[Orac note: You might have noticed that posting has been a bit…slow. That’s because I have a double deadline on Friday. A grant application I’m working on is due then, as are the reviews I’m doing of grant submissions for an NIH study section. Yes, this will be an ugly week, meatspace work-wise. After this RFK Jr. post today, I might manage to post something as a distraction from plowing through so much reading and writing of dense scientific prose, but don’t be surprised if you don’t see anything new here until the weekend or next week.]
I hate to say it, but I’m feeling a sense of déjà vu, except on steroids. After Donald Trump won the Presidency in 2016, I watched the Presidential transition process with a sense of growing dread. In particular, I was worried about whom President-Elect Trump would name to staff key medical and public health policy positions, such as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the FDA, and the CDC. For HHS, Trump picked Dr. Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon unqualified to run such a huge organization who had been referred to by the ever-great Charles Pierce in 2015 as as “one of Georgia’s wingnut sawbones” and described by Stephanie Mencimer as one of The Tea Party’s Favorite Doctors, in part due to his membership in the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). This is a group that I’ve characterized as the “John Birch Society” of medicine due to its rabid antivax views, HIV/AIDS denial, and general right-wing conspiracy mongering. For the CDC, the pick was not great either; although Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald was generally pro-vaccine, she was a quack in other ways, having sold anti-aging nonsense. Worse, the trio of finalists for FDA Commissioner included men acceptable to Peter Thiel, one of whom advocated replacing those pesky clinical trials with a Yelp! or Uber for drugs. And don’t even get me started on Trump meeting with antivax crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to dangle a position as chair of a “vaccine safety commission” in front of him.
This fast forwards me to 2024. While it is true that Donald Trump has not won the Presidency again and there still remains a decent chance that he will lose, I’m feeling worse than déjà vu right now, given that RFK Jr., who had been running for President as the nominee of the Natural Law Party, suspended his campaign late last month and endorsed Donald Trump, to the point of campaigning with Trump. Worse than that, there does appear to be a definite quid pro quo, with Trump apparently having promised RFK Jr. a cabinet-level position in return for his endorsement. Even worse, it’s looking likely that the position Trump promised RFK Jr. is HHS Secretary, as described in an article in The Hill entitled Alarm grows over possible RFK Jr. role at HHS if Trump wins (as well it should):
The possibility of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becoming Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary if former President Trump wins has rankled Democrats and the public health community as he gains influence within the former president’s transition team.
Speculation about Kennedy’s future role has grown after Nicole Shanahan,who was Kennedy’s running mate before he suspended his campaign last month, said recently that he would do “an incredible job” at HHS should Trump win in November.
While the former president has not said what, if any, Cabinet position he would offer Kennedy, the prospect of the former independent candidate taking the reins of HHS is already drawing pushback from health experts critical of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric.
“We can only hope that he will have no position in the administration, because someone who thinks like that, who just has these beliefs that are immutable no matter how much evidence is against them, is not the kind of person you want in a position of authority,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
I’m with Dr. Offit (as usual) on this, but I strongly suspect HHS Secretary is exactly the price that RFK Jr. required to suspend his campaign and throw his weight, such as it is, behind Trump. When I first heard that Trump and RFK Jr. were talking, I first suspected that maybe Trump would offer RFK Jr. the post of FDA Commissioner (for which RFK Jr. is unqualified) or perhaps CDC Director (for which RFK Jr. is also unqualified), but in the back of my mind was always the fear that HHS is what RFK Jr. wanted and what he might get. The reasons are obvious and described in The Hill story:
Shanahan sparked talk of a possible HHS secretary role for Kennedy during a recent conversation on a podcast with nutrition entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu.
“It oversees a massive portfolio,” she told Bilyeu. “Bobby in a role like that would be excellent.”
“I’d love to see the state of science go uncensored,” Shanahan added.
And:
Kennedy has long courted controversy for pushing the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism, a message championed and amplified by the nonprofit he founded, Children’s Health Defense. He has now broadened his focus to the increase of childhood chronic disease, something he also attributes to vaccinations.
As he looks to help Trump defeat Vice President Harris, Kennedy has been telling voters that the 45th president will “make America healthy again.” Before suspending his campaign, he was running ads on social media asking, “Is America sicker than it’s ever been?”
The Democrat-turned-independent has been lobbying Trump for a role in his possible next administration, and one ally of Kennedy said he would likely have a position that “impacts something in public health.”
“Bobby has the network of experts, lawyers and leaders ready to step up and do battle,” the ally said.
Trump said recently during a rally in Arizona that he would ask Kennedy to work on a panel that would investigate “the decades-long increase in chronic health problems, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility and many more.”
The former president’s comments come as Kennedy continues to draw scrutiny over his views on the public health sector. Kennedy has vowed to eliminate corporate corruption from public regulatory agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which he says are controlled by large corporate interests.
HHS oversees 13 separate agencies, and Kennedy has long argued they are in desperate need of reform.
As much as some of the agencies that fall under the umbrella of HHS might need reform, the sorts of “reform” that they might need is not what RFK Jr. is likely to work on, should Trump win. That, of course, is what frightens public health advocates, physicians, and scientists. I also note that one of these agencies overseen by HHS, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), is the entity that oversees the massive Medicare and Medicaid programs. The HHS Secretary thus has enormous power to influence Medicare and Medicaid policies, regulations, and reimbursement for services.
