Exclusive interview with Scripps News: RFK Jr. discusses vaccines, medical research funding and more

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. What is your message to CDC employees who are concerned that there's a culture that's been created around vaccine skepticism and disinformation? Well, I mean, my my message coming here was to offer condolence to the family of a police officer, David Rose. And I I'm hoping to visit Mariana, his wife, this afternoon, his two children, and she's pregnant with a third. And also to offer support of all the CDC employees who are who are part of a shining star health agency around the world. They should be proud of their work. They work in silence and saving us all and protecting our health. And they should not be the targets of this kind of violence from anybody. I come from a family that lost two of its members to political violence, and it's always wrong. And we need to make part of my job is to make sure that we protect our employees and keep them safe and allow them to do their critical work. So what is the plan to sort of quell disinformation, misinformation so that something like this doesn't happen again? Well, you know, I would say that we don't know enough about what the motive was of this individual, but people can ask questions without without being penalized. And, you know, there was a there was attacks on the NFL the other day for by a shooter who was concerned that he got a brain injury from playing football. And nobody blamed The New York Times for spreading that disinformation that football can cause injuries. What we need to do at our agency is to make sure the public believes in in the things that we're saying. And the way that we do that is by telling the truth. And what I'm trying to do at the agency is return it to gold standard science to make sure that anything that we tell the public, we we tell the public what we know and what we don't know. And, you know, one of the things that we saw during covid is that the government was overreaching and in in in its efforts to persuade the public to to get vaccinated. And they were saying things that were not always true. And public health agencies should never do that. There are many other countries that actually have a higher vaccination rates than ours, where there are no mandates. And it's because people trust their government. The Americans have lost faith in the federal government. One of the reasons that we recently withdrew the mRNA platform for upper respiratory, we're only doing it for us, upper respiratory infections, but it's because Americans have lost faith in the recommendation. 60 percent of Americans say that they will not take that vaccine no matter what. And only 13 percent of children, although it's recommended for 100 percent of children, only 13 percent are complying. And that's after a billion dollar campaign to persuade people to take. It's the biggest farm is a campaign for a pharmaceutical product in history. We have to ask, why are people not believing the public health agencies? And the answer, I think, is pretty elementary. At the public health agencies have not been honest. And and no matter how well intentioned it is to tell a noble lie to get an outcome that you want, it it never works for a long time. But I do have to ask the mRNA vaccine has been proven safe and effective. It has been proven to. I mean, according to Steve Bannon's war room, NIH director Jay Bhattacharya said that the mRNA platform no longer viable, but that it saved nearly two million lives with minimal safety issues compared to other vaccines. What Jay Bhattacharya said is that we don't know because the data is unreliable and we don't know what the injury rates where there is over 5000 peer reviewed studies that that are documenting injuries or supposed injuries from the vaccine. We don't know. We there's not much we know about it. What we know is this. And this is the reason that we that we discontinue the platform again for only for upper respiratory. It's still we're still doing the research on oncology, on cancers where it may be very, very effective for upper respiratory infections. It did not prove very effective during Covid. And the reason is that there's a number of reasons. One is it targets a single protein. Which means that all the virus has to do is to mutate out that protein. And then the virus is immune to the vaccine. That's what happened with Omnicron. It actually encourages the virus to mutate and prolongs the pandemic. The other problem with mRNA platforms for upper respiratory illnesses is that you can't control the amount of antigen that everybody is getting. When you give a vaccine, you want to know exactly how much antigen is, because some people react very, very badly and can get very, very badly injured. I'm too much. What the mRNA vaccine does is it turns your body into an antigen factory and we can't control the biodistribution of that antigen in your body. We don't know how much your body is producing. We don't have any way of controlling it. And we can't tell, we can't dictate where it's going to end up, if it's going to end up in organs where it's not supposed to work and cause injury. Those two factors, those two dynamics really dictate. We had unanimity across the agency and CDC and FDA and NIH and BARDA and CBER that this was something that was not working and we should not go forward with it. But ultimately, the biggest issue is public trust. If the public doesn't trust in a vaccine, then you've got a problem and they no longer trust in this platform. A traditional vaccine like we've seen thus far, too, also the virus mutates with that as well. So how is it different than if it were to mutate in mRNA, especially when you're looking at something like avian flu, which is learning, you know, one step away from having an easier human