Diseases like measles could become more prevalent in America with a vaccine sceptic in Government, Luke O’Neill has warned.

As President-elect Donald Trump puts together his cabinet choices, vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr stands out as an interesting choice for Department of Health and Human Services Secretary.

If Mr Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate into the role of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, he will have control over Federal Drugs Administration (FDA), Medicare and Medicaid - the social medical programs provided by the American State.

Mr Kennedy has continually spread disinformation about vaccine efficacy, but disputes the tag of vaccine sceptic.

According to Trinity Professor Luke O’Neill, a choice like Mr Kennedy for the role of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary could make America an unsafe place.

"Consternation"

Having just returned from multiple conferences in America, Mr O’Neill told The Pat Kenny Show that the mood over there is one of “consternation”.

“[Mr Kennedy]'s not using science in his prognostications and he's against fluoride, and he's completely wrong with that,” he said.

“He's right in that high dose fluoride, fluoride can have certain nasty affects, but it's tiny amounts.

“There's about 100 times the amount of fluoride in your toothpaste than there will be in water, for instance.

“But he's made these claims that fluoride is very damaging, and it's not, scientifically, not true, at least at the levels that it's in water.”

"Massively damaging"

Mr O’Neill said Mr Kennedy’s claims that vaccines cause autism were “massively damaging”.

“He's on record as a massive anti-vaxxer [and] he was the one who pushed vaccines causing autism, which was a massively damaging thing, because the uptake of measles vaccine went down, and kids died,” he said.

“When I was over there I heard that any company's now working on vaccines, their share prices have fallen because the worry would be the be less uptake of vaccines in America.”

Mr O’Neill said the evidence that vaccines work is “so compelling”.

“Now the problem is, if a figure like that begins to doubt vaccines, that will stop a certain percent of people,” he said.

“Maybe 10% less people will then allow their kids to be vaccinated, and that will give rise to these diseases.

“Measles will be a huge worry, it’s going up, and that's a very damaging disease - it kills children.

“Many survive and end up deaf – a big cause of deafness, back in the 40s and 50s, was measles.”

Pseudo-science

Mr O’Neill was also disappointed by the selection of Dr Mehmet Oz to head Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, saying he was “peddling pseudo-science”.

Mr O’Neill, however, claimed that if Europe invests in science now, we will “catch up with the US”.

“They're going to slow down, and Europe has a chance now to begin to improve,” he said.

He cited this as “another reason why the European Union should fund science”.

Split image: R, Luke O'Neill, L, Photo of child receiving vaccines.