As a sign of just how “all-in” this partnership between RFK Jr. and Trump has gone, Trump’s campaign has started to adopt an RFK Jr.-inspired variation of Trump’s old slogan. Instead of “make America great again” (MAGA), RFK Jr. has been claiming that he and Trump would “make America healthy again” (MAHA):
Of course, I can’t help but laugh at the thought of a President who has been about anything but healthy eating “making America healthy again.” Some famous photos come to mind:
Far be it from me to be too judgmental of someone for liking fast food, even someone whom I detest as much I detest Donald Trump. Personally, though, I’ve been known to indulge in the occasional Big Mac or Kentucky Fried Chicken meal myself, although when it comes to fried chicken I definitely prefer Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken. However, Donald Trump’s penchant for greasy fast food appears to go beyond the occasional self-indulgence, making his embrace of “make America healthy again” rather jarring, at least to me.
Who knows, though? Maybe Donald Trump, at age 78, has had a “come to Jesus” moment and is now all about the healthy lifestyle, including healthy diet. It’s possible. I had a similar moment in my late 50s, when, seeing my weight balloon past 210 lbs, heading fast for 220 lbs, I started doing distance bicycle riding, watching what I ate, to the point that I lost nearly 60 lbs over a couple of years. Then, three years ago, going to the gym regularly for resistance training and put on 5-10 lbs of muscle. Given that it’s Trump, though, I doubt it. Whatever the reason for this risible “MAHA” moment, I did wonder what, exactly, RFK Jr. wants to do if Trump wins again and he gets his most fervent wish to run one of the largest cabinet-level departments in the federal government, in essence having enormous control over federal health and public health policy and funding. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I did not have to wait long for him to publish his intentions on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal—where else?—entitled Trump Can Make America Healthy Again. The subtitle? “Chronic diseases have reached crisis proportions, and Kamala Harris seems uninterested in the issue.”
I seriously eyerolled. It is, of course, all about how you define being interested in the issue, and we know from long history what RFK Jr. means about chronic diseases.
RFK Jr.’s 12-point plan: Introduction
As is often the case with cranks like RFK Jr., the problems that he identifies range from the reasonable (regulatory capture of some agencies and conflicts of interest)—some of which, he mischaracterizes or exaggerates, of course—to the nonsensical (e.g., not enough alternative medicine in medicine). Basically, RFK Jr.’s proposal is a lot like “integrative medicine” in that he “integrates” a lot of quackery and pseudoscience into some semi-reasonable policy proposals. Again, no one would argue that chronic disease isn’t a huge public health problem, as described:
Among American teens, close to 30% are prediabetic. More than 18% of young adults have nonalchoholic fatty liver disease. More than 40% of adults 22 to 44 are obese, according to a 2023 study. In 2020, 77% of young adults didn’t qualify for the military based on their health scores, forcing the military to lower its standards.
Six out of 10 adults in America are living with a chronic illness. Seventy-four percent of American adults are overweight or obese. Rates of kidney disease and autoimmune conditions are going up. Cancer rates among young people are rising. This is despite Americans spending more and more to treat many of these conditions. U.S. life expectancy is markedly lower than in every other developed country, with wide disparities between income classes.
As you can see, RFK Jr. starts with a very predictable gambit (at least predictable to those who have been following him for a long time, as I have), laying out a variation of what he has long touted through his antivax organization Children’s Health Defense, namely the idea that somehow today’s children represent the “sickest generation” (and a lot of it is due to—cough, cough—vaccines). As I described, although no one—least of all I—would argue that chronic illness is not a problem among children, RFK Jr.’s version both exaggerates the scope and mischaracterizes the causes.
RFK Jr. pivots to a common quack mantra. While it is true that there is some merit to this complaint, as you will see (I hope), as always the devil is in the details and the spin:
This crisis is the product of broken incentives. There is nothing more profitable for much of the healthcare system than a sick child. Americans with chronic conditions are often put on medications or treatments for the rest of their lives. Nearly 30% of teens have reportedly used prescription drugs in the past 30 days, according to data from the prescription discount service SingleCare.
Mr. Trump has made reforming broken institutions a cornerstone of his political life. He has become the voice of countless Americans who have been let down by our elites.
I must admit that I laughed out loud at the sycophancy of that last line. Trump “has made reforming broken institutions a cornerstone of his political life”? Seriously? As for “elites,” it’s hard to imagine anyone more “elite” than a billionaire reality show star who has hobnobbed with celebrities and powerful politicians all of his adult life before being elected President. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
RFK Jr.’s 12-point plan: Ranging from the semi-reasonable to advocacy for quackery
Now let’s look at the specific “proposals.” Again, they range from semi-reasonable to not so reasonable, and even the semi-reasonable ideas are tainted with some rather odd rhetoric and exaggeration. The first three proposals are not particularly objectionable, depending on your interpretation of what they mean and how such “reforms” might be implemented, although they could be debated, starting with the first one:
Reform the Prescription Drug User Fee Act. Pharmaceutical companies pay a fee every time they apply for a new drug approval, and this money makes up about 75% of the budget of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug division. That creates a barrier to entry to smaller firms and puts bureaucrats’ purse strings in the hands of the pharmaceutical industry.
