The Current - The backlash against RFK Jr's MAHA movement

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is under fire for upending American healthcare and undermining vaccine science. At a Senate hearing last week, he faced a barrage of criticism from both sides of the aisle. And former leaders of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are urging action, warning Kennedy is threatening the health of every American. Dr. Mandy Cohen, former CDC Director, joins us to talk about why she and eight other former leaders of the top U.S. health agency are calling for urgent action to protect public health in America. And the fears are being felt by doctors in Canada. Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease doctor from Alberta, talks about how she's seeing Kennedy's influence undermine faith in vaccines in her province.

This message is from Wise, the app for international money. With Wise, you can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with a fair exchange rate and no hidden fees. Download the Wise app or visit wise.com. T's and C's Apply. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It's been obvious from the start that Robert Kennedy's primary interest is to take vaccine, away from Americans.

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in February, he promised to make America healthy again. Now, he is under growing fire for his radical reshaping of American health care and undermining a vaccine science. Last week, at a heated Senate hearing, politicians from both sides of the aisle grilled RFK Jr. And the Democratic Senator Ron Wyden led the charge. Every single day, there's been an action that endangers the health and wellness of a American families. Robert Kennedy has elevated conspiracy theorists, crackpots, and grifters to make

life or death decisions about the health care of the American people. In the last seven months, RFK Jr. has fired thousands of health care employees, cut $500 million in funding for MRNA vaccine research, dismissed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's entire panel of vaccine experts, replacing it with his own picks, several of whom have expressed anti-vaccine views. And then, last month, he fired the CDC's director, Susan Menares. Last week's Senate hearing, he defended his actions. We are the sickest country in the world.

That's why we have to fire people in the CDC. They did not do their job. This was their job to keep us healthy. Thank you, Mr. And I need to fire some of those people to make sure this doesn't happen again. Dr. Mandy Cohen was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2023 through 2025, she and eight former leaders of that organization published an open letter in the New York Times last week with the headline,

We ran the CDC, Kennedy is endangering every American's health. Dr. Mandy Cohen, good morning. Well, thanks for Matt, for having me. I'm really glad to have you here on the program. In your editorial, your group wrote, what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has done to the CDC and to our nation's public health system over the past several months is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.

How dangerous is RFK Jr. to American Public Health? Well, I think it is unprecedented to see nine former CDC directors dating back to the 1970s raise this type of alarm. And we felt we needed to do it this time to share how unprecedented what we are seeing. You read off that pattern of actions that we have seen this year, but I think with the firing of their own hand-picked person to run the CDC, this is not someone who was there for years. This is a person they picked on their own who then our Senate confirmed, and again, our Senate is a majority of Republicans, confirmed just three weeks prior to them firing her. And she wrote in an open op-ed to the Wall Street Journal saying that she was fired because she refused to rubber stamp manipulated science.

And so this isn't, you know, what he's saying about an agency that needs reform. Under my tenure, we were working hard to reform the CDC. We learned lots of lessons from COVID. This is not what is happening now. What we're seeing is unprecedented. I want to come back to those lessons learned in a moment. If you go back to that question of how dangerous he is to public health, what are the impacts you're seeing already from the policies and actions that he has put in place on the health

of Americans? Well, first, let's talk about vaccine access. That is certainly the thing that is on many of our minds, and we're seeing immediately. Right now in September, we would normally, at last September, we would have been vaccinating people with the flu vaccine and with an updated COVID vaccine. That is not happening right now. The FDA changed who could have access to the COVID vaccine and the CDC's advisory committee has not even met to weigh in on this issue. And so there is a lot of confusion.

Vaccines have not shipped. They're not at pharmacies. And so folks are seeing already a decrease in access, not to mention the confusion, the budget cuts, the workforce cuts, the erosion of trust. All of those things are contributing. You're seeing it play out at the state level, not just from the CDC. I mean, the CDC used to be looked at as kind of a gold standard when it came to vaccine guidance. The Surgeon General in Florida announced last week that the state is going to remove childhood vaccine mandates. This is the first American state to do that.

