Yves here. As much as we have lambasted the CDC’s and Biden Administration performance during Covid, yours truly is not keen about the idea of RFK, Jr. as head of HHS. Even though he has some good ideas about improving Americans’ food safety, he’s not only unsound but unrepentantly so on some important issues.
First, he intends to fire 600 officials at the NIH. Mass firings are never a good idea. Perhaps I missed it, but I have yet to hear him address what I see as a far more serious problem: that NIH employees can and do collect royalties on NIH projects, with Fauci having been a particularly big-ticket beneficiary.
Second, the article suggests RFK, Jr. would tighten up vaccine and drug approvals. Given the dodgy mRNA vaccine trial/approval process (IM Doc has pointed out that increases in all-cause mortality for Pfizer during the study period would have led to an immediate halt to the trial until it was understood why that happened and if the “why” implicated vaccine safety) and the suppression of reports of vaccine injuries (we have discussed this repeatedly and at length), it may actually be necessary to do that to restore any faith in vaccines. And IM Doc has also decried the gutting of the role of Institutional Review Boards as a check on Big Pharma. So there is a need for improvement.
But RFK, Jr. is hardly the person to do that. He has never recanted his wrong-headed and decisively-debunked claim that thiomersal in vaccines (or for that matter, vaccines at all) caused autism. He was also an important figure fanning misguided fears about an MMR vaccine in Samoa, where two deaths had occurred. The problem was not the vaccine but that two nurses, later convicted for manslaughter, had mixed it with muscle relaxant. Measles vaccinations plunged, an outbreak occurred, and 83 children died.
The article also suggests that RFK, Jr. would relax the already weak standards for dietary supplements. The US is already more permissive than most countries, which generally do not allow the sale of hormones like melatonin and DHEA. In Australia, dietary supplements are regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration and made to pharmaceutical grade standards, so you know you are getting the dose and potency listed on the label. It may be a function of these standards that the only time I have found echinacea to help in fighting off bugs was when I used an Australian brand (and yes, I had also tried many supposedly very high quality US versions).
Having said all of that, I am not sure Trump can get the votes for his approval. I would have preferred RFK, Jr. as attorney general. He could still have made plenty of trouble, and potentially more of the clearly net positive sort.
By Arthur Allen, senior KFF Health correspondent, who previously worked for Politico. Originally published at KFF Health News
Many scientists at the federal health agencies await the second Donald Trump administration with dread as well as uncertainty over how the president-elect will reconcile starkly different philosophies among the leaders of his team.
Trump announced Thursday he’ll nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, after saying during his campaign he’d let the anti-vaccine activist “go wild” on medicines, food, and health.
Should Kennedy win Senate confirmation, his critics say a radical antiestablishment medical movement with roots in past centuries would take power, threatening the achievements of a science-based public health order painstakingly built since World War II.
Trump said in a post on the social platform X that “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,” echoing Kennedy’s complaints about the medical establishment. The former Democratic presidential candidate will “end the Chronic Disease epidemic” and “Make American Great and Healthy Again!” Trump wrote.
Vaccine makers’ stocks dipped Thursday afternoon amid news reports ahead of Trump’s RFK announcement.
If Kennedy makes good on his vision for transforming public health, childhood vaccine mandates could wither. New vaccines might never win approval, even as the FDA allows dangerous or inefficient therapies onto the market. Agency websites could trumpet unproven or debunked health ideas. And if Trump’s plan to weaken civil service rights goes through, anyone who questions these decisions could be summarily fired.
“Never has anybody like RFK Jr. gotten anywhere close to the position he may be in to actually shape policy,” said Lewis Grossman, a law professor at American University and the author of “Choose Your Medicine,” a history of U.S. public health.
Kennedy and an adviser Calley Means, a health care entrepreneur, say dramatic changes are needed because of the high levels of chronic disease in the United States. Government agencies have corruptly tolerated or promoted unhealthy diets and dangerous drugs and vaccines, they say.