The FDA has long been funded mostly by user fees, but it was not always so. Interestingly, the move to funding the FDA more through user fees began with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and pressure from patient advocates, who felt that the FDA was not moving fast enough and that more funding was required:
In 1992, in response to intense pressure, Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act. It was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.
With the act, the FDA moved from a fully taxpayer-funded entity to one funded through tax dollars and new prescription drug user fees. Manufacturers pay these fees when submitting applications to the FDA for drug review and annual user fees based on the number of approved drugs they have on the market. However, it is a complex formula with waivers, refunds and exemptions based on the category of drugs being approved and the total number of drugs in the manufacturers portfolio.
You can see that there is a legitimate policy argument to be had here, although some data suggest that prescription drug user fees (PDUFs) actually benefit the public in terms of enhancing the balance between safety and speed of approval. One problem that I see with moving to Congress funding the FDA in its annual appropriations is one that RFK Jr. perhaps has not considered. If Trump retakes power, coming along with him will be a contingent of ideologues inspired by Peter Thiel and other radical “libertarians” who think that the FDA is not needed because, according to them, it kills more people than it saves, invoking as the reason the vastly exaggerated descriptions of the regulatory burden on “innovators” producing “cures” supposedly face in their quest to develop all sorts of diseases. These are exactly the people who want to decrease the authority and reach of The FDA as much as possible, with the possible exception of when it comes to approving new vaccines. One way to accomplish that goal of defanging The FDA is to decrease its funding.
Moreover, drug approval is not the only function of the FDA. Food and drug safety monitoring is another key function, and, arguably, while user fees have made the drug approval process now relatively well-funded, funding for the FDA’s other functions is insufficient for it to fulfill its other functions. (The case of Stanislaw Burzynski is one good example.) Any consideration of weaning the FDA from user fees is incomplete without making sure that the FDA is fully funded for all of its critical functions, not just drug and medical device approval.
Next up:
Prohibit members of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee from making money from food or drug companies.
I was curious about what was meant by a “conflict of interest.” I have long been of the mind that COIs do matter, but undisclosed COIs are far more pernicious than those that are disclosed. I looked at the study cited by RFK Jr. concluding that 95% of all members of a USDA panel charged with updating dietary recommendations had a COI. What this study suggested to me, more than anything else, is that more rigorous disclosure requirements are needed. Again, the optimal amount of rigor in reporting and disclosure of COIs is a legitimate area of debate. However, one problem with barring anyone on any of these committees from “making money from food or drug companies” is that the scientists and physicians with the most expertise almost invariably have had some contact with pharmaceutical and food companies in their careers, because they can be sources of research funding and/or a means for turning a discovery into a product that can benefit the public (e.g., a new drug). If anyone who’s received any funding ever from a food or drug company is excluded from such panels, all that will be left are activists like RFK Jr., which introduces an entirely different form of bias, one that RFK Jr. no doubt wants to promote.
Next up:
Review direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ad guidelines. The U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to the public. News channels are filled with drug commercials, and reasonable viewers may question whether their dependence on these ads influences their coverage of health issues.
This is one of the rare areas where I have little or no conflict with RFK Jr. Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads have been a boon to pharmaceutical companies and a bane to physicians trying to promote evidence-based care for their patients. I suspect that a lot of physicians agree with me here. Again, this is an example of one reasonable proposal sprinkled into RFK Jr.’s list to make the rest seem equally reasonable. Ditto RFK Jr.’s proposal to address the disparity in how much US patients pay for prescription drugs relative to how much patients in, say, Germany or other countries pay in part by allowing the federal government to do what most other countries do and negotiate prices with drug companies paid by federal payors.
Other reasonable to semi-reasonable ideas that I will mainly only mention in passing include:
- “Reform crop subsidies. They make corn, soybeans and wheat artificially cheap, so those crops end up in many processed forms. Soybean oil in the 1990s became a major source of American calories, and high-fructose corn syrup is everywhere. Our subsidy program is so backward that less than 2% of farm subsidies go to fruits and vegetables.” (Maybe. Again, this is a very contentious issue and devilishly complex; so I file it under the possibly semi-reasonable.)
- “Issue new presidential fitness standards. My uncle John F. Kennedy was right in 1960 when he wrote, ‘The physical vigor of our citizens is one of America’s most precious resources.’ The Presidential Fitness Test that President Obama ditched should be reinstated.”
- “Increase patient choice by giving every American a health savings account. HSAs are a bipartisan healthcare policy that saves Americans money and gives them financial support in healthcare outside insurance. In many cases, food and exercise interventions are clinically the best medicine. With an HSA, a pre-diabetic can choose with his doctor whether to devote medical dollars to a drug like metformin or a root-cause intervention like a gym membership.”
