77 Nobel Prize winners ask the Senate to reject Kennedy's nomination

Seventy-seven Nobel laureates are urging the Senate to vote down Donald Trump's nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the nation’s top health agency, pointing to his views against vaccines and fluoride in drinking water, among other things.

The letter, published Monday by the New York Times, said putting Kennedy in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees agencies handling food and drug safety, disease epidemics and health insurance would “put the public’s health in jeopardy.”

The authors pointed to Kennedy’s opposition to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the polio vaccine. Kennedy is a leading proponent of the discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism. President-elect Trump said Sunday he would ask Kennedy to look into what is causing autism because “something is going on.”

'Somebody has to find out' Trump says RFK Jr. will look at why autism is on the rise

Kennedy founded the anti-vaccination nonprofit Children's Health Defense, which sues governments to oppose vaccine requirements. The group also sponsored a sequel to Wakefield's pseudoscience film "Vaxxed." Kennedy said on Fox News in 2023, "I do believe that autism does come from vaccines."

The same year, Kennedy was caught on video saying that “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese," the New York Post reported. Groups including the Anti Defamation League and the Stop Asian Hate Project immediately condemned the comments.

There is no proof that vaccines cause autism. The claim originated in a medical journal article by British researcher Andrew Wakefield that was later retracted and called an “elaborate fraud” based on falsified data and children whose parents were suing vaccine manufacturers.

"Withholding vaccines will do nothing to reduce the chance that a child is diagnosed with autism, but will absolutely increase the chance that a child could contract and die from a vaccine-preventable disease," Alison Singer, the president of the Autism Science Foundation, said in a statement.

Trump's team defended Kennedy's appointment.

“Americans are sick and tired of the elites telling them what to do and how to do it," said Katie Miller, a spokesperson for Trump's transition team. "Our healthcare system in this country is broken. Mr. Kennedy will enact President Trump's agenda to restore the integrity of our health care and Make America Healthy Again.”

The Nobel laureates' letter called Kennedy “a belligerent critic of respected agencies” including the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control, and said the department’s leader should “continue to nurture and improve ? not threaten ? these important and highly respected institutions and their employees.”

The Nobel laureates who signed the letter included 31 winners in medicine, 18 in physics, 17 in chemistry, and 11 in economics. They include Drew Weissman, whose work led to the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and Charles Rice, who won for the discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 77 Nobel Prize winners blast Robert F. Kennedy nomination