Means and Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment. Four conservative members of the first Trump health bureaucracy spoke on condition of anonymity. They eagerly welcomed the former president’s return but voiced few opinions about specific policies. Days after last week’s election, RFK Jr. announced that the Trump administration would immediately fire and replace 600 National Institutes of Health officials. He set up a website seeking crowdsourced nominees for federal appointments, with a host of vaccination foes and chiropractors among the early favorites.
At meetings last week at Mar-a-Lago involving Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., Kennedy, and Means, according to Politico, some candidates for leading health posts included Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University scientist who opposed covid lockdowns; Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who opposes mRNA covid vaccines and rejected well-established disease control practices during a measles outbreak; Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty Makary; and Means’ sister, Stanford-trained surgeon and health guru Casey Means.
All are mavericks of a sort, though their ideas are not uniform. Yet the notion that they could elbow aside a century of science-based health policy is profoundly troubling to many health professionals. They see Kennedy’s presence at the heart of the Trump transition as a triumph of the “medical freedom” movement, which arose in opposition to the Progressive Era idea that experts should guide health care policy and practices.
It could represent a turning away from the expectation that mainstream doctors be respected for their specialized knowledge, said Howard Markel, an emeritus professor of pediatrics and history at the University of Michigan, who began his clinical career treating AIDS patients and ended it after suffering a yearlong bout of long covid.
“We’ve gone back to the idea of ‘every man his own doctor,’” he said, referring to a phrase that gained currency in the 19th century. It was a bad idea then and it’s even worse now, he said.
“What does that do to the morale of scientists?” Markel asked. The public health agencies, largely a post-WWII legacy, are “remarkable institutions, but you can screw up these systems, not just by defunding them but by deflating the true patriots who work in them.”
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf told a conference on Nov. 12 that he worried about mass firings at the FDA. “I’m biased, but I feel like the FDA is sort of at peak performance right now,” he said. At a conference the next day, CDC Director Mandy Cohen reminded listeners of the horrors of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and polio. “I don’t want to have to see us go backward in order to remind ourselves that vaccines work,” she said.
Stocks of some the biggest vaccine developers fell after news outlets led by Politico reported that the RFK pick was expected. Moderna, the developer of one of the most popular covid-19 vaccines, closed down 5.6%. Pfizer, another covid vaccine manufacturer, fell 2.6%. GSK, the producer of vaccines protecting against respiratory syncytial virus, hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, and influenza, fell just over 2%. French drug company Sanofi, whose website boasts its products vaccinate over 500 million annually, tumbled nearly 3.5%.
Exodus From the Agencies?
With uncertainty over the direction of their agencies, many older scientists at the NIH, FDA, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering retirement, said a senior NIH scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job.
“Everybody I talk to sort of takes a deep breath and says, ‘It doesn’t look good,’” the official said.
“I hear of many people getting CVs ready,” said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University. They include two of his former students who now work at the FDA, Caplan said.
Others, such as Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, have voiced wait-and-see attitudes. “We worked with the Trump administration last time. There were times things worked reasonably well,” he said, “and times when things were chaotic, particularly during covid.” Any wholesale deregulation efforts in public health would be politically risky for Trump, he said, because when administrations “screw things up, people get sick and die.”
At the FDA, at least, “it’s very hard to make seismic changes,” former FDA chief counsel Dan Troy said.
But the administration could score easy libertarian-tinged wins by, for example, telling its new FDA chief to reverse the agency’s refusal to approve the psychedelic drug MDMA from the company Lykos. Access to psychedelics to treat post-traumatic stress disorder has grabbed the interest of many veterans. Vitamins and supplements, already only lightly regulated, will probably get even more of a free pass from the next Trump FDA.
‘Medical Freedom’ or ‘Nanny State‘
Trump’s health influencers are not monolithic. Analysts see potential clashes among Kennedy, Musk, and more traditional GOP voices. Casey Means, a “holistic” MD at the center of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” team, calls for the government to cut ties with industry and remove sugar, processed food, and toxic substances from American diets. Republicans lampooned such policies as exemplifying a “nanny state” when Mike Bloomberg promoted them as mayor of New York City.