I know I said I’d mention these mainly in passing, but I can’t resist responding to that last proposal thusly: Why not just propose that insurance companies include gym memberships in health insurance plans when indicated? Oh, wait, a lot of health insurance plans already subsidize low-cost (or sometimes even no-cost) gym memberships. As for health savings accounts, I remain agnostic regarding their relative value in health care, although I do note that HSAs can function to siphon tax-sheltered HSA dollars to pay for quackery, mainly because HSA accounts don’t require the treatments they pay for to be safe and effective. Far more valuable would be some sort of government-subsidized or funded universal health insurance, just like nearly every other wealthy country provides for their citizens. Funny how RFK Jr. doesn’t propose anything like that, but instead advocates a program that, in addition to its legitimate uses to help pay for healthcare needs, can facilitate funneling tax-sheltered funds to pay for quackery.
Now, let’s look at the ideas and proposals that drift out of the reasonable or semi-reasonable and into the realm of RFK Jr. quackery:
Change federal regulation so that NIH funds can’t go to researchers with conflicts of interest. A 2019 ProPublica analysis of disclosures going back to 2012 found that over 8,000 federally funded health researchers reported significant financial conflicts of interest.
Again, what constitutes a “conflict of interest” for an NIH-funded researcher? Again, many of these researchers are trying to translate their findings into actual products that benefit patients. To do so, they often either have to form companies themselves or partner with existing companies to develop their findings into an FDA-approvable, marketable product. There are even NIH grant mechanisms specifically designed to assist this process, like the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, collectively the Small Business Programs, also known as America’s Seed Fund. No one, least of all I, will likely argue that COIs shouldn’t be reported, and the NIH does require its investigators to report any financial COI that involves more than $5,000/year, but if the goal of NIH-funded research is to lay the groundwork for drugs, treatments, and devices that are ultimately turned into products it is counterproductive to ban NIH funds from going to anyone who has a financial interest with a pharmaceutical, medical device, or food company. One can reasonably argue about policies designed to minimize harmful influences due to financial COIs, but to ban researchers with interest in a company related to the research that they are carrying out would likely have the unintended consequence of hampering further research. The issue is, of course, complex, predictably RFK Jr. has presented an oversimplified version of it designed to imply that most NIH researchers are in the pocket of big pharma.
This next one will sound familiar to readers of the blog:
Devote half of research budgets from the NIH toward preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health. In the current system, researchers don’t have enough incentive to study generic drugs and root-cause therapies that look at things like diet.
I note that the NIH already has a fairly well-funded center to examine these questions, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), formerly the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which, unfortunately, already saw its budget increase by a lot a few years ago, to the point where it could dedicate $1 billion to a plan to insert quackery into the treatment of chronic pain under the deceptive mantle of “nonpharmacologic” treatments for pain. (Both the budget increase and the $1 billion quackery initiative happened during the first Trump administration.) Of course, research into the “preventative, alternative, and holistic approaches to health” funded by NCCIH includes rank quackery such as acupuncture and highly dubious treatments like chelation therapy for cardiovascular disease. This proposal sounds as though RFK Jr. wants to expand NCCIH to take up half of the NIH budget, which would, of course, be a disaster for public health. One also notes that one of the most efficacious and safe preventative approaches to health is vaccines. I’d love it if the NIH put more resources into vaccine research, but somehow I suspect that RFK Jr. isn’t including vaccines in the category above.
Unsurprisingly, related to the above proposal, RFK Jr. suggests:
Require nutrition classes and functional medicine in federally funded medical schools. Today, 7 out of 10 of the leading killers of Americans are chronic diseases that are preventable, sometimes through improved eating habits. Yet about 80% of medical schools don’t require a course in nutrition.
Notice how RFK Jr. yokes a relatively unobjectionable idea (depending on the specifics, of course) that increasing the teaching of nutrition in medical schools might be desirable to the pure quackery that is functional medicine. As I like to point out, functional medicine can best be characterized by the defining feature of its practitioners, reams of useless tests in one hand and a huge invoice in the other. As for nutrition, the complaint that there isn’t a specific class on nutrition in many medical schools is a bit deceptive. There are a lot of topics that we covered in medical school for which there is no specific class; rather, the topic is covered in multiple classes, with a lot of time dedicated to it in different contexts. This is particularly true now with the “organ-systems” approach to medical education used in many medical schools, in which the curriculum is divided into organ systems and, for example, nutrition’s effect on each organ system would not be covered as a single class but rather as a segment in each class dedicated to each organ system. Again, designing a medical school curriculum is a hellaciously complex endeavor in which, it seems, one topic or another will be shortchanged in the eyes of some, but here RFK Jr. is simply amplifying the deceptive narrative that medical schools don’t teach nutrition.
Next up, fear-mongering about glyphosate:
Revisit pesticide and other chemical-use standards. As of 2019, the U.S. allowed 72 pesticides that the European Union bans. We also allow chemicals in food and skin care that the bloc doesn’t. Some of these chemicals are quite common to our daily lives. Though glyphosate isn’t currently banned EU-wide due to disagreement between member states, it’s approved for use only through the end of 2033, when the issue will be revisited. Meanwhile in the U.S. the University of California, San Francisco, in 2015 found the chemical in 93% of the urine samples it studied.
Again, different countries have different standards, and the regulatory bodies of different countries might reasonably conclude that certain pesticides are or are not safe and effective in the context of the needs of the country. As for glyphosate, even though it is quite safe it has become the boogeyman to people like RFK Jr. because of its association with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and all the imaginary harm that he and others attribute to them. It’s also another appeal to “chemicals” as somehow inherently dangerous, when (1) everything is made of chemicals; (2) the identity and toxicology of the individual chemicals are what matters; and (3) even for “toxic chemicals” (like some of the ingredients in vaccines, the dose makes the poison and low doses are very much safe.
