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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s views on vaccines are well known, but the environmental lawyer tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be the next HHS Secretary has touted other questionable claims, from man-made chemicals turning children gay to antidepressants being responsible for mass shootings. Here are a few.

That HIV Does Not Cause AIDS

One claim espoused by Kennedy is that AIDS is not caused by HIV. "There are much better candidates than HIV for what causes AIDS," Kennedy said in a interview.

"A hundred percent of the people who died -- the first thousand who had AIDS -- were people who were addicted to 'poppers' ... They were people who were part of a gay lifestyle, where they were burning the candle at both ends, and they were taking a lot of injectable drugs and methadrine (methamphetamine)," Kennedy stated in a in June 2023.

"This misinformation is dangerous and clearly wrong," noted Carl Schmid, executive director for the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute in Washington D.C., in an email. "How can [Kennedy] dismiss the millions of people in Africa who have been impacted by HIV? Does he believe they used poppers? It is nonsense and harmful."

Schmid applauded Trump for work during his first term on an initiative aimed at ending HIV. "We know that [Trump] understands what causes HIV and look forward to the opportunity to sit down with RFK Jr., should he be confirmed by the Senate to be HHS Secretary," he said.

The causal relationship between HIV and AIDS was established in the mid-1980s. In 2008, for the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS.

That Pesticides Alter Children's Sexuality

Another unproven Kennedy theory is that man-made chemicals can make children become gay or transgender.

"I think a lot of the problems we see in kids, and particularly boys, it's probably underappreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we're seeing," Kennedy told Canadian media commentator Jordan Peterson in June 2023 during a podcast, (The podcast was later removed from YouTube for misinformation about vaccines.)

Kennedy has conflated studies of the in male African clawed frogs (which chemically castrated and feminized them as adults) with the idea that chemicals like these could similarly affect children, .

Tyrone Hayes, PhD, of the University of California at Berkeley, who authored the frog study, told Politifact that while he favors more research on atrazine, "[t]here are no data to really make that link. That's speculation."

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can affect reproductive function, according to the . "In people, EDCs have been linked to undescended testicles and urethra defects in men and endometriosis and fibroids in women," according to the Endocrine Society's web site. "Ovarian cysts have been associated with higher amounts of chemicals such as BPA in the body."

However, Jack Turban, MD, director of the Gender Psychiatry Program at the University of California San Francisco, said in an email to 番茄社区app that there is "no evidence to support the notion that environmental toxins are causing people to be LGBT."

That Antidepressants Are Responsible for Mass Shootings

The next potential HHS Secretary also blamed antidepressants for mass shootings, according to .

"Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events in our country," Kennedy told Elon Musk in a Twitter Spaces discussion in 2023, Business Insider reported.

Kennedy is not alone in his thinking. After a shooting at a Texas Mall in May 2023, (R-Ga.) called for "study[ing] SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] and other factors that cause mass shootings."

A causal link between mass shooting and antidepressants has never been established, experts maintain. "SSRIs, and psych meds in general, are not responsible for mass shootings or violence in any way," Ragy Girgis, MD, of Columbia University in New York City, who has conducted research on mass murders, in a fact-checking article about school shootings.

"Not only are a small minority of mass shooters ... taking therapeutic doses of these medications at the time of the mass shootings, but these psych meds have specific anti-violence properties," Girgis said. "What that means is that, if a mass murderer happens to be taking a psychiatric medication, the medication was probably incidental, as is nearly all mental illness when present among mass murderers."

That Wi-Fi Causes Cancer

Another unproven theory Kennedy endorsed is that Wi-Fi causes cancer.

"Wi-Fi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier, so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain," Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan in a June 2023 interview, . Kennedy had previously argued that 5G technology can "harvest our data and control our behavior," the Barron's article stated.

Kennedy's posts include "claims that 5G damages human DNA, causes cancer, and is being installed in order to carry out mass surveillance," the wrote.

On its page about radiofrequency (RF) radiation, the cites the Federal Communications Commission, which states that "currently no scientific evidence establishes a causal link between wireless device use and cancer or other illnesses. Those evaluating the potential risks of using wireless devices agree that more and longer-term studies should explore whether there is a better basis for RF safety standards than is currently used."

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