Have a listen to what he said about those mandates. Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery. Who am I as a government or anyone else or who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body? Dr. Mandy Cohen, what do you make of that? What goes through your mind when you hear that? Well, first, I was glad that right after that, the president of the United States was asked about that policy and particular, and he was very clear. He said, vaccine's clear and simple work. And so what's going

through my mind as a physician, as a former leader of the CDC, but also as a mom, my girls are 11 and 13. We just got back to school here, and they just had recent vaccines. I'm thinking I want to make sure that families across the United States, but into Canada, across the world, have the tools that they need to keep their kids, their families safe and healthy. And so I want to make sure that we are continuing to march towards a place where vaccines are fully accessible and that kids are able to go to school and families know that their kids are going to be safe in those school environments. So when the search in general, the state compares vaccine mandates to, you know, having residences of slavery and says, who am I to tell you what you can put in your body?

What is the impact of that going to be in that state, do you think? Well, I definitely think we're going to see erosion of vaccine levels in states like Florida. And then I think folks are going to say that you're going to have to judge at the ballot box and vote about whether or not they think that that is an appropriate policy for their state, for their families. I would encourage families in Florida to talk to their pediatrician, to their doctor about what is needed and how to keep their children safe. Again, these are decades-long requirements to attend public school, and they are ones that have kept away these terrible illnesses from our children. I don't want to see children get sick to remind us all why we have these vaccines. in requirements for school in place in the first place. What is your sense, and you mentioned the president,

what is your sense as to how widespread that sentiment is, that government shouldn't tell me what I should put in my body? The president said, these are his words, you have vaccines that work. They work pure and simple, and those vaccines should be used. I think both the president saying vaccines work, and then last week,

Congress was doing oversight of Secretary Kennedy and his actions, you saw particularly the Republican doctors in the Senate, Dr. Cassidy, Senator Dr. Cassidy, and Dr. Barrasso, two Republican senators, really asking hard questions. And so, again, I do not think that the actions we're seeing from Secretary Kennedy are ones widely held by either party. And I think that is why, as CDC directors, we wanted to raise the flag to say, we've worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations. This is unprecedented and we want to see a change in action. The ship can be righted, but we need to do it now before we see

more consequences. RFK Jr. wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last week saying that he's restoring public faith in the CDC. He said that over the decades, these are his words. Over the decades, bureaucratic inertia, politicized science and mission creep have corroded that purpose and squandered public trust. How fair is that criticism of the CDC, do you think? Well, since CDC was established more than 60 years ago, sorry, in 1946 is when it was established, the life expectancy in the United States was 66 years. Now it's more than 78 years. And the biggest reason that we are living longer is because of the work of public health, particularly around vaccinations.

We, because we're able to eradicate things like smallpox and allow folks to make sure they're not dying of preventable diseases is the reason we're able to live longer. What I would say is, look, during the COVID pandemic, it was historic crisis. I think there was a lot that went right. But there was certainly a lot that we needed to learn from. And when I was asked to take over the CDC after the pandemic in 2023, my job was to restore trust and to make sure CDC was embedding those lessons learned. And I was very proud of that. And you can see it in the polling.

Folks polled about what trust looked like in CDC. And trust was on the rise in CDC because of the work we're doing. Was that done? No, it wasn't. We always have more work to do. But what I'm seeing is not reform, but sabotage, right? You can't make all of these changes in the name of reform when what we're really looking at is undermining the ability of the agency to work at all. Can I just ask you about one more thing about COVID and just what that did to public trust in public health?

I mean, the CDC office was shot up in August. There were hundreds of rounds of ammunition fired at the building. A police officer was killed. Nobody who worked in the office was injured. But what does that tell you about? about public trust in public health? Well, we know that during this time of COVID, that wasn't the only thing that was happening.

It was also a change in how we were getting information and how we all communicate. And we know we're living in our information bubbles. And we know folks are hearing over and over some misinformation, particularly about things related to COVID and the COVID vaccines. And that misinformation is coming from the secretary, talking about vaccines, COVID vaccines in particular and issues with them. Well, we know COVID vaccines have saved millions of lives.

And so I think that misinformation, does that cause someone to shoot up a building? No, but does it create an environment in which folks who are susceptible to that kind of information? I think it does. And so I think we need to be asking ourselves, how do we combat that in this moment? Not just strengthen the agency and the work that it does, but I think this is how do we strengthen the way we are able to communicate information to all communities and make sure we're getting outside of our information bubbles as well. As I mentioned, the CDC was seen as a gold standard when it came to not just vaccine guidance, but public health information more broadly. Do you think the American public can still turn to the CDC for reliable public health information?