Notable omissions
After finishing RFK Jr.’s MAHA manifesto, I noticed at least three glaring omissions in RFK Jr.’s litany of health woes among children (and adults). First is gun violence. Firearms are currently the leading cause of death among children and teens, but nary a word about this public health catastrophe is to be found in RFK Jr.’s MAHA manifesto. To me, this is very telling about just how much RFK Jr. has subsumed his previous “progressive” and “liberal” beliefs to bend the knee to the culture war shibboleths of the right. (So is his opposition to gender-affirming care for gender dysphoria and trans adolescents.) Any health policy that does not address the number one cause of death among children and teens is, to me at least, automatically profoundly unserious, given that it ignores the single largest cause of preventable death among children today, one that claims more lives than even trauma from vehicular collisions.
The second glaring omission is not unexpected: Vaccines. Nowhere in his MAHA manifesto does RFK Jr. mention vaccines, not even once. In one way, you might be surprised at this given his history of rabid antivax fear-mongering dating back to at least 2005, when he published the antivax ur-conspiracy theory of the 20th century (at least in the US), that mercury in the thimerosal preservative used in some childhood vaccines until 2001 was responsible for an “epidemic” of autism. It is very clear that RFK Jr. wants to flee the “antivax” label that he has so richly earned over the last two decades, to the point where he doesn’t mention his central animating purpose over the last two decades, namely portraying vaccines as dangerous, the cause of autism and America’s children being the “sickest generation” at all. No one is fooled. Certainly I am not, and Steve Kirsch, as much as he liked most of RFK Jr.’s plan noticed that not once did RFK Jr. mention vaccines, which is why he “helpfully” added some points that he’d like to see, such as:
- Get rid of the liability protection for vaccine manufacturers.
- Revoke the medical license for any doctor in America recommending any vaccine
- End the mandates. Make it illegal to require vaccination as a requirement to attend school or work.
- Replace the head of the CDC and FDA with someone who recognized the dangers early
- Hold regular public debate forums inviting qualified scientists on both sides of an issue to debate to help resolve important questions like whether vaccines cause autism
- Compensate victims of vaccine injury.
- Criminally prosecute the people at the CDC who ordered William Thompson to destroy the evidence linking vaccines and autism and those who went along with the fraud. They should be locked up for the rest of their lives for what they did. We need to send a message that people will be held accountable for clear scientific fraud.
I love how people like Kirsch claim that they are “not antivaccine” but then argue that the medical license of any doctor who recommended any vaccine should have their medical license revoked and parrots the “CDC whistleblower” conspiracy theory. (Hint: There is no evidence that any data were destroyed, much less at the orders of anyone at the CDC.)
Of course, RFK Jr. is trying to “prove” to the electorate that he is not an antivax conspiracy theorist, even though he very much is about as antivax to the core as a human can be. Kirsch, on the other hand, is free to let his antivax freak flag fly high. Still, given the elephant in the room, I was nonetheless somewhat surprised that RFK Jr. didn’t at least mention vaccines in seemingly less objectionable ways still coded so that they serve as antivax dog whistles, such as saying that he wants “more rigorous testing” before approving new vaccines or questioning whether children get too many vaccines too soon, you know, “just asking questions.” He did not.
The third notable omission is even odder, given recency bias. Nowhere in RFK Jr.’s MAHA manifesto is there a mention of the most important public health incident of (arguably) the last century, namely the COVID-19 pandemic. RFK Jr., besides being antivaccine, soon joined with the anti-“lockdown” and antimask crowd that opposed basically all non-voluntary public health interventions to slow the spread of COVID-19, in favor of the death-ridden “natural herd immunity” approach favored by contrarian physicians and scientists.
Instead he ends by sucking up to Donald Trump:
Mr. Trump has told me he wants to make ending this chronic-disease calamity a key part of his legacy, while Kamala Harris has expressed no interest in this issue. His political courage and moral clarity about the danger of our compromised institutions give us the best opportunity in our lifetimes to revive America’s health.
First of all, it’s not true that Kamala Harris has “expressed no interest in this issue.” It’s just that she, as far as I can tell, has not supported expanding quackery like “functional medicine” to do that. One also can’t help but wonder if the above statement is just sour grapes, given that RFK Jr. approached the Harris campaign with a similar deal to the one he ultimately took with Trump, a cabinet position in return for his dropping out and endorsing the Harris-Walz ticket. Her appropriate refusal of RFK Jr.’s feelers regarding such a possible deal does not mean that she has “expressed no interest in this issue,” just that she has expressed no interest in having RFK Jr. be the point man for this issue in her administration if she wins.
I realize that there are those among our readers who don’t think that we should be political at SBM, but we have always been so. After all, advocating for the highest level of science in government policies with respect to healthcare and the regulation of medicine and physicians is inherently political. In other words, we do not try to be apolitical, but rather nonpartisan. (Just look at the opprobrium we heaped on Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin for basically creating NCCIH and using his power to pressure it to “validate” quackery.) I realize that it’s sometimes a fine line, but in this case I would argue that it’s nowhere near that.
