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Bill Nye the Science Guy explains why he blocked HHS Secretary RFK Jr. from texting him

Bill Nye is still very serious about science 30 years after his famous show.

Bill Nye the Science Guy explains why he blocked HHS Secretary RFK Jr.

Bill Nye has been a household name for decades, though many Millennials likely can't say his name without adding "the science guy" behind it. He played an integral part in the childhood of an entire generation with his television program teaching kids science in a fun, engaging way. The theme song will forever be emblazoned in the minds of those who grew up watching him.

When he made his way to social media with his familiar kindness and humor, people flocked to his pages for the nostalgia but stayed for the knowledge. If there was one thing Nye was going to do, it was stand with scientific evidence no matter what. Due to his love of science and being established as a trusted and pivotal voice in the worlds of science and tech, it wasn't surprising that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would have Nye's phone number. But what is surprising is that Nye blocked him.

Bill Nye; Bill Nye the Science Guy; RFK Jr. vaccines; anti-vaxx; MAHA; HHS Secretary; Bill Nye blocks RFK Jr. Bill Nye leaning against podium speaking at ASUPhoto by Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia

A lot of scientific research is funded through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Americans also depend on the accuracy of information leaving the office of HHS, whether it be vaccine recommendations, baby formula safety, or protective measures to be taken with a new disease outbreak. The department of Health and Human Services handles nearly everything that has to do with the health of American citizens and everyone who visits the country.

In 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and descendant of the Kennedy political dynasty, was confirmed as the new Secretary of HHS. While his nomination raised concerns due to his anti-vaccine activism and involvement in the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, the son of RFK assured Americans he would follow the science. But it would seem that this isn't the case according to the science guy who blocked RFK Jr. from being able to contact him via phone or text.

RFK JR, HHS, health and human services, America, Bill NyeRFK Jr. Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr

In a recent interview with Men's Health, Nye explains that the current health secretary would text him on occasion—but at some point the texts got to be out of hand. The magazine describes Nye holding up his iPhone to show multiple walls of text messages from RFK saying, "This is real. That’s Bobby Kennedy Jr.” Turns out Kennedy had been sending him long text messages back to back making an argument for not vaccinating children due to its (repeatedly scientifically debunked) claimed links to autism.

"Just no self-awareness. And if you read these articles he sent, they’re all this speculation about autism and just cause-and-effect, and mercury in vaccines, that maybe there’s a connection. I wrote him back and said, ‘Okay, I’ll read your book. I think you’ve confused causation with correlation. Your friend, Bill.’ And he sent this,” Nye told Men's Health before showing the interviewer more extremely long text messages. “So I wrote, ‘Okay, no more texts.’ And he started again! So I cut him off. He does not have good judgment. He is not suited for this job.”

Nye didn't stop with venting his frustrations around the excessive paragraphs of texts. The mechanical engineer, actor, and author frustratingly pointed out the recent measles outbreak in Texas, which has been attributed to a lack of vaccines that led to insufficient heard immunity.

"There’s an outbreak of measles in Texas. Did you hear about this? It was a religious sect that has historically low vaccination rates, "he says in part before later adding, "Unvaccinated people can, and usually do, spread a disease. And that’s why we have these rules, for public health! It’s not arbitrary."

Billy Nye, Bill Nye the science guy, speech, science, scientistBill Nye speaking. Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr

The topic of vaccines, which RFK Jr. not only hit on, but droned on about incessantly via text message, seems to be a sticking point for Nye. He is clearly fired up while speaking to Men's Health about the issue, and it may be due to his own experiences as a child.

"The other thing that’s so remarkable about what’s going on now—I went to elementary school with a guy who had polio. You do not want polio! And the reason you don’t get polio is because of a vaccine that was discovered that keeps you from getting polio! What is wrong with you, man?" Nye said.

He explains the minute risk of contracting the disease from the vaccine, but stresses how rare it is before explaining how things worked before vaccines existed when he was a child. But this isn't the first time The Science Guy has shared his views on vaccines. He's done multiple interviews with outlets like Now This where he explains how vaccines work and was even part of a 2021 campaign to help kids understand how COVID vaccines protected them.

Nye doesn't just have a bone to pick with people who are against vaccinations, he is against anti-science and uses his platforms to educate the public. He's testified before congress and debunked conspiracy theories on Big Think. Nye has also ventured back into the entertainment industry with Bill Nye Saves the World, which ran from 2017-2018 and The End is Nye which aired on Peacock in 2022. Nye is a trusted voice for millions of Americans and, while blocking RFK Jr. might appear harsh to some, to others he's simply staying true to science.

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March of Dimes

My dad had weird feet.

He was born in 1942, and when he was just a few years old, he caught polio. He survived the disease, but it affected the way his legs and feet grew — one foot was always a shoe size or two smaller than the other one. I remember being fascinated by them when I was little.

Though polio affected my father, I myself have never been in danger of contracting it.

In fact, the disease has disappeared completely from the United States, and we're incredibly close to eliminating it worldwide.


