I want to get your response to what one Illinois farmer, who is also the National Corn Growers Association president, Kenneth Hartman Jr. He told The Wall Street Journal, if the administration's goal is to bring more efficiency to government, then why is the Maha Commission duplicating efforts by raising questions about pesticides that have been answered repeatedly through research and reviews by the EPA? There's nothing in this report that will worry the American farmer. The the person who made that statement had never seen the report. So so you won't reverse anything that EPA has approved. We consider and I said this during the two and a half years that I was running for president. There is no farmers in this country are in trouble. You know, and I've met with farmers in Texas and the Midwest this week. And they consistently told me seven out of every 10 years we are losing money. If we lose the farmers, the Maha agenda is is bankrupt. We need the farmers as partners. We need to keep them in business. We don't want to put a single farmer out of business. What we want to do is create incentives and innovation to allow them to innovate themselves, to use less chemical intensive. But we're not an anti state. We're not going to coerce people. We're not going to tell them what to do. We're going to give them the opportunity. And we found in the farm community that there are that the majority of farmers, they are the original environmentalists. They want to produce healthy food, and we need to give them the ability to do that and the economic incentives and the technology that we already have healthy food. We need to produce we need to produce the best food that we can possibly and continue to do that. You mentioned your presidential run, and some farmers may look at that and be skeptical of what you're saying because you you made comments like saying that you would you could weaponize the other agencies against chemical agriculture by doing good science on the chemicals that you say are poisoning us. High fructose corn syrup. And it's linked to the obesity epidemic. So if there weren't, you're going to weaponize other agencies against them. And that's, you know, processed food. And we I think we've all agreed that processed food is not a good thing for human health and that we're we're driving a diabetes epidemic. You know, Caitlin, when I was a kid, my uncle was president. The average pediatrician at that time saw one case of juvenile diabetes in his lifetime over a 40 or 50 year career. Today, 38 percent of teens are diabetic or prediabetic. And one out of every three kids who walks through his office door has that. And it's costing us a trillion dollars a year just for that kind of mitochondrial dysfunction, bankrupting our country. It's making it 75 percent of American kids can't qualify for military service. Let me ask you about something you said when you were on Capitol Hill this week. You were asked about the lead crisis in Milwaukee schools. You told Congress, quote, We have a team on the ground in Milwaukee. The city said that's not true and that they are still not getting the help that they want from the CDC. Do you know who is on the ground? The CDC is giving them assistance with their labs, their analytics and advice. They just said one technician was on the ground. I can't tell you how many are on the ground in the city of Milwaukee, but I can tell you we are there. But you don't know how many? I can't tell you how many right now. So I mean, this is from the Milwaukee Health Commissioner and Senator Tammy Baldwin. Yeah. And I you could hear my other. Exchanges with Tammy Baldwin and, you know, anyway, I'm not necessarily believing what Senator Baldwin. So you're disputing and saying that there are more than one CDC. Like I said, we have sixty two thousand employees. I'm not sure how many we have deployed to Milwaukee. I'm happy to check and give you that information. And are you committed to helping with the schools there? Because obviously they're having a real issue with this. And so, of course, I've been working on lead in the schools for including in Milwaukee for 40 years. It's it is a crisis in our country. Forty four percent of black youth in our municipalities have dangerous levels of lead in their blood. And that is crippling them for a lifetime, potentially. Oh, it's an issue that is foremost on my mind. It's a high priority and it's something we'll continue to be involved with. OK, and we're talking about your the big release of this report today. The next report that you've said that that you'll produce is in September when you want to determine the cause of autism. Do you still plan to know the cause of autism? Guidelines come out in August and the second stage of this report also comes out in August. OK, so that's in August. So this would be in September when you said that you would be able to determine what the cause of autism is. Is that still the timeline that you are sticking? We will we will have some studies completed by September. And those studies will mainly be replication studies of studies that have already been done. We're also deploying new teams of scientists, 15 groups of scientists. We're going to send those grants out to bid within three weeks. Why would you replicate studies that have been done? Because the only way you can get good science is