Investors in pharmaceutical companies have sold off shares in the sector after Donald Trump nominated the anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services.
RFK Jr has embraced numerous health-related conspiracy theories, and is one of the most persistent and influential vaccine deniers in the US.
Trump’s announcement sent shares in some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies – including Moderna, AstraZeneca and GSK – falling on Friday.
RFK Jr has said vaccines are linked to autism in children, that HIV is not the cause of Aids and that some antidepressants are linked to a rise in school shootings.
RFK Jr – and Trump – are mulling banning fluoride in drinking water, while he has also called for bans on hundreds of food additives and chemicals and wants to cut ultra-processed foods from school lunches as part of a plan to reduce diet-related chronic diseases.
Announcing his choice, Trump said the health department would play a “big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis in this country”.
The potential ramifications of RFK Jr running the department prompted panic among investors with shares in Moderna, which produces mRNA vaccines, falling 5% on Thursday night and another 8% on Friday trading in New York.
BioNTech, the German drugmaker that helped develop a Covid vaccine with Pfizer, fell 7% on Thursday and a further 5% on Friday. In London, AstraZeneca and GSK shares were down about 3%, placing them among the biggest fallers on the FTSE 100.
Shares in the chemicals firm Croda, which makes ingredients for food products and vaccines, shed more than 3% on Friday. Germany’s Roche has fallen by 2%, while Denmark’s Novo Nordisk – the firm behind Wegovy and Ozempic, which also makes vaccines – has fallen more than 5%.
RFK Jr’s nomination has drawn widespread criticism, with Robert Garcia, California’s Democratic representative, calling it “fucking insane”.
“He’s a vaccine denier and a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist,” said Garcia in a post on X. “He will destroy our public health infrastructure and our vaccine distribution systems. This is going to cost lives.”
RFK Jr has long run an anti-vaccine non-profit group, Children’s Health Defense, and three years ago appeared in a video campaign next to a sticker that declared: “If you’re not an anti-vaxxer, you aren’t paying attention”.
He took leave from the group when he announced he would run for president. In August, he suspended his US presidential bid and endorsed Trump.
He has also pushed conspiracy theories including that Covid-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
RFK Jr has claimed he is not against vaccines, but that he wants them to be rigorously tested. However, he has also said “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective”.
He said in a podcast in 2021: “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.”
Russ Mould, the investment director at AJ Bell, said Trump’s nomination of RFK Jr as head of the HHS had “spooked investors” in the pharmaceutical sector.
“The impact … is hard to judge fully at this stage but, at the very least, it will cause a good deal of uncertainty,” he added.