Both the libertarian and “medical freedom” wings oppose aspects of regulation, but Silicon Valley biotech supporters of Trump, like Samuel Hammond of the Foundation for American Innovation, have pressed the agency to speed drug and device approvals, while Kennedy’s team says the FDA and other agencies have been “captured” by industry, resulting in dangerous and unnecessary drugs, vaccines, and devices on the market.
Kennedy and Casey Means want to end industry user fees that pay for drug and device rules and support nearly half the FDA’s $7.2 billion budget. It’s unclear whether Congress would make up the shortfall at a time when Trump and Musk have vowed to slash government programs. User fees are set by laws Congress passes every five years, most recently in 2022.
The industry supports the user-fee system, which bolsters FDA staffing and speeds product approvals. Writing new rules “requires an enormous amount of time, effort, energy, and collaboration” by FDA staff, Troy said. Policy changes made through informal “guidance” alone are not binding, he added.
Kennedy and the Means siblings have suggested overhauling agricultural policies so that they incentivize the cultivation of organic vegetables instead of industrial corn and soy, but “I don’t think they’ll be very influential in that area,” Caplan said. “Big Ag is a powerful entrenched industry, and they aren’t interested in changing.”
“There’s a fine line between the libertarian impulse of the ‘medical freedom’ types and advocating a reformation of American bodies, which is definitely ‘nanny state’ territory,” said historian Robert Johnston of the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Specific federal agencies are likely to face major changes. Republicans want to trim the NIH’s 27 research institutes and centers to 15, slashing Anthony Fauci’s legacy by splitting the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he led for 38 years, into two or three pieces.
Numerous past attempts to slim down the NIH have failed in the face of campaigns by patients, researchers, and doctors. GOP lawmakers have advocated substantial cuts to the CDC budget in recent years, including an end to funding gun violence, climate change, and health equity research. If carried out, Project 2025, a policy blueprint from the conservative Heritage Foundation, would divide the agency into data-collecting and health-promoting arms. The CDC has limited clout in Washington, although former CDC directors and public health officials are defending its value.
“It would be surprising if CDC wasn’t on the radar” for potential change, said Anne Schuchat, a former principal deputy director of the agency, who retired in 2021.
The CDC’s workforce is “very employable” and might start to look for other work if “their area of focus is going to be either cut or changed,” she said.
Kennedy’s attacks on HHS and its agencies as corrupted tools of the drug industry, and his demands that the FDA allow access to scientifically controversial drugs, are closely reminiscent of the 1970s campaign by conservative champions of Laetrile, a dangerous and ineffective apricot-pit derivative touted as a cancer treatment. Just as Kennedy championed off-patent drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat covid, Laetrile’s defenders claimed that the FDA and a profit-seeking industry were conspiring to suppress a cheaper alternative.
The public and industry have often been skeptical of health regulatory agencies over the decades, Grossman said. The agencies succeed best when they are called in to fix things — particularly after bad medicine kills or damages children, he said.
The 1902 Biologics Control Act, which created the NIH’s forerunner, was enacted in response to smallpox vaccine contamination that killed at least nine children in Camden, New Jersey. Child poisonings linked to the antifreeze solvent for a sulfa drug prompted the modern FDA’s creation in 1938. The agency, in 1962, acquired the power to demand evidence of safety and efficacy before the marketing of drugs after the thalidomide disaster, in which children of pregnant women taking the anti-nausea drug were born with terribly malformed limbs.
If vaccination rates plummet and measles and whooping cough outbreaks proliferate, babies could die or suffer brain damage. “It won’t be harmless for the administration to broadly attack public health,” said Alfredo Morabia, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Public Health. “It would be like taking away your house insurance.”
Sam Whitehead, Stephanie Armour, David Hilzenrath, and Darius Tahir contributed to this report.
95 comments
Comments are closed.
Many thanks for the top note as well as this article. I have been skeptical of KennedyJr for some time. His assertions often don’t pan out, and he was peddling too much nostalgia for a nonexistent Camelot.