transition. So what is the difference then from traditional to what the mRNA vaccine, you say, does? The virus, that's the nature of the virus, is to mutate to find the host that's acceptable. That is a problem with some of the traditional vaccines, although apparently much less so than with mRNA. And with COVID particularly, with coronaviruses and flus, they're very unstable and they're much more likely to mutate. With measles and some of these other chickenpox, et cetera, it's a much more stable virus. We've always had problems with the flu vaccine, and this is one of the reasons. And it's one of the reasons we're shifting resources to universal vaccines that target not just a single protein, but the entire virus or the entire phylum of viruses with the hope of creating, and really a promise, we've made a lot of progress on this, of creating a vaccine that addresses all COVID viruses and will not encourage, not destabilize them and encourage that mutation, the same with flu. And so then why is it that, you know, even President Trump's former Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams, said that people will die with the decision of not using mRNA vaccines for viruses like COVID and the flu. There's been a lot of scientists, a lot of doctors who have disagreed. So where is the disconnect with the science? Well, first of all, what experts says is not science, you know, and we have to get away from that. We were told during COVID, trust the experts, but trusting the experts is not a feature of either science or democracy. It's a feature of totalitarianism and of religion. With science, there's always questions and we're always encouraged to ask them. Science is always evolving. In terms of the critiques of the former Surgeon General, I haven't spoken to him. I don't know what he had in mind when he made those statements. It may be that he was reacting to press accounts that described what we're doing and much more expansively than what we're actually doing. Otherwise, I would just say that he is not reading the science. As I said, there's over 5,000 peer-reviewed studies now that chronicle in detail the injuries from the COVID vaccines. And these include very serious injuries, particularly to young people from myocarditis and pericarditis and blood clots and aneurysms. Across the agency of people who are working on this every day in all of the different agencies, they're all unanimous that this was something that was the wise and prudent course for us to do. You mentioned safer, broader vaccine platforms. What are those platforms that you're looking at then if we do not have mRNA as an option for COVID or flu? Again, these would be vaccines that target not just a single antigen, but the entire virus. And as I said, for respiratory viruses like flu and COVID, because they're so unstable, because they're constantly evolving, you don't want a leaky vaccine. You want a vaccine that will provide a sterilizing immunity. In other words, it will kill all of the different strains of that virus and not just a particular constellation of genes and then leave it to mutate to other forms that are equally dangerous. Let me ask about federal funding dollars. We know that billions of dollars are being taken away from universities because of things like anti-Semitism, transgender, in sports. A lot of this is going to have a trickle down when it comes to funding cancer research, Alzheimer's research. And a lot of people say, well, what does one have to do to the other? So what about people who are relying on breakthroughs or new techniques or new technologies or cures or vaccines for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's? How is this going to affect that? And how do we make sure that we don't fall behind? I suppose the answer to that, one of the answers is universities that are now being defunded because they're breaking the law should stop breaking the law. And then they will get that funding. But we're also looking at ways to, we're paying in some cases over 70% of research funding for the administrative costs of the university. And one of the reasons for doing that is we really centralized our funding so that it goes to a handful of universities. The bulk of it goes to a handful of private, mainly private universities. And what we're trying to do is to expand that so that more and more people, more and more researchers have access to that money, that we have more breakthroughs. We have more open debate. And one of the reasons that it was so easy to censor people during COVID, great scientists, many of them now working for me like Dr. Oz and Vinay Prasad and Jay Bhattacharya and Marty McCarry were all censored. And because they criticized the government policies, government policies that are now acknowledged as having been wrong. And we don't want that to happen again. And one of the ways that you ensure that doesn't happen is having a multiplicity of grantees. So that it's much more difficult for the government to control the narrative and tell people, if you talk up about this, we are going to end your funding. We want to end that so that everybody's talking that there's real democracy in the marketplace and that we can all thrive because of the free flow of information and making sure that we're getting good information. But is that not what's happening now, though, saying we're going to withhold federal funding? The government is controlling the federal funding for research grants, that things that are happening now when it comes to cancer. What you were talking about is the anti-Semitism measures by the Trump administration where they're saying that President Trump has said, if you are encouraging or allowing anti-Semitism on your campus, we're no longer going to give you federal funding. But that's affecting this research. Yeah, but all the college has to do is to