The most outrageous health claims from the US’s new anti-vaxxer health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jnr: from ‘chemicals can make you transgender’ to the ‘dead worm’ in his brain

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now one of the most influential figures in healthcare, having been chosen by Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

It comes despite a series of bizarre health claims Kennedy has made over the years, including that a worm “ate” part of his brain, chemicals in water cause children to question their sexual identity and that vaccines cause autism cause.

Experts fear his appointment, and the potential policies that could be put in place, could have ramifications far beyond U.S. shores, especially when it comes to global vaccination rates.

Here, MailOnline details the outrageous health theories peddled by the 70-year-old ahead of his predicted takeover of major US healthcare institutions.

Kennedy has been deeply interested in drinking water for years. He recently labeled fluoride, a mineral that helps prevent tooth decay, as “neurotoxic” and called for it to be removed from U.S. supplies.

However, his most bizarre claims focused on atrazine, an herbicide that is a known endocrine disruptor, a substance that can disrupt hormones.

Kennedy has pointed to studies showing that such chemicals can cause frogs to change sex, with a completely unfounded idea that they could cause children to question their gender identity.

On a podcast, Kennedy said, “Our children are now seeing these consequences that people suspect are very different than in the past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion.”

Robert F Kennedy Jr. is now one of the most influential figures in healthcare, having been picked by Donald Trump to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services

“I think a lot of the problems we see in children, especially boys, are probably underappreciated because a lot of that comes from chemical exposure, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria we see.”

“I mean, they’re swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals today, and a lot of them are endocrine disruptors. There is atrazine in our water supply.”

The idea that chemicals in water can influence gender and sexuality has been spread by conspiracy theorists for years.

It was most famously touted by conservative radio host Alex Jones, who said such substances “turn the damn frogs gay.”

Frogs are not people, and many amphibian species have the natural ability to change sex in response to stimuli. Experts have repeatedly dismissed claims related to endocrine disruptors and children’s gender and sexuality.

One of the most prominent and recent health claims that Kennedy is spreading is that a parasitic worm has ‘eaten’ part of his brain.

This came to light this year, but stemmed from documents that came to light during his divorce proceedings with Mary Richardson in 2012, after he complained that cognitive problems were affecting his income.

In 2010, Kennedy’s doctors suspected that a dark spot that appeared on scans of his brain was a potential tumor after he complained of memory loss and mental fogginess.

The revelations were part of a 2012 deposition during divorce proceedings by Mary Richardson (left), in which Kennedy claimed his earning capacity had declined due to cognitive problems.

The New York Timesin which the documents came to light, said Kennedy wrote that his mental problems “were caused by a worm that entered my brain, ate part of it and then died.”

It is unclear how Kennedy became infected with the worm in the first place, although he suspects he contracted the worm while traveling in South Asia.

This, combined with the fact that it was found in his brain, has led some doctors to suspect that he was probably infected with a tapeworm found in pigs.

But Kennedy’s claims that the worm “ate” part of his brain are probably incorrect.

Such worms only directly infect the digestive system. However, sometimes people eat eggs that are so small that they can enter the bloodstream and end up in parts of the body such as the brain.

Although they cannot survive there for long, these eggs can develop into cysts that can cause problems due to the highly sensitive nature of the brain tissue, including potentially fatal seizures. However, this does not mean that the parasite ‘eats’ the brain.

One of Kennedy’s long-standing health claims is that vaccines are not safe. It has previously claimed that no jab is ‘effective’ and suggested vaccines for children could be driving rising autism rates.

He also falsely claimed that Covid vaccines have killed more people than all the jabs ‘over the last thirty years’, in what experts called an inaccurate representation of data.

Kennedy is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, left, and the son of former U.S. Attorney General and New York Senator Robert Kennedy, second from left

Kennedy has also previously floated the idea that schools with vaccination requirements for attendance in the US should be dropped.

One of the most shocking incidents involved Kennedy and a measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019.

He is widely credited with boosting anti-vax sentiment in the country through thoroughly debunked and discredited links between the jab and autism.

An investigation also found that an anti-vax charity Kennedy led at the time, called World Mercury Project, now called Children’s Health Defense, helped fund a large number of anti-vax ads to Facebook users in the United States. Pacific country, according to the Washingtonpost.

More than 80 people, mostly children, died in the Samoan measles outbreak.

Kennedy this week backed away from his tough stance on vaccines, telling NBC News in the US: “If vaccines work for someone, I’m not going to take them away.

However, he has left the door open for a relaxed policy to make some vaccines non-mandatory.

‘People should have a choice, and that choice should be based on the best information, so I’m going to make sure that there are safety studies and efficacy studies available and that people can make individual assumptions about whether or not that product will be suitable. good for them.’

Kennedy has repeatedly posted videos and photos of himself shirtless and working out on social media

Kennedy has also repeatedly, and incorrectly, suggested that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.

He also linked WiFi to cancer in a conversation with podcast host Joe Rogan.

Kennedy also told Elon Musk, the owner of the social media website

“I’m also going to look very closely at the role of psychiatric drugs in these events,” he said in an interview on Musk’s platform.

‘Before the introduction of Prozac, we had virtually none of these events in our country.’

Kennedy, like many other anti-vaxxers, enjoyed a return to the spotlight during the Covid pandemic.

He made many controversial statements at the time, including that wearing a face mask was like being a slave.

But the most shocking comment were bizarre comments that Covid was an “ethnically targeted” bioweapon and that “the people who are most immune” are those with a Jewish or Chinese background.

The comments were widely condemned, but Kennedy claimed he never suggested that Covid was intended to “splatter” Jewish people, but instead pointed out that the government was developing ethnically targeted bioweapons.

There is no evidence that such weapons exist or that Covid was one of them, although some experts do suspect that the virus leaked from a laboratory where it was stored before spreading around the world.

British experts and doctors have expressed concern about the possible consequences that Kennedy’s appointment could entail.

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, said: ‘There are real concerns that his appointment could provide a new platform that he could use to pursue the same anti-scientific views on life-saving interventions in the field of public health. that he has made progress before, and that he can continue to promote and misrepresent evidence to support false claims about vaccines.

“If this causes families to hesitate to immunize themselves against the deadly diseases that threaten children, the consequence for some will be fatal.”

Dr. David Elliman, a pediatrician at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, added: ‘He has perpetuated myths, including that of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, with a complete disregard for the evidence.

“If he is appointed and continues in the same manner, I fear not only for the vaccination program in the US, but for similar programs around the world.”