Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sparked controversy Tuesday after publicly accusing three of the world’s leading medical journals of corruption and threatening to ban National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists from submitting research to them.
In a candid appearance on the “Ultimate Human” podcast hosted by Gary Brecka, Kennedy Jr. alleged that the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and The Lancet are deeply compromised by their financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
“We’re probably going to stop publishing in The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they’re all corrupt,” said Kennedy Jr.
According to the HHS secretary, these publications actively suppress research that could threaten pharmaceutical profits, leading to a biased and incomplete scientific record. He further claimed that even the leadership of these journals has acknowledged the problem.
Kennedy Jr. referenced two high-profile critiques of the medical publishing industry. One was a 2015 editorial by The Lancet’s Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton, who wrote that “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue” due to “flagrant conflicts of interest.” The other was a 2009 article by former NEJM editor-in-chief Dr. Marcia Angell, who argued that the pharmaceutical industry’s influence rendered it “simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published.”
Kennedy said that unless the journals undertake sweeping reforms, NIH researchers will be directed to publish elsewhere—possibly in new in-house journals developed by NIH institutes.
“Unless these journals change dramatically, we are going to stop NIH scientists from publishing there,” Kennedy Jr. said. “We are going to create our own journals, in-house, in each of the institutes … and they are going to become the preeminent journals. Because if you get NIH funding, it is anointing you as a good, legitimate scientist.”
None of the journals targeted by Kennedy—the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, or JAMA—responded to requests for comment from The Post.
The remarks come on the heels of the White House’s release of its “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission report, a policy initiative led by Kennedy. The report accuses pharmaceutical corporations of distorting scientific evidence through “corporate capture” of the research ecosystem.
“Drug companies exercise corporate control over the research agenda, corporate control of the research findings seen by patients and doctors, and corporate influence over the review of those findings,” the report states.
It also highlights the pharmaceutical industry’s resistance to data transparency and claims this lack of access results in “distorted and misleading information routinely published in top journals.”
The MAHA report echoes Kennedy’s broader public health messaging, which has drawn scrutiny and sparked debate across the medical and scientific communities. Critics argue that such rhetoric could undermine public trust in peer-reviewed science, while supporters view it as a necessary reckoning with industry influence in healthcare research.
As of now, no formal policy restricting NIH scientists from publishing in the mentioned journals has been enacted, but Kennedy’s comments suggest a shift in federal research publishing priorities may be imminent.
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