Hawaii governor: Kennedy should step aside so we can save lives and rebuild our health care system

Opinion by Dr. Josh Green

(CNN) — As a father, a physician and a governor, it is my responsibility to protect every community in my state – especially the most vulnerable – from threats to their health and safety, and to advocate for the public health of the entire country.

That is why I am making an appeal to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign as secretary of Health and Human Services. Mr. Kennedy’s actions as our country’s chief public health officer are not just irresponsible and misguided; they are dangerous. I urge him to step aside now before more damage is done to our health care system, more lives are put at risk and more American children die as a result of his policies.

In January, I issued a public warning that if Mr. Kennedy were confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, “he would jeopardize half a century of progress and success gained by the United States as a result of vaccination programs. Too much depends on our commitment to truth and the lifesaving power of vaccines to entrust Mr. Kennedy with the direction of these programs. Our children’s lives depend on it.”

That warning was based on my firsthand experience during an outbreak of measles in Samoa in 2019 – an outbreak that infected over 5,000 people and killed 83 – after misinformation spread by anti-vaccine activists including Mr. Kennedy and his organization eroded public trust in vaccines, lowered vaccination rates across the country and led directly to the devastating outbreak.

The public warning I gave in January has proved to be heartbreakingly prescient.

The failed response to the national measles outbreak

Right now, America is suffering the worst measles outbreak in a generation. In 2000, the World Health Organization declared measles eliminated in the United States, a public health triumph that has been undone in less than eight months under the disastrous leadership of Secretary Kennedy.

Over 1,400 measles cases have been confirmed this year in more than 40 states. Many people have been hospitalized, and several have died. Entire school systems have shut down. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued travel advisories for several domestic regions for the first time in decades. Parents are terrified, doctors are overwhelmed, and public confidence in our nation’s health leadership has collapsed.

This did not happen by accident. It has been the direct result of Mr. Kennedy’s policy decisions – misguided, dangerous and ideologically driven actions that have crippled America’s ability to respond to infectious disease outbreaks.

Secretary Kennedy’s reaction to the rapidly spreading outbreak included recommending unproven, fringe remedies over proven medical prevention. He touted cod liver oil, vitamins, steroids and antibiotics while casting doubt on MMR vaccine, which the medical community recommends as the first line of defense against measles and which has been found safe and effective by the FDA since 1971.

This kind of irresponsible rhetoric during an outbreak not only erodes public trust and contradicts established science, it endangers lives. By failing to prioritize and to urge vaccination, Mr. Kennedy has allowed measles to rage across the country, spreading faster and farther, and putting more of our children’s lives at risk.

Undermining scientific progress and public trust in the CDC

Secretary Kennedy’s anti-vaccine beliefs have set us back years in our fight against other deadly diseases.

In May, he canceled a nearly $600 million contract to develop a vaccine against bird flu – a disease which experts fear could become the next global pandemic – and two months later, he canceled nearly $500 million in grants and contracts to develop mRNA vaccines, falsely claiming that these vaccines are not effective against respiratory illnesses like Covid and flu.

Mr. Kennedy has also unleashed turmoil and crisis at the CDC, marked by abrupt firings, mass resignations and the sidelining of scientific expertise.

In June, Mr. Kennedy dismissed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing them with a rubber-stamp panel for his ideology, including several known anti-vaccine activists.

In August, less than a month after she was confirmed as CDC director, Dr. Susan Monarez was terminated for resisting Mr. Kennedy’s push to restrict vaccine access. Her firing triggered the resignations of other senior officials who refused to bow to political interference, warning that Mr. Kennedy was politicizing public health and endangering the most vulnerable.

This month, nine former CDC directors, representing both Democratic and Republican administrations, issued an op‑ed accusing Mr. Kennedy of crippling the CDC, dismantling global vaccination programs and endangering millions of lives, calling the damage he has done to our nation’s public health system over the past several months “unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.”

By attempting to force his anti-vaccine ideology into national public health policy, and by substituting conspiracy theories for scientific evidence and consensus, Mr. Kennedy has subverted respected public health institutions built on decades of expertise, causing enormous damage to public trust in the CDC in the process.

An appeal to Secretary Kennedy: Step aside now so we can rebuild

My call for Mr. Kennedy to step aside has nothing to do with partisan politics, and it is not a personal vendetta. It is based solely on my responsibility to protect the people of my state and to advocate for the public health of the entire country.

I believe Mr. Kennedy can still make valuable contributions on issues such as the health impacts of processed foods, chemical preservatives and obesity in our country. He can still play a positive and constructive role in American public life – but not as secretary of Health and Human Services. He has lost the trust and confidence of the medical and scientific communities in our country, and a majority of the American people now disapprove of his actions.

Secretary Kennedy’s resignation would send a powerful message to the American people and to the world: that science still matters. That consequences exist for failed leadership. That the lives of children are not acceptable collateral damage in an ideological campaign.

It would allow a new secretary – someone whose policies are based on scientific evidence, not anti-vaccine ideology – to begin the urgent work of restoring public confidence in our health leadership, repairing our vaccination programs to stop the spread of this entirely preventable measles outbreak, and rebuilding our national health care system to protect every American.

It would not erase the harm already done, but it would be the first step toward healing it.

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