Viewpoint: The U.S. has entered a dark period in public health, thank you Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

We expect [medical] breakthroughs to occur on a regular basis, and 2025 delivered; successful trials of gene therapies for diseases that have no treatments, for example, filled scientists and the public with hope. But bright spots like these were overshadowed by a series of political decisions in the U.S. that have already started to set public-health care back instead of pushing it forward.

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Many of the changes revolve around the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda and a mistrust of vaccines led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic. 

Public-health experts are vocally pushing back, citing decades of strong scientific evidence showing that vaccines are safe and do not cause autism. The source of much of the evidence on which experts like these rely—not just about vaccines, but about every aspect of medicine—is scientific research funded by NIH. …

Related on the SLP

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Without the basic research that made advances like these possible, the stream of innovative treatments that could save both lives and health care costs could be reduced to a trickle in coming years, experts worry.

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