In his first network television interview since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke with CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook about a variety of topics, including measles, food additives, and weight loss drugs.
Here are some highlights of their conversation:
Measles and “heartbreaking” Texas visit
After previously downplaying the growing number of cases and making several false and misleading claims about the safety of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, Kennedy has now acknowledged its effectiveness.
In the CBS News interview, Kennedy publicly encouraged people to get the measles vaccine, the first time he had done so since becoming HHS secretary.
“The federal government’s position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine,” he said. He went on to say, “The government should not be mandating those.”
He also discussed his recent trip to West Texas, where two children died from the highly contagious infection, part of a larger outbreak that has sickened over 500 people in that state alone. He described the visit, which included meeting with the children’s parents and attending a funeral service, as “very heartbreaking.”
“In some ways, it was very nice to be able to actually meet them in person and spend a whole day with them and share their lives with them and get to know their community, which was very welcoming and loving towards me, and to attend these very, very moving services for these girls,” he told me. He described the Mennonites in that community as resilient, God-fearing, resourceful, and compassionate.
According to health officials, nearly all of those infected in the Texas outbreak were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status. Both of the children who died were not vaccinated.
Food additivesÂ
After being sworn in, Kennedy said he met with major food processors and producers and received “no real pushback” on removing certain ingredients, such as artificial food dyes, which he called “the most egregious” from American foods.
“They’re clearly associated with a variety a grim inventory of diseases, including cancers and behavioral disease and neurological disease like ADHD, and it’s very, very well-documented and they’re making, in many cases, the same products in this country have those dyes, and then they use vegetable dyes in Canada, Mexico and Europe,” Kennedy told the crowd.
Certain artificial dyes used in the United States are banned or require warning labels in other countries. West Virginia recently moved to ban seven artificial food dyes. In 2023, California will ban Red Dye No. 3 and several other food additives.
Earlier this year, during the Biden administration, the FDA announced its decision to revoke the authorization for Red No. 3 in foods, citing evidence linking high levels of it to cancer in laboratory animals. Companies are working to update their products to comply with the FDA’s decision, which has a January 15, 2027 deadline.
Kennedy stated that the food companies he met with told him it would take time to remove the additives.
“It was all about timing. “They told us it would take a while,” he said. “For example, the CEO of Pepsi, which owns Doritos, stated… ‘The consumers like them to be very red, and we have not yet found a vegetable dye that we can match, but we’re going to do it.'” And I said they all had to be completed within two years.
Kennedy stated that he intends to eliminate what he refers to as “the biggest villain”: the GRAS, or Generally Recognized As Safe, standard, which allows some food ingredients to bypass the approval process.
“The FDA became captured by the food industry, and they expanded the GRAS standard to apply to everything, which is why we have 10,000 ingredients in our food while Europeans only have 400. Because in Europe, you must prove the safety of something, such as a chemical, before adding it to a food. “In our country, it is rubber-stamped.”
Obesity and coverage for GLP-1 drugs
GLP-1 agonists, which Kennedy referred to as “extraordinary drugs,” are available by prescription to anyone diagnosed with diabetes or pre-diabetes — but when asked if they would be covered by Medicare and Medicaid for obese people, Kennedy said officials are “looking at a regulatory framework.”
“Ideally over the long term, we’d like to see those drugs available for people after they try other interventions,” Mr. Kennedy said. He stated that these interventions include the use of glucose monitors as well as health regimens such as diet and exercise.
LaPook noted that diet and exercise regimens “have been tried for half a century.” Kennedy contended that there are now better ways to track it, which could be used as evidence for future Medicare or Medicaid coverage.
“They can show that they’ve done these interventions, and if they don’t work, then you would be entitled to the drug,” he said of the framework they’re currently debating. “I believe everyone would like to make those drugs available to everyone through Medicaid and Medicare. However, the impact on our medical costs would be dramatic.
Previously, the Biden administration proposed that Medicare begin covering medications for people with obesity, rather than just those with diabetes or another medical condition. Last week, the Trump administration decided not to proceed with that plan.
Health program cuts
Since his appointment in February, Kennedy has overseen massive cuts to a variety of health programs and thousands of employees.
When LaPook asked if he personally approved the more than $11 billion in cuts to local and state public health programs—funding that helps states address infectious disease, mental health, addiction, and childhood vaccination—Kennedy said, “No, I’m not familiar with those cuts.” A federal judge temporarily blocked the cuts.
“The cuts were mainly DEI cuts, which the president ordered,” Kennedy explained, but the $11 billion in public health funding was unrelated to DEI.
Kennedy and Elon Musk’s DOGE are laying off approximately 10,000 HHS employees as part of a restructuring initiative. Kennedy acknowledged that some of the DOGE cuts would need to be reinstated.
Kennedy said he was unfamiliar with LaPook’s example of funding being cut for an adolescent diabetes study.
“A number of studies that were cut were brought to our attention and were not justified in being cut, so we reinstated them. “Our goal is not to reduce any level of important scientific research,” the secretary stated.