President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks are raising eyebrows.

He recently nominated environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine organizer Robert F Kennedy Junior to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and controversial television talk show host Doctor Mehmet Oz as head of Medicare and Medicaid.

Neither of whom have public health experience.

Joining us now with more on the potential impact on public health is Doctor Robert Murphy, professor of infectious diseases and executive director of the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, Dr. Murphy, thanks for joining us again.

Welcome back.

>> Thank you for inviting me.

>> So what was your reaction to President Trump's selection of RFK Junior Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead a this department?

>> Well, really, I'm horrified because this is a person who is completely incompetent in this area.

He's a vaccine the NIE ER.

He's stated publicly.

He says he's walked it back a little bit.

I guess it's a little bit too much for people to absorb, right?

Know.

But this is a person with no public health background.

No real Knowledge.

Who is going to be running?

One of the biggest department in United States, the Department of Health and Human Services.

People don't realize Holmen is encompassed year.

>> The NIH, the CDC, the FDA.

>> All that and more is under this person's purview.

It's an incredibly important post and this person is completely uncalled for.

>> You mention CDC and FDA.

So let's at some of his other choices for other agencies.

Got Doctor Dave Weldon as the nominee for CDC, for the Centers for Disease Control Prevention, Dr. Jeannette Nationwide for surgeon General Dr Martin, the Kerry for Food and Drug Administration, Dr Mehmet Oz for Medicare and Medicaid.

And Doctor Jay Bhattacharya for NIH, National Institutes of Health.

What are your thoughts?

Concerns with some of the book picks?

>> It's a mixed bag.

First of all, Dave Weldon, who is a physician, was in Congress for I think 12 years is a believer that the there are ingredients in vaccines that cause autism.

He has really he was a founding member of the Autism Caucus.

This has been disproven time and time again.

This completely non scientific us.

So here's a person with a little knowledge who has really gone off the plank.

He doesn't know what he's talking it.

He's going to be in charge of the Centers for Disease Control, which a lot of it has to do with recommending vaccines.

Some of the other choices after are pretty solid.

Dr McCary for a head of the surgeon Johns Hopkins with a master's in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health, also a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a very respectable person.

And I think he's he's pretty solid.

>> Well, it is let's let's let's talk about him for just a just a minute.

Because Dr, Martin, care he has, you know, decried the overprescribing of drugs, the use of pesticides in food, undue influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies over doctors and government regulators.

So some of that sounds, you know, fairly mainstream reasonable.

You say it's a mixed bag.

So it sounds like some of these nominees you think could be suited for the job.

>> I think they could.

And I think he's one of the ones that, though, is probably going to go forward, you know, having this kind of institutional change, a change at the top and change in direction.

This is normal.

This is normal evolution of these gigantic departments.

I think this would be a healthy change with him in charge of the FDA.

>> Okay.

But obviously it sounds like you've got some concerns potentially a couple of the Dr Little Public with who he reports to.

He's going to be reporting JFK to RFK Junior who doesn't know what he's talking about.

Some of the other, the CDC Dr. Well done is is another person who is a really an extreme U.S. >> Some of these appointees, as you've mentioned as we've discussed, are either anti-vaxers or anti, you know, required vaccine programs.

What could a change in vaccine requirements mean for schools?

>> Where all this is going is relaxation in the requirements for vaccination in public facilities like nursing homes hospitals, et cetera.

that vaccine mandate that exist today for like, say, for example, measles, if that drops below 90% or even below 95%.

I hate to say it.

You're going to start seeing measles outbreaks and why is that important?

Because measles can kill children.

They can kill adults who vaccinated can kill anyone is not vaccinated.

And the RFK junior should know this because he was involved in the crisis in Samoa years ago where he convince the president of that country to eliminate the mandate for measles vaccine and they had a big jump in cases in 90 children died.

we can see the same thing here.

If visa vaccine uptake drops like it did in some old.

>> Rp juniors also said that he would pause drug development and infectious disease research.

Lot of that is funded out of the National Institutes of Health in favor of focusing on chronic diseases.

What impact will that have on research?

And at, you know, the universities that conduct a lot of that research.

>> Well, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases where falls into is about 8 billion dollar a year enterprise of the 50 almost 50 billion dollars that the NHS.

It's a huge investment in research.

What's happening know with drug resistance and the bacteria with new pathogens emerging are emerging critically important.

Look what happened in 2020.

>> I mean, with COVID, I mean, you think we're not going to have another infectious pandemic and to put all the infectious to >> interest to the side.

This is this is insanity.

do we learn anything from our mistakes?

>> It was tough enough getting through the COVID pandemic avian flu becomes transmissible human to human, which is a huge fear certainly a possibility that could Is this group going to be able to run it?

I mean it what the RFK is saying is a list that the look at the infections anymore.

This is this is absolutely ridiculous.

>> Dr Murphy, Hines, public, how has public health public health leadership at the national level affect public health outcomes at the state and local level.

>> there is no national mended.

There's nothing in the constitution that says that.

Public health is a U.S. constitutional issue.

That has always been delegated to the states.

So we have 50 states.

We have 6 territories that have including Puerto Rico and the District Columbia and others and everyone has their own Illinois here.

We actually have 3.

We have the city of Chicago have Cook County with the state of Illinois.

Unfortunately, they're all working together things are working just well.

But every state is different.

And when these infections roll into a you can when you're one state doing one thing, another jurisdiction doing another thing.

I mean, that is really not going to be the wisest thing in situations.

You know, it's really just a matter of time before there's another epidemic or pandemic that comes along.

We have to be ready for it.

And this group is group that could run it.