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# To Make FDA Great Again, Impeach RFK Jr.
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/to-make-fda-great-again-impeach-rfk-jr/
- Published: 2025-05-27T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T15:12:47.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5159243

*\[Commentary by James G. Dickinson\]* Like each of the past 15 FDA commissioners I have known since 1975, the current incumbent is both eminently qualified and dedicated to the agency’s mission. But unlike any of them, **Martin Makary** serves under the most science-defiant HHS secretary ever to hold that office, a man whose president promised while campaigning to [“let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4956319-trump-says-hell-let-rfk-jr-go-wild-on-health-and-food-in-potential-second-term/?ref=fdaweb.com) Now well into **Robert F. Kennedy Jr**.’s unrestricted mandate, Makary has begun yielding to his policies.

FDA has always relied on science-based independence and objectivity, even if it meant pushing back against secretarial intrusions. In these exertions, previous commissioners had to battle against the restraining language of FDA’s various authorizing statutes. These congressional statutes do not recognize that FDA even exists, as everything that FDA does is, according to statute, officially done by “the Secretary.”

Historically, HHS secretaries have been happy to defer this statutory authority to the agency and its commissioner. In the Carter administration, secretary **Joseph Califano** even went so far as to publicly declare that he had told FDA commissioner **Donald Kennedy** to do whatever he wanted to without reference to him -- “but please don’t spoil my coffee with a nasty surprise on the front page of my morning paper.”

This Kennedy is not following this time-honored tradition, instead using his office to subtly coerce subordinates like Makary to incorporate his long-established controversial and unscientific theories into their policymaking. As *The Hill* [noted in reporting the 5/22 promulgation](https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5314748-trump-maha-report-challenges-medical-practices/?email=e89a9ccd9e43f6bb2435915bdd6f8eb99d473585&emaila=6c921139f74f2699d83c0bc8fa933373&emailb=a102cda770d523a9d8291093dc2bb40f1f0f8f19f0d68b10a2446641d8017cb2&utm%5Fsource=Sailthru&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=05.22.25EL-News%20Alert-MAHA%20report) of “Make Our Children Healthy Again: Assessment” issued by the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission, “Kennedy was perhaps the country’s most prominent vaccine skeptic prior to becoming the HHS secretary. He has continually refused to acknowledge data disproving any links between vaccinations and autism, even when confronted during his confirmation hearing by Sen. **Bill Cassidy** (R-LA), himself a physician.”

*The Hill* linked Kennedy and Makary to recent moves by FDA to “enforce a [new requirement for placebo testing](https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5288707-hhs-rule-vaccine-testing-controversy/?ref=fdaweb.com) on all new vaccines, though how this rule will be implemented remains unclear.”

At a [White House news conference 5/22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDkYJxE9WTc&ref=fdaweb.com), Kennedy repeatedly called for the replacement of drug and chemical industry science and technology by “commonsense” in the government’s promotion of good public health, an agenda he has pushed relentlessly for 20 years as a private citizen.

Notwithstanding his Senate confirmation hearing testimony ’s earnest devotion to transparency, Kennedy in office has ended the Nixon-era “Richardson Waiver,” (a policy named after HEW secretary **Elliot Richardson** that required public comment on HHS rules and regulations related to public property, loans, grants, benefits or contracts). This fiat has been met with concern by those who believe it reduces transparency and accountability in policy-making. The time has come for Congress to rectify its error and pursue my articles of impeachment:

**Articles of Impeachment**

*Count 1: Deliberately misleading Congress about staff firings*. On the first day (1/29) of his confirmation hearing, Kennedy told Senator **Mark R. Warner** (D-VA): “I will commit to not firing anybody who's doing their job.” However, since his first day in office (2/13), an estimated 3,500 FDA employees (about 13%) have left the agency through firings, buy-outs and retirements.

*Count 2: Deliberately misleading Congress about being pro-science*. In the same hearing, Kennedy told Senator **Maria Cantwell** (D-WA) “I have always been a science person, a pro-science person. I believe in evidence-based medicine and gold standard science. …Chronic disease accounts for 92% of deaths in this country and almost nothing is studied at NIH about the etiology of our chronic disease epidemic.’

Later, Senator **Ron Wyden** (D-OR) told the hearing that when Kennedy was asked two hours earlier to reconcile his many anti-vaccine statements with his handful of pro-vaccine statements, “instead, he gave us a word salad and ducked the issue. …The same was true, Mr. Kennedy, with respect to measles where you wrote a book playing down the threat of measles even though American families are very concerned about it.”

*Count 3: Deliberately misleading Congress about measles and Hepatitis B vaccines causing autism*. On the second day of the hearing, Republican Cassidy returned to the measles issue, telling Kennedy: “There are multiple studies establishing the safety of measles and Hepatitis B vaccine and specifically that they are not a cause of autism. In this position, and you have previously said yes, but if you are approved to this position, will you reassure mothers unequivocally and without qualification that the measles and Hepatitis B vaccines do not cause autism?”

Kennedy tried to deflect, answering “If the data is there, I will absolutely do that.”

Cassidy retorted that the data not only existed, but it had been well established for decades. … “Now, what concerns me is that you've cast doubt on some of these vaccines recently. I mean, like in the last few years. But the data has been there for a long time. I've been out of the game. I've been in Congress for 16 years and this data was in large measure generated before I came to Congress. So my concern is that if you are making those claims and being so influential … I mean, your bully pulpit is incredible. With that responsibility, that you never acquainted yourself with anything that might contradict what you were previously saying. So let me ask once more. If the data is brought to you and these studies that have been out there for quite some time and have been peer-reviewed and it shows that these two vaccines are not associated with autism, will you ask, "No, I need even more", or will you say, "No, I see this, it stood the test of time and I unequivocally and without qualification say that this does not cause autism"?

Kennedy: “Not only will I do that, but I will apologize for any statements that misled people otherwise.”

As of this publication date, Kennedy has yet to apologize.

*Count 4: Deliberately misleading Congress about changing vaccine review standards at FDA*. After similar intense questioning from Cassidy on whether he would “promise that FDA will not deprioritize or delay review and/or approval of new vaccines and that vaccine review standards will not change from historical norms” Kennedy again at first deflected – “We will have the best vaccine standards with safety studies and I will … if the panel will recommend …”

Cassidy: “That's a little bit of a different answer than the question I asked because what is the best could be in the eyes of the beholder. So let me read again. Promise that the FDA will not deprioritize or delay review and/or approval of new vaccines and that vaccine review standards will not change from historical norms.”

Kennedy (reluctantly): “Yes.”

On 5/25, commissioner Makary and CBER director **Vinay Prasad** [announced radical changes](https://www.fdaweb.com/covid-vaccine-policy-on-boosters-and-new-trials/) to FDA Covid-19 vaccine reviews, including placebo-controlled testing that will bring approval delays and depart from historical norms.