So under my tenure, we looked at trust in the CDC and put it central to our goals, to increase trust. And we saw that happening. And I was really proud of communicating differently, investing differently, bringing communities together, listening. Those are all things that I want to see, the transparency of what we were doing. was increasing trust, but now we are seeing the opposite. We're seeing folks move in the wrong way. And by firing their own director and then unfortunately losing then senior officials who all resigned in protest, I think that they are saying to us, that firing, the leaving of those senior leaders is saying,

they have said in their own words, we cannot trust what is coming from the CDC. And that is awful for me to say, loud as a former CDC director. But I am not seeing actions right now that are making the agency trustworthy. And again, I think that is coming from the top, not from the agency themselves. So go back to the first question that we asked, which is how dangerous RFK Jr. is to American public health. In the plainest of terms, what are you most concerned about? So I joined with eight other CDC directors, again, from who have worked in multiple administrations over decades. And we are worried that we are eroding trust and the ability

of the Centers for Disease Control to do its job, to fulfill its mission to protect health and improve lives. They need to be able to do their work, right? So make the investments in the people and the systems to do the work and that we are eroding trust and particularly undermining one of the most important tools that we've used in the last number of decades and that's vaccines and that is what we are concerned about and I think you saw from both sides of the aisle then raising that concern as well so when when you wake up at three o'clock in the morning worried what is the thing that wakes you up particularly I mean people worry about about and you talked about the COVID effect what might happen the next

time something like that comes around. What are you worried about? Yeah, I think that I'm worried that this pattern of action is leaving us more vulnerable going forward. So if we were to have another pandemic outbreak, again, we will we have one? The question is, will we have one in two months from now, two years or 20 years from now? Will we be prepared? Because I have learned as someone who has had to lead through a crisis like that, you are only as good as how much you can prepare to go into those crises. And if we're not preparing now, if we're eroding institutions, of eroding trust, even if we have the quickest vaccine and we're able to bring it to folks, if folks don't trust it, then we aren't going to be able to be successful to beat back the next

outbreak. And so that makes me very concerned. Just before I let you go, briefly, you said earlier that there is still time to write the ship. How long do you have before the ship sinks? Well, look, we wanted to raise the alarm. I think that I'm seeing folks do what we already asked in that op-ed, which is one. We asked Congress to do oversight. I think that has started. I think there is more to come.

I think we've asked for the president to show leadership, as he did for Operation Warp Speed during COVID. It was under the President Trump's leadership in his first term that we got the COVID vaccine out as quickly as we did and save millions of lives. And then we're asking for medical societies, for doctors, nurses, pharmacists to step up, to talk to patients to help them navigate this really difficult, confusing moment. It's hard for me to even keep up day to day on what is changing. And so, of course, families who are trying to understand how to keep their kids safe. So we're hoping everyone is going to step up and do their job. But there is certainly a lot of concern at the moment

and we wanted to raise the alarm. Dr. Cohen, good to speak with you. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Dr. Mandy Cohen was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2023 through 2025. This podcast is brought you by Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe.

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Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. Tease and Cs apply. Okay, so how come a film about a Canadian icon, John Candy, produced by a Canadian star, Ryan Reynolds, kicking off Canada's biggest film festival, still doesn't count as a Canadian movie. Well, to understand weird little nuances like that, you just have to listen to commotion.

We're doing TIF and 12 every single weekday during the Toronto International Film Festival, and we have our best critics in town explaining stuff like this, all in under 12 minutes. Find commotion with me, Alameen Abdul-Mahmoud, wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. Doctors and scientists in Canada

are raising concerns about the impact of RFK Jr's actions north of the border. Dr. Lenora Saxinger is an infectious disease specialist, a professor of medicine at the University of Alberta. Edmonton. Good morning to you. Good morning. We'll talk about specifics, but just broadly, what is your reaction to what you're watching unfold south of the border? I kept on shaking my head as the previous interview was going on, because in a way it's unimaginable, but today's world, I guess it's all too real. And, you know, I think

I'm pretty representative of a lot of people in Canada, medical and public health colleagues, and just feeling frustrated watching all of the advances that have happened, just getting thrown away, basically, and absolutely horrified for our colleagues and for the public at the direction things are taking. It just really is a, it's a shocking regression. And it's just, you know, kind of falling apart in front of her eyes. Dr. Cohen said that it's difficult for her to keep up on what's happening. What to you has stood up? Is there one thing in all of the things that have unfolded under RFK Junior's leadership of this file that has made you, you know, take your breath in? Well, I mean, it's kind of been building.

