Others are just getting to know him,” Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia, said of her cousin, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for health secretary.

US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy described her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views on vaccinations as “dangerous,” the latest public rebuke by a senior member of the storied family against the man Donald Trump has tapped for a key Cabinet post.

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was building up a following with his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, and became one of the world’s most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines.

Of the many unorthodox positions taken by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, none worries US public-health experts more than his embrace of the anti-vaccine movement.

Kennedy has been criticized for making false medical claims. He has also vowed to purge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

President-elect Donald Trump said he’s tapping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services, a move that would elevate a prominent vaccine skeptic and pharmaceutical industry critic to a top role on federal health policy.

The nearly $2 trillion agency administers health-insurance programs for millions of Americans, approves medications and oversees vaccine safety.

The choice will roil many public health experts after his years of touting debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.