Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced that the agency may prohibit federally funded scientists from publishing in leading peer-reviewed medical journals, citing concerns about pharmaceutical industry influence. Instead, Kennedy proposed the creation of new government-run journals within each institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“We're probably going to stop publishing in The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they're all corrupt,” Kennedy stated during a recent appearance on The Ultimate Human podcast. He further described these journals as being under the control of pharmaceutical companies.
Kennedy proposed a substantial reorganization of the NIH’s $46 billion annual budget, which funds an estimated 56,000 researchers globally. He stated that approximately 20% of the agency's budget would be allocated to replication studies and that peer review processes would be published “for the first time.” The proposed NIH-controlled journals would feature mandatory reproducibility standards and would serve, in Kennedy’s words, as “preeminent journals” because NIH funding would act as an endorsement of a scientist’s legitimacy.
“If you get NIH funding, it is anointing you as a good, legitimate scientist,” Kennedy said.
Criticism of Journal Publishing Practices
Kennedy alleged that pharmaceutical companies exert influence by financially supporting both the publication and distribution of studies that align with their business interests. He claimed that companies pay up to $10,000 to publish studies and then purchase reprints—which display journal branding—for distribution to prescribing physicians via pharmaceutical representatives.
“They buy the preprints … and give them to pharmaceutical reps to distribute to doctors,” he said. “This system promotes products, not science.”
He cited former editors of prominent journals—Marcia Angell, MD, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, and Richard Horton, FRCP, editor of The Lancet—as having expressed concerns over the current state of scientific publishing, asserting that these outlets serve as “vessels for pharmaceutical propaganda.”
Reforms at HHS
Kennedy reported extensive structural changes underway at HHS. He noted the departure of numerous staff following a buyout initiative, stating that “a lot of people left the agency.” Internal consolidation efforts reportedly reduced the number of communication, IT, and procurement departments—each formerly numbering in the dozens—to streamline operations and reorient the agency’s mission.
“If you want your job, you gotta wake up in the morning and be thinking, how am I going to end the chronic disease epidemic today?” Kennedy said.
According to Kennedy, the agency now prioritizes chronic disease prevention over the traditional focus on infectious disease. He framed these changes as an effort to address what he described as longstanding regulatory capture and conflicts of interest within federal health agencies.
Concerns Over Regulatory Capture
Kennedy described a pattern of post-government employment among federal health officials that he argued incentivizes favorable treatment of industry. He alleged that “seven of the eight recent FDA commissioners have immediately gone to work for industry,” and cited Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as an example. Gerberding later joined Merck & Co., Inc., following CDC decisions that Kennedy claims expanded the vaccine schedule and increased pharmaceutical revenue.
He also alleged that media coverage of health policy is compromised due to pharmaceutical advertising revenues, claiming that such advertising accounts for approximately 75% of evening news division revenue.
“Their salaries are actually coming from pharmaceutical companies, and they know that,” Kennedy said, referring to television news anchors.
Changes to Alternative Medicine Policy
Kennedy proposed an overhaul of the FDA's approach to alternative medicine. He indicated plans to permit greater access to therapies such as stem cells, chelating agents, peptides, and vitamins, arguing that the FDA should limit its role to conducting scientific assessments and publicly sharing findings, rather than restricting physician discretion.
“You shouldn’t have to go to Antigua to get stem cells, which I had to do for my throat,” he said.
NIH Funding and Scientific Integrity
Kennedy criticized the NIH’s grant allocation process, alleging that it favors established researchers who conform to industry norms. He described this system as an “old boys’ network” and claimed that the absence of replication requirements incentivizes manipulation of study outcomes.
“If you know there’s going to be no effort to replicate your study, you have a huge incentive to change [the results],” Kennedy said. He referred to scientists who tailor data to expected conclusions as “biostitutes.”
To address these issues, Kennedy proposed that NIH make privately held datasets available for replication and that all studies undergo mandatory reproducibility testing.
Scientific Community Response
Experts and observers have raised concerns about Kennedy’s proposals. According to the Washington Post, Adam Gaffney, MD, MPH, a public health researcher and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, warned that requiring NIH-funded scientists to publish only in government-created journals would “delegitimize taxpayer-funded research.”
The Post also reported that the Biden administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report, which accompanied Kennedy’s announcements, included misleading claims and contradicted established medical consensus on vaccines. The report has fueled broader concerns over politicization of health research.
In addition, NIH funding reportedly fell by more than $3 billion in the first quarter of the current administration, compared with the same period one year earlier. An estimated 20,000 federal employees were affected by Kennedy’s agency-wide restructuring, prompting some U.S. researchers to consider relocating abroad.
Implementation Timeline
Kennedy acknowledged that Supreme Court decisions on commercial speech limit the government’s ability to regulate pharmaceutical advertising directly. Nevertheless, he indicated that his administration is exploring alternative policy mechanisms. He projected that the most significant reforms will occur within the first year of implementation, with additional changes unfolding over a four-year term.
“What we want to do over the next four years is restore global faith in American regulatory integrity,” Kennedy said.