President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — setting up a debate over whether Kennedy, whose vaccine skepticism and unorthodox views about medicine make public health officials deeply uneasy, can be confirmed.

Trump is stocking his administration with people whom even some Republicans find alarming, including former Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general and Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, as defense secretary. In choosing Kennedy, Trump is picking someone who is at war with the very public health agencies he would oversee.

“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” the president-elect said on Truth Social, his social media platform, in making the announcement.

“Mr. Kennedy,” he added, “will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

Public health experts were appalled. Dr. Richard Besser, the CEO of the Robert W. Johnson Foundation and a former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that having Kennedy in the health secretary’s job was “absolutely frightening” and “would pose incredible risks to the health of the nation,” because Kennedy’s assault on the nation’s public health apparatus was only worsening the mistrust lingering after the coronavirus pandemic.

“Robert F. Kennedy is part of the problem and cannot be part of the solution,” Besser said.

Some of Kennedy’s views, such as his emphasis on nutrition and removing additives from foods, are mainstream. But Kennedy has spread false information about vaccines, including that they cause autism — a theory that has long been debunked. He has publicly contradicted the CDC’s recommendation that communities fluoridate their water to guard against tooth decay.

He has embraced raw milk, despite the Food and Drug Administration’s warning that drinking it is risky, particularly amid a current bird flu epidemic among dairy cows. And he has promoted hydroxychloroquine, a drug whose emergency authorization as a COVID-19 treatment was revoked by the FDA.

Whether the Senate, even one controlled by Republicans, will confirm Kennedy is an open question. In addition to his outside-the-mainstream views about medicine and health, he has been associated with a number of peculiar activities, including dumping a dead bear in Central Park and supposedly decapitating a whale. In interviews before Trump’s announcement, some Republican senators said Kennedy gave them pause, but none ruled out voting for him.

“I find some of his statements to be alarming, but I’ve never even met with him or sat down with him or heard him speak at length,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a centrist whose vote could be critical to Kennedy’s confirmation prospects. “So I don’t want to prejudge based just on press clippings that I have read.” However, she added, “I think it would be a surprising choice.”

But Republicans more closely aligned with Trump were enthusiastic. “One hundred percent,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., a member of the Senate health committee, said when asked if he would vote to confirm Kennedy. Tuberville said he was a fan of Kennedy’s because of the work he had done with food and vaccines, adding, “More than anybody that I know of, he’s had an open mind.”

The strange political marriage between Trump and Kennedy, who endorsed Trump after suspending his presidential campaign, has been beneficial for both men. The merger gave Kennedy a platform he previously lacked — slickly produced rallies and roaring crowds.