Washington, 10 December 2024 (dpa/MIA) — In a letter published by the New York Times on Monday, 77 Nobel prize winners have asked the US Senate to oppose the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services because his "lack of credentials" and anti-vaccine beliefs "would put the public's health in jeopardy."

"The letter," The New York Times writes, "marks the first time in recent memory that Nobel laureates have banded together against a Cabinet choice, according to Richard Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine, who helped draft the letter. The group tries to stay out of politics whenever possible, he said.

"But the confirmation of Mr. Kennedy, a staunch critic of mainstream medicine who has been hostile to the scientists and agencies he would oversee, is a threat that the Nobel laureates could not ignore, Dr. Roberts said.

“These political attacks on science are very damaging,” he said, as quoted by The New York Times. “You have to stand up and protect it.”

Back in November, President-elect Trump named the former independent US presidential candidate and declared vaccine opponent as his new administration's health minister.

Trump, writing on his Truth Social platform and on X, said Kennedy would "Make America Great and Healthy Again!"

Trump, who is known to have a fast-food habit, said Americans had been suffering "far too long" from the "deception, misinformation and disinformation" from the "industrial food complex."

Trump said Kennedy's role in health policy would be to halve the number of cancer and depression cases, as well as child suicides, within four years.

Trump did not specify how this would be achieved.