Illustration by Mother Jones; Lev Radin/Zuma

From the a lot absurd things Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said over the years – about vaccines, about 5G technology as a tool for mass surveillance, about Covid being… an “ethnically targeted” biological weapon designed to spare Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese people – its claims about HIV and AIDS are among the most devoid of facts.

Kennedy suggested that there were questions about whether HIV causes AIDS. (There isn’t, and there is.) His book The real Anthony Fauci has widely cited the work of Berkeley professor Peter Duesberg, a notorious first-wave AIDS denier. Kennedy also promoted the idea, debunked since the late 1980s, that the party’s drug addicts could cause AIDS. All of this has led experts to ask a simple question: What will happen to U.S. policy toward HIV/AIDS if Kennedy is confirmed as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services? social?

Donald Trump announced last week his intention to nominate Kennedy to head HHS. cause immediate concern between scientists and public health experts. Given the extraordinary reach of HHS, it has been said Mother Joneshis taking over of the agency would be “a real catastrophe”. In the case of HIV/AIDS, the damage could be global, if Kennedy’s previously expressed beliefs about the disease and its treatments were still true.

Along with the State Department, HHS helps implement the President’s Emergency AIDS Relief Plan, created by George W. Bush in 2003. The PEPFAR program has been an incredible success, spending approximately $100 billion dollars to save millions of lives in developing countries. , mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, helping people access antiretroviral drugs, testing and prevention.

While AIDS denialism and revisionism take many different forms, one of the most common is to suggest that HIV may not be the true cause of AIDS. By this measure, Kennedy has engaged in overt denial, writing in his book Fauci that he “takes no position” on whether HIV causes AIDS. In a music video unearthed by the Twitter account Patriot Takeshe falsely told an audience that “one hundred percent of the ‘early AIDS deaths’ were people addicted to poppers… people who participated in a gay lifestyle where they burned the candle at both ends.” He went on to say that some government scientists involved in early AIDS research thought the disease was environmental, but, RFK explained, “for Tony Fauci, it was really important to call it a virus ‘because it’ allowed him to take control. »

The idea that AIDS is “environmental,” rather than caused by a virus, is a clear reference to the widely and repeatedly discredited Duesberg Hypothesis. Duesberg – who was a biologist, but not an AIDS researcher – claimed that HIV was a harmless “passenger virus” and that the real cause of HIV/AIDS was drug use. By citing Duesberg, Kennedy participated in a slight but notable resurgence of AIDS denialism, with people like Joe Rogan echoing Duesberg’s ideas, and NFL superstar Aaron Rodgers suggesting that Fauci used the AIDS crisis for personal gain and recklessly promoted the first wave of drugs AZT antiretrovirals. (Rogers incorrectly suggested the drug was “killing people.”)

When I wrote earlier about this resurgence of AIDS denial This yearSeth Kalichman, professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and author of Denying AIDS: conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and human tragedysaid he was relieved that no one in a position of power in the U.S. government had yet taken up the cause.

Now, he said, “it’s hard to believe we’re having this conversation.” Kalichman predicts that the danger of a Kennedy-controlled HHS is not that Kennedy will directly target AIDS studies, but that he will preside over a general reduction in scientific funding that will impact research on HIV. Kennedy has already presented a plan to radically remodel the National Institutes of Health, which is a division of HHS. According to Kalichman, budget cuts at the NIH could mean that “the Office of AIDS Research, which is at the forefront of AIDS research globally, could easily disappear.”

“PEPFAR will not be a priority” in the new Trump administration, Kalichman adds, explaining that with Marco Rubio as likely secretary of state, he predicts “more isolationism” and “a real mobilization of our resources at all levels.” levels”. .”

For Kalichman, Trump’s choice of Kennedy brings the United States closer to a “worst-case scenario” similar to the one “they experienced in South Africa, where there is now AIDS denial at the highest levels.” . Thabo Mbeki, who became president of South Africa in 1999, was convinced by the denialist arguments of his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, as well as by the American AIDS deniers whom he welcomed when he was in power. Tshabalala-Msimang argued that AIDS could be cured with beetroot and garlic while dismissing antiretroviral drugs as toxic; his role was, Kalichman points out, “effectively the parallel position in government to that of secretary of HHS.”

Leading AIDS research and philanthropy groups have made clear their opposition to a Kennedy nomination. The nonprofit amFAR, which has donated some $635 million to AIDS research over the years, issued a statement citing “the numerous controversial and false statements made by RFK Jr in connection with the HIV and AIDS”.

“Unfortunately, he repeats disproven and debunked theories. amfAR intends to refute these statements and vigorously oppose his nomination to head HHS – a position for which he is completely unqualified,” it added. (Kennedy could not be reached for comment. An email sent to his campaign press team bounced; one sent to the group set up to promote his campaign. Making America Healthy Again the movement was not returned.)

A professor of medicine at Emory, Dr. Carlos del Rio is a widely recognized expert on HIV and infectious diseases who formerly chaired PEPFAR’s scientific advisory board. He declined to comment on what Kennedy might do at HHS, saying only that “we all hope that any nominee will engage in evidence-based decision-making.”

Rio also pointed out that Trump’s first term had been surprisingly focused on AIDS. Her State of the Union 2019 The speech called for more funding to end AIDS in the United States, although congressional Republicans later attacked this allocation. “Say what you want,” del Rio says, “but he did well with PEPFAR.”

As one of the most effective public health interventions ever undertaken, Del Rio says Americans “should be very proud of PEPFAR.” If the program were to end, he points out, “30 million people currently on antiretroviral treatment would potentially die. Would you want to be the president responsible for the murder of 30 million people around the world?

“The one thing you don’t want to become is the laughing stock of the world,” Del Rio says. “I don’t think anyone in this administration would like that.”