As Sarah Jones at The Intelligencer puts it:
There’s no evidence that Trump has gone completely anti-vaxx. But he doesn’t have to in order to agitate his base and pull in Kennedy’s small voting bloc at the same time. “Make America healthy again” is a way for Trump to pretend yet again that he’s invested in the common good — as he promotes language and policy that would undermine it. The former president’s health gambit is a ruse. His voters won’t care, but the rest of us should.
Precisely, and RFK Jr. is Trump’s useful idiot to help him do that.
The first Trump administration was in general a disaster for health care policy and public health, concluding, as it did, with his utter mismanagement of a once-in-a-century pandemic. That was true even though his worst impulses had been checked and he did not appoint RFK Jr. to chair a “vaccine safety commission” or put the “Uber for drugs” guy in charge of the FDA. This time around, though, Trump and RFK Jr. are, at least in appearance, the best of buds, with RFK Jr. on track if Trump wins to be put in charge of the federal government’s health apparatus. If that doesn’t scare proponents of science-based medicine and vaccine policy, I don’t know what will. If Trump wins in November, the guardrails will be gone, and it’s likely that his second administration would do damage to public health that won’t be repaired in a generation, if it’s ever repaired at all.
28 replies on ““MAHA”? Antivax conspiracy monger RFK Jr. is not the one to “make America healthy again””
It was hilarious watching RFK’s campaign commercials where he pretended to be a “progressive Democrat” when it was obvious that his only function was to support Trump.
I expect he was a bit upset when Trump left him dry in 2016, but it’s been a while.
Yep. Trump dangled a position as chair of a “vaccine safety commission” in front of him, and he came running. Then Trump yanked it away like Lucy yanking the football away before Charlie Brown can kick it. Our only (slight) hope if he wins again is that he’ll do the same thing in 2025 with RFK Jr. that he did in 2017.
Bet on it. There’s only one spotlight in Trumpworld, and it must always point at Donald. Belonging demands total toadying deference to the dear leader. Check the part of Junior’s endorsement where he talks about forming a “team of rivals” with Trump, imagining they’ll rule together in some kind of Odd Couple power sharing where he can still pursue those of his issues on which Trump disagrees. Well, it’s hardly news that Bobby-2 is delusional.
Con artists rely on the egos of their marks, who think they’re too smart to be conned, and oh so desirable that of course the person dangling a proposal in front of them really wants them as a partner in whatever enterprise. Elon Musk is no doubt convinced Trump understands he’d be the perfect efficiency czar for cutting federal agencies. If Trump wins, he too will be kicked to the curb as soon as he goes 5 degrees away from the orange insanity du jour. Which, with an ego like Musk or Junior, I’d put the over-under at 72 hours.
On the heels of Scientific American’s endorsement of Kamala Harris today, I am endorsing Donald J. Trump.
I am doing this with great reluctance as I no longer even like him or right wing influencers, most of whom are frauds and bullshit artists.
But the Democrats are crazy and need to be stopped by all means. The deadly Covid vaccine and pandemic insanity and the campaign of vaccine hate, made me their enemy despite previously voting Democratic.
So, I hope that Donald Trump is elected despite their attempts to kill him. I do realize, of course, that votes will be “counted” again to make Kamala win despite not actually winning, so his eventual victory is highly unlikely.
I decided against publicly supporting Donald Trump on my substack, monetary contributions, or via house signs due to my general discomfort with the right wing sphere, the Trump vaccine, etc. I hope that, eventually, US politics will be reformatted, smart people will be admitted into elected roles (as opposed to behind the scenes roles), and US politicians will advocate for interests of citizens, acceptance and reconciliation.
This, of course, comes as exactly zero surprise to anyone here. You were always going to endorse Trump. There was never any doubt that you would. Any pretense otherwise was always purely performative.
That “great reluctance” is only a result of your having a tiny shred of decency left just big enough for you to feel some shame for endorsing a racist, fascist, grifting con artist like Donald Trump. Don’t worry. You’ll get over it. I predict that your journey to the Dark Side will be complete very soon, and you will become full-fledged enthusiastic MAGA—just as soon as you manage to silence that last little bit of conscience you have.
Unsurprisingly, as an antivax quackery-promoting Substack bullshit artist, you detest people who support vaccination more than you care about our democracy descending into fascism. You’ve found the “other” that all fascists need to demonize.
A bonkers conspiracy theorist yourself, of course you believe in the nonsensical “stop the steal” conspiracy theory being promoted by those right wing influencers whom you claim to detest. Of course you believe that Democrats are trying to kill Donald Trump. (They’re not.) Maybe…just maybe…you don’t actually detest the “frauds and bullshit artists” as much as you claim? Maybe…just maybe…you want to be like them.
Nah. It’s that shame thing again. You have just enough conscience left to feel a bit of shame for supporting a right wing fraud and grifting bullshit artist like Donald Trump. Fear not. It’ll pass. It always does.
Nah. You want things to change just enough so that you don’t have to feel a twinge of shame and guilt for supporting someone like Donald Trump. You’ll do just fine under the destruction of our democracy and its descent into an authoritarian one party rule pseudo-democracy in which election results are never in doubt, which is not unlikely to happen if Trump wins.