One area I particularly don’t get is the aversion to fluoride in drinking water. Fluoridated water has been an enormous success. Is Kennedy enamored of some dentist? Eliminating fluoride will likely up dentists’ revenues, and the recent studies showing that infected teeth and gums lead to heart attacks and shortened lives give one pause, no?
Anecdotally, and our brethren and sistren here in the comments can back me up: My parents’ generation, born in the late 1920s, had many troubles with teeth. (And I don’t.) Both my father and his brother ended up with dentures. Family lore is that my uncle’s teeth were so bad, he went in before he was forty and asked for them to go. My mother and her brother kept their teeth (most of them). My mother’s sister and her husband both ended up with dentures.
The aversion to fluoridation is like blabbering “communism.”
And the article has this good insight: ‘Casey Means, a “holistic” MD at the center of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” team, calls for the government to cut ties with industry and remove sugar, processed food, and toxic substances from American diets. Republicans lampooned such policies as exemplifying a “nanny state” when Mike Bloomberg promoted them as mayor of New York City.’
I have contended here in the comments that the U.S. of A. allows too much crap in foods, and the various lobbies will make sure that the crap keeps going into food. Again, anecdotally, but common enough to make one think, Americans who have gluten sensitivities often find that they can eat bread in Italy. Hmmm. My own experience is that Italian flour looks and acts differently from U.S. flour. And I’m fussy about flour.
I also think that much of the dietary mess in the U.S. of A. goes back to use of horrible oils unfit for human consumption. Here in the Chocolate City, I see olive oil and sunflower oil. (Not even peanut oil — although Italians sure know how to roast and salt a peanut addictively.) That’s about it. In the U.S., foods are stuffed with dubious oils like corn oil and soy oil, as well as oils that I consider trash like cottonseed oil.
Freedom! It’s all about Crisco’s right to exist.
Do Americans actually drink tap water?
Lordie. Yes. NYC tap water is very good.
Bottled water was pretty rare in the US until the late 80s/early 90s. You could find some glass bottles of Perrier or Evian, but that was just for the fancy people trying to show off. I was surprised to see all the plastic water bottles the first time I went to Europe in the early 90s. Now they’re everywhere in the US too but the tap water is still fine in most places. As long is you don’t live in one of the fracking zones where tap water starts on fire.
Yes. Tap water here in the Seattle area is good. And single-use water bottles are a blight on the landscape.
Fluoride reduces your IQ.
A judge recently decided on this case. The EPA was told to look at Fluoride again.
It has been a known neurotoxin since 2012.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/fluoride-childrens-health-grandjean-choi/
That study has been widely criticized, in terms of trying to it to fluoridation. The levels in the water in China were MUCH higher than for fluoridation. High doses of caffeine and salt will kill you.
For instance, from Bad science: To fluoridate or not to fluoridate: the saga continues, in Nature:
https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2018.146
Recent science posted without comment and for your consideration:
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/completed/fluoride
https://ufhealth.org/news/2024/study-explores-association-between-fluoride-exposure-in-pregnancy-and-neurobehavioral-issues-in-young-children
You need to do better than this sort of disingenuous material. The low bound for the POTENTIAL danger range for fluoride in water (remember the study found a correlation, which is not a strong proof; the high fluoride levels in studies likely include well water which may have high levels of other minerals) is more than 50% higher than the MAXIMUM level for fluoridation in water.
The second study is crap. It was based on unverified maternal assessment, not any objective standard. So maybe the study found a bunch of neurotic mothers who looked for and found problems among not abnormal-by-any-measurable-standard toddlers.
I like that RFKjr has been appointed to the post. I expect him to advocate for research on many nefarious aspects of our medical and food safety. Too many of the relied-upon “science” is tainted by corporate interests and self-serving individuals and groups. And too many times people who question the narrative fed to us is labeled as crazy conspiratory theorists. Stirring things up and, in some cases starting over (reapply for jobs, have rules about conflict of interest and enforce them, etc.) may the only way to truly make much needed changes.
Last I saw, RFK JR was a total vaccine denier. See his advice during the Samoan measles outbreak.
