RFK Jr.'s insistence that the government ignores chronic disease is misguided
Feb. 1, 2025, 3:00 PM GMT+5
By Aria Bendix, Mustafa Fattah and Erika Edwards
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made clear in testimony before the Senate this week that if confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary, his focus would be on chronic diseases over infectious ones.
“We’ve devoted all of these dollars to infectious disease and to drug development and very little to chronic disease,” Kennedy said Thursday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Kennedy described himself as uniquely positioned to “end the chronic disease epidemic” in the United States, which he blamed for high health care costs. His opening statements mentioned rising rates of diabetes, cancer, asthma and obesity as issues that should be prioritized, along with chronic disease rates among children. (Although Kennedy stated that 66% of kids have a chronic condition, data from the National Survey of Children’s Health suggests it’s around 40%.)
In testimony before two Senate committees this week, Kennedy faced questions about his history of anti-vaccine rhetoric, promotion of conspiracy theories and shifting views on abortion. He was met with fierce opposition from some Democratic senators, as well as reservations from the chair of the health committee, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who is a doctor.
If confirmed, Kennedy would oversee a $1.7 trillion annual budget and 13 agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prior to the hearings, Kennedy had suggested taking an eight-year break from researching infectious diseases like Covid and measles.
In his statements to senators, Kennedy claimed that infectious diseases receive significantly more federal funding than chronic diseases. But government records suggest the opposite: Infectious diseases ranked ninth on the list of research subjects funded by the NIH last year, receiving $8.1 billion.
Compare that to a single chronic disease — cancer — that received nearly the same amount of funding in 2024. Brain disorders received $8.9 billion.
Many of the other diseases Kennedy named also receive billions in federal funding, including Alzheimer’s ($3.9 billion), diabetes ($1.2 billion), and cardiovascular diseases ($2.9 billion).
When it comes to autism — a chronic disease that Kennedy has falsely linked to vaccines, a stance he did not disavow in the hearings — federal funding has grown for more than a decade according to Statista, a data information group. NIH funding for autism research amounted to $305 million in 2024, the group found, compared with $169 million in 2011.
Researchers have attributed much of the increase in autism rates to greater awareness and advances in diagnostic capabilities. Much of the risk of developing autism is genetic, though parents having kids later in life and environmental factors like air pollution may also play a role.