Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing renewed scrutiny after declaring the public should “stop trusting experts” while unveiling his plans to integrate artificial intelligence across federal health agencies, including accelerating drug approvals at the FDA.
Speaking on “The Tucker Carlson Show” on Monday, Kennedy said he is leading an “AI revolution” within the Department of Health and Human Services, enlisting tech talent from Silicon Valley to overhaul outdated systems like the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
His goal, he explained, is to automate and streamline processes like drug approvals without relying on animal testing, arguing that AI tools can achieve results “very, very quickly.”
“We are at the cutting edge of AI,” Kennedy said. “We’re implementing it in all of our departments. At FDA, we’re accelerating drug approvals so that you don’t need to use primates or even animal models. You can do the drug approvals very, very quickly with AI.”
Kennedy’s remarks included sweeping criticisms of the scientific establishment, including the assertion that trusting public health experts is “not a feature of science,” but instead akin to “totalitarianism.” He claimed that Americans were wrongly discouraged from conducting their own COVID-19 research, adding, “We need to stop trusting the experts, right?”
While Kennedy did not specify which AI systems would be used for drug approvals, he suggested the agency would move away from traditional clinical models in favor of simulated testing.
During the interview, he repeated misleading claims about COVID-19 vaccine trials, suggested former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci should face legal consequences and called for a national “truth commission” to investigate the government’s pandemic response.
While Kennedy says the agency is actively recruiting engineers and data scientists for his AI initiative, he has yet to announce any formal rule changes or provide technical guidance for how AI would meet existing regulatory standards.
Originally published on Latin Times
