(LifeSiteNews) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slammed the World Health Organization (WHO) as a compromised institution that has capitulated to Chinese political interests in a Tuesday video address to the WHO’s governing body.
Months after President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the WHO, the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary called out the WHO for its control by China, its mismanagement of the COVID outbreak, and its lack of transparency.
“Like many legacy institutions, the WHO has become mired in bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest, and international power politics,” Kennedy said Tuesday.
“While the United States has provided the lion’s share of the organization’s funding historically, other countries such as China have exerted undue influence over its operations in ways that serve their own interests and not particularly the interests of the global public.”
This “became obvious,” said Kennedy, during the COVID outbreak, when the WHO suppressed reports of human transmission of COVID-19 “under pressure from China,” and helped “promote the fiction” that the virus came from bats and not from “Chinese government-sponsored” work at a biolab in Wuhan.
“Not only has the WHO capitulated to political pressure from China, it’s also failed to maintain an organization characterized by transparency and fair governance by and for its Member States,” Kennedy continued. “The WHO often acts like it has forgotten that its members must remain accountable to their own citizens and not to transnational or corporate interests.”
Kennedy criticized the international body for failing to uphold its purpose of promoting public health in other ways, such as pushing “harmful gender ideology” and the agenda of “corporate medicine” in general.
Kennedy went on to note that far from reforming itself, the WHO has “doubled down” on its mistakes, such as by adopting a “pandemic agreement” to regulate countries’ responses to future pandemics.
Kennedy highlighted the U.S. health system’s new focus on “chronic health issues” as a model for health policy, citing his department’s move to remove harmful dyes and additives from food, investigate autism and other chronic illnesses, and reduce the “consumption of ultra-processed foods.”
“I urge the world’s health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organization as a wake-up call,” Kennedy exhorted.
