National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses, calls on the U.S. Senate to reject the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Health and Human Services Department (HHS).

“For nurses across the United States, memories of Covid’s deadliest days are still painfully fresh, and we know that having strong leadership in the federal agencies tasked with protecting public health is a matter of life and death,” said Nancy Hagans, RN, president of NNU. “Kennedy has a long track record of anti-science positions and opposition to measures that keep people healthy and safe. He’s the wrong candidate for the job, his nomination puts lives at risk, and our patients deserve better.”

Kennedy would be one of the most dangerous individuals to ever hold the top U.S. health care office, say nurses, given his longtime opposition to lifesaving vaccines and his willingness to spread medical disinformation and unfounded health care conspiracy theories. After the Trump administration froze HHS communications, travel, and hiring during week one, causing critical health research meetings to be canceled and silencing the spread of necessary information during an H5N1 avian influenza outbreak, nurses say Kennedy’s nomination to head the already chaotic department could be the straw to break the U.S. health care community’s back.

In a 2023 podcast, Kennedy proclaimed there is “no vaccine that is safe and effective” and disputed the CDC’s guidelines about if and when children should get vaccinated. He has a history of spreading the debunked myth that vaccines cause autism, and he has petitioned, with his lawyer, for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to revoke the polio vaccine and pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines. His insistence on spreading false information about the measles vaccine contributed to a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that caused 83 deaths.

Nurses who fought for their patients’ lives and their own lives on the front lines of Covid-19 are especially appalled at Kennedy’s attacks on Covid vaccines and mitigation efforts. Despite clear scientific evidence to the contrary, including a 2024 estimate that by mid-2021, Covid vaccines and precautions saved around 800,000 lives in the United States, Kennedy falsely claimed that the Covid-19 vaccines are “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Kennedy has also floated wild conspiracy theories about the virus causing Covid-19, claiming at a 2023 press event that SARS-CoV-2 was a bioengineered weapon “ethnically targeted” to attack “Caucasians and Black people” and spare “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

“Kennedy’s tenure would further inflame public distrust of critical vaccines and other health and safety protections,” said Hagans. “Covid-19 will not be the last pandemic we face. It is insulting and dangerous to nominate him to head the HHS when it’s clear from his very public record that he would actively position our country to experience more deaths when the next deadly infectious disease strikes.”

Nurses call on the U.S. Senate to “keep patients front of mind” during confirmation hearings and to reject Kennedy for the good of public health.

National Nurses United is the largest U.S. union and professional association of registered nurses, with 225,000 members nationwide.