stop practicing anti-Semitism and they'll get their research funding. It just feels a little bit like the medical science is being held hostage a little bit to things that aren't related. So I think about somebody's grandmother who has Alzheimer's or somebody who's going through cancer treatment, and they will ultimately be the ones to suffer. Do you think that's true? When my uncle integrated the University of Alabama and the University of Mississippi with federal troops, if they had been getting federal funding at that point, not allowing black people on campus, wouldn't you say that maybe we should give that federal funding to somebody else who was complying with the American laws? Could you earmark that funding and say, look, we're going to give it strictly for medical research and maybe not for other things and separate that? You're supporting the university with it. What does Harvard have, a $100 billion endowment? And the same with Stanford. If they want to pay for that research and continue to do it, if they're continuing anti-Semitic policies, I think the federal government is in its rights to say that you can fund that yourself and we're going to fund somebody else who wants to do the same kind of research, but is going to create a safe environment for students and a diverse environment where everybody feels safe. And while I have you here, I want to ask, you've been a champion for healthier foods, to making us healthier, especially when it comes to children, to fight diseases like diabetes, heart disease, obesity. What do you think the biggest threat is when it comes to Americans' health today in terms of what we're eating? Ultra processed foods and too much sugars. I mean, those are, I'll give you an example. 20 years ago, there was virtually no diabetes in China. And today, 51% of the adult population is pre-diabetic or diabetic. And it's because they built 20,000 fast food places and they began importing American processed food. Processed food is poison, ultra processed food. And right now we're paying for it with food stamps. We spend $405 million a day on the food stamp program, a day. 10% of that is going to buy sugar drinks and other three to 8% sweets and candies. And so we're giving the poorest members of our society diabetes when they're young. And then we're paying it forth through Medicaid later. We spend now a trillion dollars a year on diabetes and other mitochondrial disorders, and it's bankrupting our country. And 88 out of 10 American kids cannot qualify for military service. So it is hurting us, our national security. It's destroying our economy. It's holding back the aspirations of children because we're not taking care of them. And now the federal government is going to begin taking care of our kids and say, we are not going to abet the poison. If you want to drink a Coke in this country, you ought to be able to. You live in America, you should make your own choices. The federal government is no longer going to pay for it. And we're going to issue dietary guidelines that are based on public health rather than commercial impulses, right? You know, the commercial impulses that drove fruit loops to the top of the food pyramid. That was not a public health decision. That was a commercial decision. So, and we're going to end that regimen and we're going to launch a new rubric where the public health agencies actually do public health rather than promoting the profit-taking by private corporations. And there's some parts though, in some communities, underserved communities, there are food deserts where people don't have access to some of these foods. And if they do, sometimes it's too expensive. So is there a plan in place perhaps to make sure to reach some of these lower socioeconomic areas? Yeah, and we're working on all that. But you know, cheap food is an illusion. If you say this food is cheap and you get diabetes from it, is it really cheap? And so, but also that, you know, we're working all over the country in food deserts. There are now, and we're working with private corporations that are providing good meals. We looked at one company that we met with recently that can provide a very, very wholesome meal for under $5. A Big Mac meal costs, I think, $9 now. And so, you know, you can get high quality food as we change these rules to incentivize people to buy better food. You're going to see the markets respond and you're gonna see better food going into these food deserts. And lastly, you had mentioned earlier about the gentleman that went to the NFL offices because he thought that he was, you know, he had gotten a CTE from a football injury and keeping kids safe. I mean, we know CTEs are real. We know they're a thing. Doctors have shown it. We've seen mapping of the brain. We see what happens. Is there any plan to protect children or even adults in sports that are contact sports like that from CTEs and knowing that there's a danger to it and looking at somebody like this who said, hey, this CTE caused me so much pain, nothing's being done? Yeah, I mean, our job at HHS is to do the research and let lawmakers and policymakers give them good data upon which they can make policy choices. And we're doing that research at NIH and, you know, on all of these issues, on processed foods issues, on vapes, on the cell phone radiation and pesticides. We're doing all of that research, but we're limited. We're not, our job, and it shouldn't be our job, is not to go out and tell people what they can do or what they can't do. It's to give good information so that groups like the NFL and private groups and public officials and then make good policies that are going to advance the health of the American people. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here on Scripps News. We appreciate your time today. Thank you for having me. We hope you'll come back.