The current assault on American healthcare compelled me to write this as a nurse practitioner. The fact that this administration made a statement that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) must align with the president’s Make America Healthy Again agenda should strike fear in all of us. Robert F. Kennedy’s assault on vaccine science is downright dangerous.

For decades the CDC has been a trusted source of concrete scientific and medical data and information. Medical providers and scientists both in the U.S. and around the world rely on it as a reliable source for up to date information because it provides actual fact driven data, not opinion or conjecture.

Democrat and Republican ideas are just that, differing opinions on what is best for our country. Medical science, vaccine data, and research are facts not up for opinion. It defies logic that a man with no medical training who admits to using heroin to get through college, had a brain worm, collects road kill, and profited from vaccine skepticism is now in charge of public health.

Trump is more concerned about damaged marble in his new Rose Garden than he is in the health of you and your family. He bragged that he “got” a Kennedy and then gave RFK Jr. free reign to “run with it” on a little pet project, literally the health and well-being of the entire population. Of course Trump has zero interest in the Department of Health and Human Services, it won’t make him richer. He is leaving our health and our children’s health to idiots.

RFK Jr. likes to cherry pick obscure and often debunked research that does not follow the scientific method which is the standard and specific criteria used in the medical field to research and track findings. Science is by definition factual. For a study to be valid you must be able to replicate the findings. There are standards of care in place for vaccines based on data gathering and fact checking. Decades of studies looking at the long term effects of vaccines have been in place to identify side effects, efficacy, and on-going safety. Historically, vaccines aren’t big money makers for pharmaceutical companies due to the astronomical cost of research and development and by definition are given to large populations at free or reduced cost. They make their money greasing the hands of politicians and all of the drug commercials selling niche name brand medications.

Sure, you can find a medical article questioning things such as vaccine safety and efficacy, but you can’t make medical decisions based on one study or finding. You can find an opinion piece or faulty study to back up anything but one study does not make something a fact.

Back in the day, surgeons recommended smoking immediately after surgery. The logic of the day being that there is a high risk of pneumonia post-operatively, deep breathing and coughing clears the lungs and reduces this risk, smoking cigarettes triggers the cough reflex. Therefore, smoking after surgery helps prevent pneumonia. It was a normal operating procedure until new research and data showed the harmful effects of smoking. Vaccine and medical research is black and white not political.

Vaccines have been widely used and factually known to be beneficial for decades. The CDC exists to ensure that the care that you and your children is the most up to date and safe. Measles, rubella, polio, among other life altering and potential deadly diseases have largely been eradicated to the point people have no memory of the horrors faced by children and their families. For the “what about COVID” people; it was by definition a novel virus, meaning new. No one on the planet knew what it was going to do and science and vaccines saved untold numbers of lives. Ask anyone who worked at a hospital during that time.

Our health and access to healthcare is not a political issue. The Department of Health and Human Services should be led by medical professionals not billionaires.

Kris Bailey is a Westfield resident.