The Trump Administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) plan sounds ambitious but is actually full of medical misinformation. Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, government sites like the White House website have been scrubbed of much critical healthcare information. This includes removing resources for COVID as well the appearance of the scientifically questionable MAHA Report.
Replacing valuable resources with divisive ideas
One of the most striking changes in health information provided by the government is the replacement of the COVID.gov website. In late April, the site was deleted and in its place appeared a page titled “Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19.” For years since the start of the pandemic, COVID.gov previously offered resources on vaccines, testing, and treatment. All of that is gone now, for no good reason but political revenge.
The Trump administration is pushing medical misinformation by endorsing the conspiracy-adjacent idea that the virus may have accidentally escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan rather than emerging naturally from an animal host.
Removing public resources accomplishes precisely nothing from a public health standpoint.
To be clear, the exact origin of COVID is still unknown. There is no definitive proof for either the lab leak theory or the natural origin theory. We’re 5 years into this and will likely never know the true source. What we do know is that removing public resources accomplishes precisely nothing from a public health standpoint.
Political revenge
Instead of providing critical resources, the White House site now vilifies Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who led America through the darkest times of the pandemic. It also needlessly discounts the critical steps we all took during the pandemic to slow the spread, such as lockdowns, social distancing, and wearing masks.
All of these were crucial steps that helped slow the spread of COVID, but the current administration wants us to remember it differently. In fact, they claim that the medical misinformation came from public health officials like Dr. Fauci. They go on to accuse the Biden administration of censorship and social media manipulation.
The White House website states that Biden ignored alternative treatments for COVID. These include things Trump had speculated about during his daily press meetings early in the pandemic. These include taking hydroxychloroquine, ingesting disinfectants, and internal use of UV light. To be clear, none of those stop COVID, and all of them could seriously harm you.
RFK Jr.’s questionable credentials
It seems that the chaos of the COVID pandemic in the last year of the first Trump administration was just a prelude. Trump’s appointment of RFK Jr. to be secretary of Health and Human Services has brought even more medical misinformation to the forefront of American politics.
Before his time in this administration, RFK Jr. helped start an anti-vaccine organization called Children’s Health Defense (CHD). CHD has been a powerful force opposing childhood vaccinations, COVID vaccines, and vaccine mandates. It has claimed vaccines cause autism (they don’t). It attempted to convince people that the HPV vaccine would make people infertile (it doesn’t).
During the pandemic, Kennedy’s CHD claimed that the COVID vaccine was experimental and dangerous. It questioned mask effectiveness and claimed public health restrictions (like lockdowns) were forms of government overreach. These actions undermined confidence in public health advocated when we needed it most. Sowing doubt about vaccines leads to lower vaccination rates. This can lead to preventable disease outbreaks, such as the 2025 measles outbreak in Texas
MAHA report is full of medical misinformation
The first major body of work under RFK Jr.’s supervision is the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) report. This aims to identify and address the root causes of the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases among American children.
The MAHA report presents dangerous medical misinformation as facts.
The report is, of course, well-intentioned. We all want the best for our kids, regardless of our political affiliations. Furthermore, much of the report focuses on things that really are dangerous for children. These include the threat from excessive consumption of ultra-processed foods, exposure to environmental chemicals, and sedentary lifestyles, often driven by excessive screen time. These are all real concerns worth addressing.
However, many other parts of the MAHA report leave a lot to be desired and present dangerous medical misinformation as facts. Multiple investigations by several news organizations revealed that the report contained numerous citations to studies that either do not exist or were misrepresented. This has led experts to speculate that artificial intelligence tools, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, may have been used in drafting the report.
In fact, the term “oaicite” appeared in several places in the early version of the report. This is a placeholder used by ChatGPT when responding to scientific questions. Its appearance implies someone used AI to generate citations but didn’t verify them with actual references. In total, the MAHA report spreads medical misinformation by failing to accurately report on numerous scientific studies and falsifying citations. It falls far short of the rigorous standards of the scientific community and is not suitable for guiding public health policy.
Government by tweet
RFK Jr. has also borrowed Trump’s preference for governing by tweet. On May 27th, RFK Jr. released a video on X (Twitter) in which he suddenly ended the governmental recommendation for COVID vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women. This is the same person who recently testified in front of the Senate that his “opinions on vaccines are irrelevant.” He also testified, “I don’t think people should be taking… medical advice from me.” His decision overturned the years-long standing guidance by the CDC that the COVID vaccine was appropriate for all people over 6 months old.
Another surprise came a week later when RFK Jr. announced on a podcast that he may bar government scientists from publishing their work in journals like JAMA, the Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine. He called these publications corrupt and tools of big pharmaceutical companies, despite the fact that they have been the independent bastions of scientific rigor for 150 to 200 years.
Kennedy has also continued to make ridiculous claims about autism. In his first press briefing, he stated that people with autism will “never pay taxes… never hold a job… never go out on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted”. These claims are patently absurd. Worryingly, he has also stated he intends to create a database of all autistic Americans. This is chilling and Orwellian.
Trump, RFK Jr., MAHA, and the dangers of medical misinformation
The Trump administration’s and RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” plan is driven less by science and more by politics. It is full of misinformation, revisionist history, and dangerous science denial. By deleting COVID resources and appointing RFK Jr. to head DHHS, this administration has once again proven its desire to elevate ideology over public safety. The MAHA report is riddled with inaccuracies and phantom citations, eroding trust in government-backed science.
The spread of misinformation has real-world consequences, including lower vaccination rates, preventable disease outbreaks, and deepening public confusion about what to believe. That is not how we get a healthier America. Instead, it requires leadership that trusts science and grounds its policies in reality.