Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is threatening to prevent National Institutes of Health scientists from publishing in some major medical journals because they are "corrupt."

Kennedy said Tuesday on the “Ultimate Human” podcast that three of the most influential medical journals in the world – the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Lancet – are “corrupt” becaus they publish studies funded and approved by pharmaceutical companies, Politico reported.

“Unless those journals change dramatically, we are going to stop NIH scientists from publishing in them, and we’re going to create our own journals in-house,” Kennedy said.

The HHS secretary's comments come after the Department of Justice sent letters weeks earlier to both NEJM and JAMA to investigate them for partisanship.

In a potentially conflicting statement with Kennedy, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said earlier this month, "Academic freedom means I can send my paper out even if my bosses disagree with me."

Kennedy also said the heads of the major journals – including The Lancet Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton and NEJM's former editor-in-chief, Marcia Angell – no longer consider their publications reputable.

Angell said in 2009 that it “is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published” due to financial ties with pharmaceutical companies, and Horton wrote in 2015 regarding concerns about the replicability of scientific research.

Kennedy argues Horton “really disgraced himself” during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Horton was at the center of a controversy over The Lancet retracting a study that linked hydroxychloroquine to increased COVID-19 deaths. He said that the journal would change its peer review process.

JAMA, NEJM, The Lancet, and HHS didn't provide comment when asked by Politico.