through replication. If you don't have replication, you don't know whether other scientists looking at the same data will arrive at the same conclusion. Good science always includes replication. In fact, we're changing the procedures at NIH so that up to 20 percent of the funding at NIH is for replication. If you don't have replication, you have incentives to cheat. And there's a lot of cheating that goes on in science. OK, but some people well, some people might dispute that. But looking at your April 10th comments when you were inside the cabinet meeting, you said by September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures. Well, we'll have some of the information to get. The most solid information. It will probably take us another six months. OK, so parents should not expect to know what causes autism by September. We'll see. We're going to as well. As I said, we're going to replicate some of the studies that have already been done that look like sound studies. And we'll know a lot from those. And then we'll know a lot more afterward. But not the definitive answer by September. Just to be clear, it depends what those replicable studies show. OK, and then what do you expect to happen six months after that? You mentioned something. I expect we will know the answers of the ideology of autism. OK, so that timeline is moving from September to six months. As I said, we're going to begin to have a lot of information by September. We're not going to stop the studies in September. We're going to be definitive. And the more definitive you are, the more drives public policy. OK, so that would put us at what, March next year? You say you'll know the cause of it? As I said, it's about six months after September. A lot of these studies will begin coming back. You also said something recently when you were on Capitol Hill and you were being asked about vaccines and whether or not you would recommend them for for people out in the United States. And you said that people should not take medical advice from you. You are the HHS secretary, though, and your job is to create guidance and to talk about vaccines and medical testing. Why should people not take medical advice from you? Well, they probably shouldn't take medical advice from any HHS secretary. Very few of the HHS secretaries historically, I think. Maybe 10 or 20 percent, 15 percent have been doctors. Oh, people were asking me, I was responding to a question about my personal health choices, and I said that's not relevant. Because I people should not make their decisions based upon my personal choices. We have an infrastructure. We have an advisory committee on the immunization practices that makes recommendations. It's a group of scientists that looks at reams of data. And that's where our recommendations come from, not from an individual. But it's time, you know, what you know, one of the big mistakes that you and many other of your media colleagues made during COVID is to try to convince the American people that they should trust the experts. Trusting the experts is not a feature of science. It's not a feature of democracy. It's a feature of religion and totalitarianism. The what we should do is trust the science. And we are going to do the science. And the science is going to be replicable and it's going to be gold standard so that parents can make their own choices about what they what is best for their family and their health. But I think people, you know, the message was to trust the science and what studies were finding during COVID. That was a bad message. Try to know is trust the experts. As with that's what you kept telling us. Trust the experts. I don't know that I ever said that. Oh, I mean, we talked to the officials. Actually, your network was saying it every day. We took the briefings live every day with all the experts that President Trump doctors. But those are the people President Trump brought out to the briefings. Oh, President Trump brought. And I can I can tell you what President Trump did right and what President Biden did wrong. What I'm saying to you, I want to get back to what your comment was about that you said that people should not take your medical advice. Is that that's your position? Yeah, absolutely. People should not be taking medical advice. I'm somebody who is not a physician, but they should. And they should also be skeptical about any medical advice. They need to do their own research. You know, you're a mom. If you're a mom, you do your own research on your baby carriage, on your baby bottles, on your baby formula. But they don't have medical degrees, obviously, if you're a mom and you're looking at what science has been tested. They do. They trust their doctors and their pediatricians. You know, one of the responsibilities of living in a democracy where where physicians and and every sort of expert are subject to all kinds of biases. One of the responsibilities of living in a democracy is to do your own research and to make up your own mind. So that's your message to moms or to anyone is to do your own research. I would say be skeptical of authority. My father told me that when I was a young kid, people in authority lie. And we've seen a lot of that in our country and people in the media lie. And and people need to make their own judgments and be skeptical and maintain their capacity for critical