On May 22 in Washington, D.C., U.S. President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) commission event at the White House. Despite concerns about a troubling MAHA report, the White House said on Thursday that it fully trusts Kennedy. (Jacquelyn Martin/The Associated Press)
The White House is facing criticism after a major health report contained references to studies that don’t actually exist. The report, called "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA), was led by the U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It cited hundreds of scientific papers to support his claims. But a news investigation by NOTUS found that some of these studies were fake or wrongly used.
When asked about these problems, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the report has formatting errors and will be corrected soon. She did not confirm whether artificial intelligence had helped create the 72-page document, which questions the safety of childhood vaccines and criticizes America’s food, pesticides, and prescription drug policies.
Leavitt told reporters, “There were some formatting issues with the MAHA report, and these are being fixed. But this does not take away from the report’s core message. This is one of the most important health reports ever released by the government.” She also expressed full confidence in Kennedy’s leadership.
However, NOTUS reported that seven of the more than 500 studies cited were never published, and some others were misunderstood or misrepresented in the report.
For example, Katherine Keyes, a professor at Columbia University, was listed as the author of a study on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic published in JAMA Pediatrics. But Keyes told Reuters she and her co-authors never wrote that paper.
Similarly, a psychiatry professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Robert L. Findling, was wrongly named as the author of a paper on advertising medications to youth.
Following these revelations, the report on the White House website removed references to those studies.
Kennedy, who has long raised doubts about vaccine safety, has faced pushback from scientists and doctors since becoming health secretary. Many federal health workers have lost their jobs, and billions in biomedical research funding have been cut during his time in office. At the same time, Kennedy has sometimes claimed he was unaware of these layoffs.
The MAHA report is intended to guide new health policies later this year. The White House has asked Congress for an extra $500 million to fund this effort.
But some experts are calling the report unreliable. Georges C. Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, told the Washington Post, “The report should be thrown out. It can’t be used to make policies or even have serious discussions because its information can’t be trusted.”
This controversy comes amid other recent moves by Kennedy that have raised eyebrows. On Tuesday, he announced that COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women. Public health experts quickly questioned this, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) contradicted Kennedy, continuing to recommend the vaccines.
Experts also criticized Kennedy’s suggestion that COVID-19 is not dangerous for pregnant women. During the pandemic, pregnancy-related deaths rose sharply, and pregnancy is still listed as a reason to get vaccinated under the FDA’s guidelines. Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics called Kennedy’s claim “simply wrong.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration recently cancelled $766 million in funding to Moderna for vaccine development. Moderna had received $176 million in July 2024 and $590 million in January for research on vaccines against pandemics like bird flu.
Speaking of bird flu, the H5N1 virus has infected cattle and dozens of people in the U.S. Some worry the virus could mutate and become more dangerous or spread more easily among humans.