We will have to tighten up our border controls to ensure that US citizens entering Canada are vaccinated against diseases such as polio and measles. I am sure there are others I am missing.
The ‘science-based health policy’ in place right now is not stopping the fall in life expectancy of US citizens. So at the demographic level it is failing somewhere.
I certainly don’t agree with all RFK’s proposals. The removal of flouride from water will see a resurgence in dental caries in people who are not solidly middle class or above, and will impact the teeth of children https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdoe.12685. It can be off set by using fluoridated toothpaste but some people are too poor or time poor or not across the issue to realise this.
However, doing something about the disgraceful introduction of mRNA vaccines would be good.
Cutting the big Pharma revolving door in and out of the government, even if temporary, would be good.
Stopping federal employees from having patents income would be good.
Doing something about over-processed junk food would be good.
If the standard applied to RFK Jnr, which has not been applied to the existing band of brothers, is that every health indicator should improve, then he will fail.
But shaking up what looks like a cosy cabal would be good. Sometimes you need an iconoclast to shake up the established order.
And I wonder what he will do about the NIAID and it being up to its armpits in bioweapon research. Will someone in a white coat and adjacent to the three letter boys stop by and leave a dead rat on his desk to head off any touching of this? Time will tell.
It’s not the “science-based health policy” that is at fault. The US scores as the worst health system among advanced economies, despite scoring at the top for preventive care. If you look at any of the studies, the big defects are cost of health care and related to that, access, particularly by lower income groups.
Second, and not acknowledged, is that unequal societies impose a health cost on everyone, even the rich. If you lose your perch, you fall a long way, which creates stress on those at the top (even before getting to maybe or maybe not warranted paranoia, leading to the construction of safe rooms and the hiring of bodyguards). Highly unequal societies score poorly on health indicators (another reason is poverty and therefore not great diets for lower income kids, which has lifetime effects).
Where RFK, Jr. does have a point is on the terrible American diet, all the sugars, other ultra highly processed foods, and often lousy fats. But your humble blogger has argued that diet is largely outside science. Nutrition is not studied well because it would be very costly to do so well. This is true all over the world and not just in the US.
US lacks a coherent health system – it is a feature of insurance based systems with private providers gouging insurers with patients in between.
Germany has similar defects since communal hospitals were privatised and two large private hospital groups carve up the market with 80-140 insurance funds. There needs to be regulation enhancing patient rights to curtail producer/ financing games
It’s funny to see the old fluoride conspiracy make it all the way to the White House. In the late 90’s I was exposed to a lot of new age hippie conspiracies that used to claim that fluoride “harmed your third eye”. Being science deficient at the time and still very naive I spent a few years actually believing it.
It’s really weird seeing this new iteration of anti-establishment sentiment and hippy dippy spirituality fully establish itself in a such a swathe of the political right.
“Healthy at last, healthy at last, thank God almighty we’re going to be healthy at last!”
RFK Jr., unlike Trump, is the right man for the right job.
There’s a reason big Pharma is coming at him, along with the unitary state-adjacent/subordinate media.
Please take the time to listen to RFK’s speech given when he suspended his campaign. I’m interested in any serious objections to anything he has to say.
https://nypost.com/2024/08/23/us-news/rfk-jr-drops-out-of-2024-race-for-white-house/
That’s an assignment, which is a violation of our written site Policies.
Anyone can make a good speech that showcases their most acceptable and attractive ideas. RFK, Jr. has a very clear record and a lot of it is very dodgy, despite also including some valid proposals. So don’t expect us to treat RFK, Jr. effectively cheery picking his views on the health front, as a valid picture.
I lived in Kennedy-worshiping Boston for most of my school years and remember well the absolute mess that Bobby Jr had made of his life and how his family’s wealth and power kept him from the jail and likely early death that would have been the fate of any regular person who did the same. The man is a cheat, a scoundrel and a kook, who’s as much of a snake oil salesman as his boss. He had no business running for president and it was again his name that kept him in the race. Now of course, that’s ad hominem but I had to get it off my chest.
