Conceptually, a One Health approach could remedy portions of the current public health crisis in the U.S. created by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s (RFK Jr.) eccentric, unscientific policies as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). However, it must overcome an institutional paradox, i.e., that the framework designed to integrate human, animal, and environmental health is being structurally undermined as we speak by the very institutions needed to implement it.
The first major “National One Health Framework (NOHF-Zoonoses)” of the U.S. federal government legally unified 24 federal agencies — including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Agriculture (USDA), and Department of the Interior (DOI) — to address interconnected health threats. Bizarrely, HHS executive actions sharply diverge from this approach. The actual application of this approach highlights a continuing sharp divergence between career scientific frameworks and current executive actions.
Why implementation is delayed
Notwithstanding the immense theoretical benefits, implementation of a One Health approach is crippled by the systemic disassembling of conventional medical science happening inside HHS. The framework requires robust, independent scientific panels and deep inter-agency trust, both of which are currently missing.
One Health relies heavily on transdisciplinary collaboration, but the HHS Secretary has repeatedly disrupted expert panels by targeting, delaying, or entirely overhauling them. HHS disabled the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force 17 months ago. This has blocked new guidelines for cervical cancer screenings and entirely undone the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. A One Health approach cannot function when the human-health side persistently removes its own experts.
Plundering vaccine and biological research
Kennedy’s unilateral decision to cancel $500 million in mRNA research and development contracts directly crippled the nation’s ability to respond to emerging zoonotic threats (diseases transmitted from animals to humans). The foundation of the One Health preparedness approach relies upon cutting-edge medical countermeasures.
Political interference against gold-standard science
The official Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda enunciates that the initiative aims to restore public trust by applying “gold-standard science,” but its actions in the real world show a different picture. The trustworthy American Academy of Pediatrics, like other major medical organizations, resorted to suing HHS to block the secretary from unilaterally removing vaccines for six major diseases from the recommended childhood immunization schedule.
Historical similarities to government-led anti-science
- The 1898 Vaccination Act “Conscience Clause” — United Kingdom, 19th century: The British government, in the late 19th century, faced an aggressive, well-organized anti-vaccination campaign against mandatory smallpox vaccination. Parliament buckled to political pressure and passed the Vaccination Act of 1898. This act introduced the world’s first “conscience clause,” allowing parents to opt out of vaccination without any medical reason. Parliament codified anti-vaccine sentiment into law with little or no institutional resistance. This led to immediate drops in vaccination levels and subsequent smallpox outbreaks.
- “The Anti-Vaccination League of America” — United States, late 19th to early 20th century: When smallpox outbreaks surged in the U.S., local governments tried to enforce vaccination requirements. Powerful lobbying groups of anti-vaccine activists formed. These successfully pressured several state legislatures and local governments to repeal mandatory vaccination laws. The U.S. Congress exercised no federal oversight over these state-level public health reversals, regarding health as being strictly a local matter. This shortsighted legislative inaction allowed anti-vaccine campaigns to dictate policy, resulting in preventable regional epidemics.
- Lysenkoism — Soviet Union, 1930s–1960s: The best historical example of a state-backed anti-science campaign was from Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist who rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of his own pseudoscientific theories. The malevolent dictator, Joseph Stalin, placed Lysenko in charge of Soviet biology and agricultural policy. Conventional geneticists who pushed back at that time were imprisoned or executed. The Soviet legislature provided no oversight or pushback, thereby rubber-stamping the policies. This led to catastrophic crop failures and widespread famine.
Fortunately, the U.S. constitutional republic prescribes that executive appointments to agencies like HHS are subject to a formal Senate confirmation process with ongoing congressional committee oversight. Public health mandates and vaccine policies in the United States have heretofore been dictated by state and local governments rather than a singular federal “czar,” meaning congressional oversight has historically co-existed with state-level legislative autonomy. The question now is “what’s happening in this arena”?
Some federal Congressional U.S. Senators and Representatives are actively opposing this anti-science agenda on a bipartisan basis. They have utilized congressional hearings, targeting funding blockades. Since Kennedy must answer to Congress, lawmakers from both parties have confronted him over his dismantling of federal health infrastructure and his targeting of conventional medical practices.
However, leaders in other federal agencies like the USDA, DOI and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) need to assertively drive the informed framework forward independently, moving in juxtaposition to HHS’s absurdities (wishful thinking). Bipartisan state Governors can issue state-level executive orders to legally force their state Departments of Agriculture, Environmental Protection, and Public Health to take action. States with large agricultural sectors and dense populations can build local One Health networks that protect their citizens despite this federal disruption.
Whether the outcomes of these misguided policies will ever be curtailed depends on a mix of active federal lawsuits, potential congressional pushback, and resistance from internal health agencies. The American Public Health Association (APHA) warns that this agenda poses a major risk to national wellness. Presidential/White House intercession could roadblock it, but this appears to be more wishful thinking.
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How many preventable diseases and/or deaths might happen over the next two years?
The exact number of preventable deaths from these sweeping proposed changes — such as dropping vaccines for several diseases from the childhood schedule — is not available yet. However, public health organizations, historical data, and modeling on falling immunization rates provide a shocking picture of the scale of risk over the next two years:
- Data cited by CBS News shows that standard childhood vaccinations prevent more than 1 million cases of illness and 10,000 deaths from the top 10 childhood diseases every year in the U.S. Over a two-year period, a total collapse in baseline coverage would put up to 20,000 children’s lives at risk.
- Outbreak modeling from the American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) warns that if vaccine skepticism/rejection drives up exemption rates, measles will likely become endemic in parts of the U.S. again. Public health experts like former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner, physician Dr. Scott Gottlieb, note that for every 1,000 children who contract measles, one child will statistically die. Incidentally, Gottlieb is a Republican.
- CDC tracking shows that childhood vaccine exemptions have reached a record high of 3.6% nationwide, with 17 states climbing past the 5% threshold required to maintain herd immunity.
- Advocates at Protect Our Care report drops in compliance that have fueled the largest measles outbreaks in decades in states like Texas and South Carolina. This resulted in the preventable deaths of unvaccinated children.
- A widespread erosion of trust in routine immunizations has led to influenza and pneumonia returning to the top 10 causes of U.S. deaths. Respiratory seasons of 2024–2025 and 2025–2026 combined for over 90,000 influenza-related deaths. This has been attributed in part to declining immunization compliance.
- Notably, the restructuring of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force disrupted updates on free insurance coverage for colonoscopies, mammograms, and Pap tests. Public health groups have warned that a minor multi-year backlog in these valuable preventive screenings can delay cancer diagnoses and cause thousands of treatable cases to progress to terminal stages.
All told, if a dynamic reversal is not forthcoming post-haste, a truly dark, seismic shift is inevitable for years, if not decades, of the rational public health shielding, safety, and welfare of America and arguably worldwide.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of impakter.com — In the Cover Photo: In this cartoon, British satirist James Gillray caricatured a scene at the Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital at St. Pancras, showing cowpox vaccine being administered to frightened young women, and cows emerging from different parts of people’s bodies. The cartoon was inspired by the controversy over inoculating against the dreaded disease, smallpox. Opponents of vaccination had depicted cases of vaccinees developing bovine features and this is picked up and exaggerated by Gillray. The boy holds a container labeled “VACCINE POCK hot from ye COW” and papers in the boy’s pocket are labeled “Benefits of the Vaccine”. The tub on the desk is labeled “OPENING MIXTURE”. A bottle next to the tub is labeled “VOMIT”. The painting on the wall depicts worshippers of the Golden Calf. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