But as much as we should celebrate its passing, we should also remember what it was like when polio affected people everywhere. And though these photos may be somber, they should also give us hope; they prove that we can overcome the worst obstacles and most pernicious infections. After all, we've done it before.

Check out these photos of what polio looked like when my dad was a kid.

Polio was a scourge. It could affect anyone. But it preyed most heavily on children.

A child paralyzed by polio in 1947. Photo by Keystone Features/Getty Images.

A young patient getting fit with a respirator in 1955. Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images.

Polio's actually a lot older than my father was. We even have paintings of it from ancient Egypt.

This over-3,300-year-old Egyptian stele is thought to depict a polio victim. Image via Deutsches Grünes Kreuz/Wikimedia Commons.

For most of that time, polio was content to remain quiet.

But in the 19th and 20th centuries, it became a killer. In 1952, an outbreak killed over 3,000 people and paralyzed over 21,000 in the U.S. alone.

Photo from Douglas Grundy/Three Lions/Getty Images.

Polio is a virus passed mostly through contaminated food and water. And as long as we humans were spread out, it never got the momentum to really become a problem. But as cities grew and, ironically, better sanitation came about and removed some of our natural exposure to it, polio suddenly found a weak spot in our defenses.

Children were most at risk of contracting the virus – hence one of its common names: infantile paralysis.

Photo by Sonnee Gottlieb/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

In most cases, it's either harmless or mild, like a case of the flu. But in some people, polio can cause serious, sometimes permanent paralysis.

A paralyzed kid at London's Queen Mary's Hospital in 1947. Photo by George Konig/Keystone Features/Getty Images.

If the virus ends up in the central nervous system, it interrupts our body's ability to communicate with our muscles, causing paralysis. And if the paralysis lasts for a long time, the muscles themselves can start to waste away, a process known as atrophy.

This is already bad, but there's one more cruel twist to the disease. If a child is the one who gets paralyzed, the muscle atrophy can end up affecting the way their bones grow. That's what happened with my dad and why his feet looked so weird.

If the diaphragm was paralyzed, patients would need respirators to be able to breathe. Some respirators were portable, like this one.

A portable respirator from 1955. Photo by Hans Meyer/BIPs/Getty Images.

For a given value of "portable."

Others, like the iron lung, effectively trapped you inside.

An iron lung in 1938. Photo from London Express/Getty Images.

If you did recover, you may have still needed regular physical therapy to strengthen the atrophied muscles. Aquatic therapy was popular.

Photo by Juliette Lasserre/BIPs/Getty Images.

At its height, polio was one of the great public specters. People were terrified of it. Public pools were closed in a misguided effort to stop the spread. Houses were quarantined.

A board of health warning circa 1910. Image from National Library of Medicine/Wikimedia Commons.

There were public health campaigns and donation drives to help fuel research, like the March of Dimes.

A cartoon from 1943. Image from U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons.

Still, nobody seemed safe. Even President Franklin Roosevelt had it, although he was careful about hiding his paralysis from the outside world.

A rare photograph of FDR in his wheelchair. Image from Margaret Suckley/Wikimedia Commons.

It was one of the great scourges of its time.

Then, in the early 1950s, Jonas Salk invented the first polio vaccine.

Photo by Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Salk was a researcher and virologist who joined the fight against polio in the late 1940s. Initially tasked with identifying different strains of the virus, Salk and his team saw an opportunity to try to prevent the disease altogether, and their work paid off.

Manufacturers began to mass produce it.

Workers at England's Glaxo company in 1956. Photo from Fox Photos/Getty Images.

Suddenly, people could save their children from this awful disease.

Photo by Monty Fresco Jnr/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images.

As people became immunized against it, the disease had a harder and harder time spreading between populations. Numbers of infections started to fall.

And, slowly, polio transformed from a demonic specter into a manageable disease, then, eventually, into a distant memory.

A woman examines a gigantic model of a single polio virus capsule in 1959. Photo from Fox Photos/Getty Images.

Thanks to the vaccines created by Salk and other researchers, most of the world began to forget this disease.

Today, we're on the cusp of eradicating polio altogether. Its last holdouts are in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.

A child afflicted with polio in Afghanistan in 2009. Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images.

We're really close. In fact, one of polio's three strains has already been eliminated.

Photo by A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images.

Which is why the U.N. switched to a two-strain vaccine in May of 2016.

In 2015, there were only 74 recorded cases of polio in the entire world. Just 74!

A Pakistani child receives the oral polio vaccine in 2016. Photo from Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images.

Polio has no natural reservoir. It has no place to hide. Once it's gone, it's gone.

We might never be able to eliminate the flu because it can hide in so many animals, like birds or pigs. But polio only infects humans. So when all humans are immunized, polio will disappear.

We're so close to eliminating a horrible disease thanks to researchers like Salk and workers dedicated to administering vaccinations. There are occasional setbacks, such as a recent shortage of the new vaccine, but researchers hope to completely eliminate the disease by the end of this decade.

We can overcome the worst demons. We have before. And we can do it again.

In the future, the only place where polio will exist is in picture archives like these. And the memories of my dad's poor feet.