Orac left out misogynist and felon.
Igor, like other alties/ anti-vaxxers I read, tells us how reluctantly he supports Trump as he supports Trump. No one says you must make a choice but I suspect people who behave this way want to avoid alienating followers: they surmise that although most of their followers lean right, a significant number may not ( PRN) whilst others ( NN) wholeheartedly support DJT because their audience is more right-wing/ CT. They can gauge the true degree of bonkers through their comments and likes on their websites/ social media easily. Naomi Wolf cagily walks this tightrope as she parades her supposed liberal/ feminist credentials and applauds various conservative causes carefully. Del Bigtree is another “liberal” who applauds RFK Jr and other quasi/ crypto fascisti.
ALL of those I survey have remarked rather negatively about VP Harris: she isn’t smart; she is corrupt; she was selected by the “elites” to do their will; she wasn’t elected by voters in a primary; she isn’t a citizen; she’s woke; sexual insinuation about her rise etc.
Naomi Wolf, who often introduces herself as “Dr”, calls the VP “Mrs Harris” ( similarly, she says”Mrs” Biden) in podcasts. I doubt her late mother, a PhD, used that appellation often.
Long ago, a psychologist learned through her research that a significant portion of respondents attributed women’s success to cheating, luck, sexual activity in exchange for careers rather than ability, effort, hard work, persistence, intelligence, talent. It’s still true.
Yup. Trump’s misogynistic behavior is a draw for Igor, a rampant woman-hater himself. He feels a kinship with trump through that.
“So, I hope that Donald Trump is elected despite their attempts to kill him.”
Oh, those Evil Demoncrats!
Igor has morphed into an even bigger conspiracy nutcase than he’s shown in previous posts.
Unless something just recently turned a switch (long Covid neurologic damage?), it’s obvious that Igor, despite his pretense of having been a Democratic voter, has been a useful idiot for far-right Republican causes for a long, long time.
Not a surprise at coming from someone whose brilliance is underwhelming. Though it was fun to see you flail when it became obvious that you had no clue that bar exams are competency tests for lawyers so that they can become licensed.
Are you even a US citizen? Because I cannot imagine you would have passed that exam.
About every 5 words you are incorrect, but here is where you are the most incorrect, when you state “But the Democrats are crazy and need to be stopped by all means. The deadly Covid vaccine….”
Democrats were not behind the COVID-19 vaccine, Igor.
Remarks by President Trump at the Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit, December 8, 2020 from the Trump White House Archives
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Please. (Applause).
Thank you very much. Appreciate it very much.
I’m honored to welcome doctors, scientists, industry executives, and state and local leaders to our historic Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit. It’s been some journey for all of us. It’s been an incredible success.
We’re grateful to be joined by Vice President Mike Pence, who has done an absolutely incredible job on the Coronavirus Task Force. Mike, thank you. Stand up, Mike. (Applause.) Great job.
We’re here to discuss a monumental national achievement. From the instant the coronavirus invaded our shores, we raced into action to develop a safe and effective vaccine at breakneck speed. It would normally take five years, six years, seven years, or even more. In order to achieve this goal, we harnessed the full power of government, the genius of American scientists, and the might of American industry to save millions and millions of lives all over the world. We’re just days away from authorization from the FDA, and we’re pushing them hard, at which point we will immediately begin mass distribution.
Igor, you’ve long shown yourself to be a congenital liar and a dyed-in-the-wool spreader of conspiracies, but this post is a record for you.
Not sure what fake evidence you’d toss out for crazy, but it’s already been pointed out that the vaccines are safe, covid can be dangerous (and is not a man-made weapon), and trump was in office when the vaccines were developed.
Just as the CIA did not kill Kennedy, the Democratic Party is not behind the attempts on trump’s life (this last one at one of his golf courses does not even qualify as an attempt, since the dirtbag with the gun never fired a shot. He seems to be another disgruntled trump voter.) And thanks for outing yourself as a “2020 election was stolen” clown, another cry of the right for which there is no evidence.
Shorter Igor: “I looked at the numbers and decided making my trump endorsement on Substack wouldn’t result in a large enough monetary return to be worth the effort.
Your ‘health’ and ‘science’ advice have been threats to the physical health of your children and people around you: it’s pretty clear that your conspiracies and general mindset are threats to the mental health of anyone who pays you attention.
Well, there’s one thing that’s not crazy about Trumpites: if they’re rich and want much lower taxes on income, inheritance etc.
But everything else?
I agree with all of your retort to the delusional Igor, except the claim that the CIA supposedly did not kill President Kennedy.
RFK, the original, who was orders of magnitude saner and smarter than his son, immediately suspected the Agency killed his brother when he was told the news on November 22, 1963. He didn’t suspect this from reading freaky Facebook posts. Instead, he had been tasked with trying to bring the agency under practical, civilian control and knew that elements of the covert operations directorate deeply detested the President and were threatening to do something about it. His first act after being told was to call the CIA director to ask if his guys did it, but the director was merely the ostensible director and not actually in control of the whole organization. Allen Dulles, who had deeper organizational ties, had been fired by JFK, but still maintained strong connections with the worst parts of the agency. After the assassination, Dulles lobbied to be on the Warren Commission (the only member to do that). In most murder investigations, asking a mortal enemy of the victim to do the inquiry is considered improper.