thinking. And that was shut down during Covid. And the media was complicit in that. Disagree on that last part. Secretary Kennedy, thank you for your time. Good to meet you. I wonder, was it surprising to hear you say here the HHS secretary doubled down on saying that people should not listen to his medical advice? It wasn't surprising because he has said this before and he's he's right that most secretaries have not been physicians. But at the same time, as you sort of alluded to during the interview, he is essentially the CEO of the largest health enterprise in the world. So his words definitely matter. And he is out there, you know, making recommendations on all sorts of different things from infectious diseases to food, to food, dyes, all these sorts of things. So, you know, he's got a lot of policy power, unlike the surgeon general, who's sort of the the the nation's doctor. He has policy mandate power. So it's surprising in that regard. I think he's trying to disentangle his own personal health choices versus his role as the the, you know, secretary of health. Well, and in that role as secretary of health back in April, he said that a new effort that they were going to carry out would, he said, find the cause of autism, the autism epidemic, as he called it, by September. Now he seems to be saying that that is slipping and he thinks that they would know more definitively by March of next year. Do you think that that is possible? What do you make of that timeline changing? I certainly wasn't realistic by September, and it's still not realistic by by March. I mean, you know, Caitlin, there have been studies that have been decades long studies following kids who've been vaccinated, following kids who have not been vaccinated and really looking into, you know, the potential causes of autism. These are international studies. First thing he said to you in that interview was that the existing studies, many of which have been done again over decades, need to be replicated. Not exactly sure what he means by that. If he means, you know, look at the data and have someone else analyze the data or if he really means what he said, which is that the studies need to be replicated. That would take a long time. I think what you're starting to hear from him, but also, you know, I think importantly from the head of the NIH is that maybe by September they might have a framework in place to actually start to talk about what kind of studies need to be done. So, you know, we'll see. But I think anybody that you've talked to that has studied this for a long time thinks that these these time frames that are being put out there are really unrealistic, even with the additional six months. The other thing he said that stood out was what's happening in Milwaukee right now as the city there and officials there are disputing that there are people from the CDC, a team of people helping with lead contamination in schools. I know you've done reporting on this, Sanjay. What is what is happening? What is the reality? But look, you know, and I covered Flint as well. So we had a good idea of sort of what happens if you call the feds when something like that's unfolding in your city, what happens at that point? They sent in these deployment teams into Flint. They created testing centers. They had epidemiologists on the ground. They were doing all that stuff. They still have a registry in Flint to continue to track lead poisoning. That was the same sort of teamwork that they expected in Milwaukee. And I spoke to the health commissioner there who said, look, we first called in March about getting help. And April 3rd, we basically heard that that department no longer existed. I was there a couple of weeks ago to ask again what was going on at that point. Again, same answer. The world's best and brightest lead experts from the CDC were no longer available. They weren't even answering the phone. And then, you know, in response to just the last couple of days, we checked back in again with Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Health Department. And that's what they said. I don't know if we have the statement, but I can read it to you. They basically said that Secretary Kennedy's statement is inaccurate. The city of Milwaukee Health Department is not receiving any federal epidemiological or analytical support related to this, to this lead crisis, essentially. So I don't know exactly what what he's referring to. There was one person on the ground there that was a person who was scheduled to be on the ground already, even before this lead crisis sort of really took off to help with analytics overall. But this is not at all the deployment teams that you're used to seeing the disease detective, the epidemiologist, the people who specialize in testing who typically show up in situations like this. So on one hand, you know, Secretary Kennedy, and I think honestly is saying he cares deeply about things like lead and heavy metals because he has a track record of talking about these things. But that's not happening right now in Milwaukee. They're not getting federal support. And that's been validated and confirmed by talking to people on the ground there. Yeah, clearly a lot of tension between him and Senator Tammy Baldwin as well. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, as always, great to have you. Thank you.