RFK Jr. Threatens to Block Scientists From Publishing in Top Medical Journals
The health and human services secretary said he’d rather have government researchers working for “in-house” publications instead.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he’s not happy about government scientists writing for top medical journals and would rather have them publish their findings “in house” instead.
“We’re probably going to stop publishing in The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals, because they’re all corrupt,” President Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary said during a sit-down with the Ultimate Human podcast.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he’s unhappy about government researchers writing for respected medical journals and wants them to stop.
Leah Millis/Reuters
All three journals, founded during the 19th century, receive tens of millions of visits to their websites each year, as some of the world’s most respected and trusted publishers of peer-reviewed studies at the cutting edge of medical research.
Asked about his plans for establishing “in-house” journals at the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy said these would swiftly “become the preeminent journals” that in turn “anointed” any author who published with them as “a good, legitimate scientist.”
During his podcast interview, the health secretary also jabbed at several agencies under his department’s mantle, calling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration “sock puppets” beholden to large pharmaceutical interests.
The interview comes only a day after vaccine skeptic Kennedy announced he would be overriding CDC review policy to force the agency to amend its immunization guidance on COVID-19.
“I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that, as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and health pregnant women has been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule,” he said in a video posted to X on Tuesday.
Kennedy’s comments about some of the world's most respected medical journals come a day after he announced changes to the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Kennedy’s false medical claims have often focused on the causes and treatment for COVID-19, which he has previously suggested may have been bioengineered to “ethnically target” black and white people while sparing Jews and Chinese people.
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