It is well documented that RFK, the original, quietly told his aides that he wanted to reopen the investigation of the assassination if he became President. It’s also a fact that the Kennedy family privately told Krushchev shortly after the assassination that they understood it was a domestic right wing conspiracy, that the Soviets weren’t involved, and better US Soviet relations would have to wait until Bobby (the original) became President in 1969. That last fact was found in the Soviet archives after the fall of the USSR – the historian who found the documentation was puzzled, since he thought the family always said they accepted the “lone nut” official story. Well they did, at least in public, but not in private.
And the official story is not the Warren Dulles Commission … the House Select Committee on Assassinations report from 1978 admitted there were multiple gunmen (duh!) but declined to investigate closely, ostensibly due to budgetary limits but in reality due to fear. Decades of avoidance has converted a serious scandal into a cultural myth that we’ll never know, that believing it was a conspiracy is the equivalent of believing in flat Earth, and all sorts of weird distractions — instead of a well orchestrated coup for specific policy reasons.
I dislike RFK Junior intensely for his endless lies about public health and other malfeasance, but he is correct that the Agency killed JFK. I wish he had been willing to say it decades before he finally said anything in public. Unfortunately associating this accurate understanding with his batty nonsense about vaccines ensures most people will discredit the whole thing while energizing a minority to spread his mix of reality and delusion. The Agency is probably delighted.
Having watched various friends succumb to the siren song of “conspirituality” during Peak Covid, detoxification probably requires teasing out real from fake concerns about conspiracy claims. There is a middle ground between denying this existence of this important scandal and addiction to every lunatic claim of conspiracy.
Oh look, a raving antivax crackpot is endorsing Donald Trump. And RFK did, too.
Thank you. Without your endorsement I was uncertain, but thanks to your argument, I’ve donated to the Harris campaign and will be knocking on doors for her. And in your honor, I’ve donated to VaccinateYourFamily.org.
P.S. The Igor Chudov graveyard tours should be a big boost to Harris’ campaign as well – we won’t go back to the days when children living to kindergarten was a rarity to be celebrated.
Trump’s entire political career has been based in racist rhetoric, culminating in stochastic terrorism. His hands drip with the blood of Asian-Americans attacked by people inspired by his “China virus” rhetoric. You’re spreading ridiculous conspiracy theories about Democrats trying to kill him, so if right-wingers murder Haitians in Springfield, which is the ultimate consequence of his lies about them, will you claim that was a false flag?
You forget Operation Warp Speed. Who introduced COVID vaccines ? Other antivaxxers do remember that.
He want to give Russia everything it wants. Not a way to stop wars, Munich did not either,
“I hope that, eventually, US politics will be reformatted, smart people will be admitted into elected roles”
I suspect that your definition of smart is ‘I agree with them’. Which, given the sartorial elegance of your tin foil hat, doesn’t bode well.
“…or right wing influencers, most of whom are unwitting useful idiots for The Kremlin…”
There, I fixed it. Have you checked to see if Tenet Media has been giving you donations for your brave, maverick work?
In light of the Cass Report, some degree of opposition to gender”affirming” care in adolescents seems quite indicated.
correction: Cass Review
Other than the review containing large steaming piles of crap?
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/integrity-project_cass-response.pdf
https://ruthpearce.net/2024/04/16/whats-wrong-with-the-cass-review-a-round-up-of-commentary-and-evidence/
I really, really, really distrust Health Savings Accounts – especially as a substitute for medical coverage.
Before I retired, I taught Human Anatomy and Physiology to allied health students. Most of them were first-generation college students, holding a part-time job (sometimes more than one!) and very often single Moms. As implemented in Indiana, there was only one option: someone could open either a regular insurance policy, or an HSA. With an HSA, the policyholder pays a certain amount into the account each month. That amount ~> and only that amount <~ is available for paying medical bills. I.e., if $20/month is paid in, then there is $20 available at the end of January, $40 at the end of February, … $240 at the end of December.
But what if Mom has two kids and they both get sick in January? What if all she can afford to pay in is $20/month, and medical appointments are $60/visit?
fusilier
James 2:24
I think RFK jr should drop any pretense of working with trump and sell whale juice as a panacea to cure all your ills. Heck, he could make it homeopathic so he needs just a little bit. I think he would find that there is a lot more money in selling quack medicines.
I think that RFK Jr already indirectly sells others’ quackery: by endorsing anti-vax/ natural health/ clean food, he steers followers away from SBM and advocates for alternative solutions to medical problems. He frightens people about meds/ vaccines substituting exercise and diet for MOST, not some, issues. Supposedly, he “recovered” from his addictions through direct intervention from the L-rd Almighty.
Spirituality plays a great part in his view of illness and health. It seems that the usual suspects have become extremely religious of late: Mike Adams is presenting 100 sermons ( halfway through now) leading up to the election and has his own internet/ possibly physical “church” ( abundance.church) .I suppose if you have little of substance you can always lean on the Insubstantial.
Given RFK Jr.’s determination to bring back polio and other serious vaccine-preventable diseases, his new slogan should be MUA-HA-HA-HA:
Make Unvaccinated Americans Handicapped Again Hyping Antivax Hoaxes Always.