It reads as kind of accelerating sabotage. She used that word, I agree, because some of the changes were like, oh, we are going to change meeting dates. And then suddenly they dissolved whole committees and stacked the committees with well-known disinformers. And then the pace of that just kept on accelerating. I think it reads as they're almost manufacturing an alternate reality using the name of the CDC. and I used to use CDC resources very regularly in my daily work in the hospital. And last week I went to go look up a parasite life cycle for my residence. And I told them, you know, if the website says it's been updated since January 2025, don't bother looking at it.

But some of the materials on the website are probably still good. And that was immensely sad. It speaks to the question of, I mean, this is a different country, but how much Canadian doctors and health officials rely on CDC? data and guidance? I mean, the CDC is a really what had been, I don't know what words to use, had been a very respected organization that had a lot of really excellent resources that other public health agencies and practitioners knew it was a good place to find reputable information. And they had a lot of global influence for that reason.

And, you know, now it's, that's in tatters. And you see other groups stepping in to pick up the slack. So, you know, my own infectious diseases. colleagues in the U.S. have started putting out, you know, policy statements and people are working harder to get out their own guidelines because the CDC guidelines can no longer be trusted. We've seen, you know, the coalition of some of the states to get together to start putting forward reputable public health information. So it's going to become a patchwork, and it's going to become a battle between, quote, official sources and all of these other

groups of professionals who are going to be working off the side of their desk to try to fill some of those gaps. And it's a terrible state of affairs, really. How has RFK Jr., who's the guy at the center of this conversation, how do you think he has influenced public opinion in this country? He, I mean, I will say that in a way, I guess I'm not in all the right circles to be able to answer that fully, but I'll say that the way he presents himself his personal history. His pretty well-known history is one of the top 10 disinformers on childhood vaccination in the U.S. when he's part of Children's Health Network. All those things I think really flagged people that this is not business as usual because he's

not just not an expert in these areas and he's not got an administrative background, but he's kind of an anti-expert in these areas. And so I think that that at least serves as a bit of a red flag. But I mean, having said that, recently the government in Alberta cited an FDA recommendation when they were putting forth the COVID vaccine policy for Alberta this fall. This is a policy that most of Albertans are going to have to pay for the vaccine. Yeah. So they cited one of the first points in the press release was that they cited the FDA's recent decision to no longer recommend the COVID vaccine for pregnant women and kids. like right up top in the press release where they then went through our incredibly changed COVID vaccination policy and rollout.

And so I was like, oh, that is a red flagged to me because having things that I think are not evidence-based kind of enshrined in the cloak of public health through the RFK CDC will make it easier for other groups, whether unknowingly or, or because of alignment, picking up that information and using it. We were talking about Florida and the search in general announcing that that state is eliminating all vaccine mandates. In this country, I didn't know this until this morning, but only two provinces have childhood vaccine mandates for attending school. That's Ontario and New Brunswick. You sit far away from Florida, but I'm just wondering whether the rhetoric in the United States is going to influence political conversations here, you think? I think it will. I mean, I think there was a window where a more cohesive approach in Canada would have been really useful because, you know, this erosion of vaccine confidence has got a pretty long time horizon. But it really had not hit a point where people were willing to kind of sail into that problem and try to make it more cohesive across Canada. And now I think that window is lost because I think in every single province, there's the groups rising that are very vocally against any kind of mandates. And the anti-vaccine

movement has really gained a lot of momentum and is much more influential than it ever has been through, you know, the weirdness of social media. So I think our landscape is very much at risk. And I think, you know, all the information coming from the U.S. can support. Like, there's going to be a ripple effect where the information from the U.S. might actually be supporting groups that are against mandates, against vaccines. And I think it's going to get messy. We're just at a time. But I just wonder where that leaves you in terms of trying to ensure that public health is protected

in the face of disinformation. I think that it's actually the last battleground for us right now. I mean, public health was outflanked and outgunned on social media in the pandemic and has never really dedicated a lot of resources necessarily to non-official kind of public communication. And that has to radically change. because if public health isn't where the people are getting the disinformation, it's a problem. But, of course, now in the U.S., public health is spreading the disinformation.

So you need to try to figure out how to meet people where they are, but that's different and more difficult, given what's going on in the United States. Absolutely. It's a massive, massive problem. We'll talk more about this in future, certainly. Dr. Saksinger, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Dr. Lenore Sacksinger, is an infectious disease. specialist at the University of Alberta. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name's Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca