RFK Jr.'s ethics filing reveals book deals worth millions of dollars

**RFK Jr. reveals advances worth $4 million to write two books****Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s annual financial disclosure revealed he has received two lucrative book advances and free flights from a friend while in office.** RFK Jr.'s ethics filing reveals book deals worth millions of dollars RFK Jr.'s ethics disclosure reveals free travel and hefty book advances. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr. listens as President Trump speaks in the Oval Office about an administration healthcare initiative last Friday. **Jim Watson/AFP via Images******hide caption**** **_For stories on the science of healthy living, subscribe to NPR's Health newsletter._** In the minutes before Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the stage last Thursday at an anti-vaccine conference in Washington, D.C., MAHA Institute president Mark Gorton was calling vaccines "a public health disaster." The conference was for Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group that has filed dozens of lawsuits against federal agencies, state governments and companies over vaccine requirements and other policies it disagrees with. Kennedy co-founded the group and it paid him $326,056 in salary and bonuses in the year before he left his role as chairman of the board and chief legal counsel to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a federal ethics filing.

You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House," Kennedy told the crowd. "We've accomplished in 19 months … things that would have seemed unthinkable two years ago." Talking to the anti-vaccine group he led so recently is just one of the ways Kennedy is pushing norms. He's also taken cash for book advances, defied his ethics agreement by promoting one of his books on social media and accepted expensive gifts.

"Having a Secretary of Health and Human Services not only give a keynote address at an anti-vaccine group that he helped found and continue to promote his anti-vaccine agenda is endangering the health, safety and lives of American citizens and the world at large," says Dr. Jason Goldman, the immediate past president of the American College of Physicians. "Nothing that I have seen with the current Secretary of Health and Human Services and his handling of public health and vaccines is, in my opinion, the norm." The Department of Health and Human Services did not answer a detailed list of questions from NPR.

Instead the department emailed a statement that said, "Secretary Kennedy complies with all applicable federal ethics laws, regulations, and financial disclosure requirements. The Secretary works with HHS career ethics officials to ensure that his financial interests, gifts, outside activities, and other reportable matters are appropriately disclosed and handled consistent with those requirements." Kennedy reported in his latest financial disclosure, signed by an HHS ethics official on Sept. 17 and obtained by NPR afterward, that he received pricey flights from a friend to Fiji and Greece as well as lucrative book advances. The two book advances were for $2 million a piece from Skyhorse Publishing, which has also published other books Kennedy wrote and also paid him $451,000 in consulting fees the year before he became HHS secretary.

One of the books in the works will be called _Unsettled Science._ The title is a twist on the term "settled science," often used to describe the evidence for vaccine safety. RFK Jr. defends his health agenda and Trump's proposed budget cuts in hearing Kennedy also received free flights to and from Fiji and Greece and the use of a vacation home in Washington, D.C. Their value totaled more than a quarter of a million dollars, according to the financial disclosure.