Whether at home or abroad, children will be the greatest victims of Trump’s Christian nationalist, anti-science administration.
If someone had set out to deliberately sicken our world and kill numerous children by medical neglect, they couldn’t have done it better than what the Trump administration announced yesterday. It reported not only the callous cancellation of more than $12 billion in federal grants that states depend on for tracking infectious diseases and other vital health programs but the ending of funding for childhood vaccines in the least-developed nations. Today, the administration further announced that it’s axing 10,000 full-time employees across the Department of Health and Human Services.
Gavi, a group that buys vaccines for children in economically developing countries, warns that due to the withdrawal of U.S. funding, as many as 75 million children will not receive routine vaccinations in the next five years, resulting in 1.2 million avoidable child deaths. The vaccination programs fight malaria, tuberculosis and more common childhood diseases, as well as new menaces such as Ebola and mpox. Gavi is believed to have saved the lives of 19 million children since it began 25 years ago, with the United States providing 13 percent of its budget, according to the New York Times.
These announcements come amid the continuing international spread of bird flu, now spreading to mammals, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy speaks out against culling infected poultry. Kennedy, a professional anti-vaccination skeptic, is partly responsible for the growing measles outbreak hitting at least 18 regions and infecting almost 400 people so far, including two who have died. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is, for now, still reporting infections, has been stripped of $11.4 million it was giving in state grants. Another $1 billion has been denied to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to fight the addiction and mental health crises.
As FFRF previously warned upon Kennedy’s confirmation, the fanatical RFK Jr. is a national health disaster waiting to happen. He’s on a mission from God to give “infectious disease a break for about eight years.” His answer to the Texas measles outbreak is to advocate Vitamin A as a panacea for sickened children. As a consequence, some children treated with unsafe doses of cod liver oil and other vitamin A supplements have suffered liver damage. The long-discredited vaccine skeptic David Geier has been hired to conduct a study on supposed links between immunizations and autism, a claim thoroughly debunked for decades.
If we are not to use time-tested inoculation to protect the health of our children, what are we supposed to rely on? Prayer? Even a child dying last month from measles has not moved Kennedy to embrace medical science. That death hasn’t even moved the Mennonite father of the child who died from measles. He defended the family’s decision not to vaccinate her by saying, “God does no wrong.”
Clearly, God’s believers and science deniers are doing a great deal of wrong. This latest defunding of public health programs at home and abroad is deeply irrational, deeply counterproductive and deeply unethical.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters of nontheism. With nearly 42,000 members, FFRF advocates for freethinkers’ rights across the globe. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