I think the thing to remember with these appointments is that the bureaucratic state is not brittle and can adapt to poor leadership. I mean, look at what Mayor Pete has done at the DOT. It’s just as dysfunctional as it was 4 years ago, and I’m not seeing EV chargers or high-speed rail progress all over the country. Frankly, imho, the only administrative progress in the US in the past 20 years has been the creation of the CFPB and the restoration of the FTC and the antitrust division of the DOJ as actual proponents of the public interest.
One reason I like RFK Jr. is because he was a drug addict -and has been in recovery for so long. Certainly part of our health crisis is because pharmaceutical companies have allowed so many to become addicted to opioids by making them easily available, when something less addictive could work as a pain killer when needed.
Considering how many people are dying of fentanyl overdoses every day, I am very happy a former drug addict, again in recovery, will hopefully head up the HHS. I agree with ArvidMartensen up above on this issue. Sometimes something needs to be shaken up.
Clearly this election was in part a referendum on how the govt handled Covid 19. The vaccines obviously did not do the following: stop transmission of the virus, or stop you from getting sick. So I am happy an iconoclast has a “shot” at this.
Also, I am hopeful he will ban pharmaceutical advertising on television. That would be good. I’d love to see a ban on billboards, like they have in Maine, all across the country, but I’d be happy for a ban on pharmaceutical advertising. Like the mental afflictions in the DSM-5, some illnesses seem to be created to create a need for a drug.
I don’t think he is perfect -what human is?- and I would have liked to seen him as AG really or in an environmental position (one of Trump’s weakest areas, though I’ll take the free speech).
A shake up is in order, and American’s should be able to choose whether they want to see alternative health practitioners, without them being jailed or whatever, or “traditional” allopathic medicine.
And 114 years ago In 1910 the Carnegie Foundation and the Rockefeller commissioned the Flexner Report to standardize the practice of medicine (an art perhaps more than a science) and the result was the elmination of homeopathic schools and competing medical systems.
Then the AMA did Committee on Quackery in 1963 was also quackery itself. I’m sure some were genuine quacks, but the way doctors dismiss alternative care and anything they didn’t study, shows how many of them are closed minded.
People should be allowed the dignity to choose from the available methods. The entire health system needs to be reformed.
So, I’m looking forward to the shake up. It’s needed.
What do heroin, which is what RFK, Jr. was addicted to, and fentanyl have to do with the HHS? These are illegal drugs.
RFK, Jr. has said nothing about banning TV ads for medications.
I don’t understand what your beef is about alternative practitioners. I see plenty and I don’t hear them beefing about the minimal licensing requirements which STATES, not the Feds, impose. Having been seriously harmed even by licensed alternative practitioners (a licensed osteopath very badly sprained one ankle, it never recovered; a licensed trainer ruined one of my knees), I would NEVER want to see an unlicensed provider.
I have seen homeopaths in my ample experimentation. They are useless. By contrast, ayurveda, although a total pain (you have to run your life around ayurveda if you are serious) was helpful.
Hi Yves,
My point about bringing up heroin and fentanyl was because of what bugs wrote here,
“I lived in Kennedy-worshiping Boston for most of my school years and remember well the absolute mess that Bobby Jr had made of his life and how his family’s wealth and power kept him from the jail and likely early death that would have been the fate of any regular person who did the same. The man is a cheat, a scoundrel and a kook, who’s as much of a snake oil salesman as his boss. He had no business running for president and it was again his name that kept him in the race. Now of course, that’s ad hominem but I had to get it off my chest.”
I have more trust in someone who has been through addiction and reformed themselves, than I do with someone who has never experienced it.
Fentanyl is not illegal when it prescribed in the hospital, as it sometimes it is. The pharmaceutical industry has a direct connection to the rise of illegal drug addiction in our country.
Point taken about alternative health practitioners, and states vs feds. Homeopathy has worked for me, as have Bach flower remedies and the like, as has ayurveda. Personally, I’ve seen more people harmed by taking doctor prescribed drugs than ever with alternative health, though I do know people who have died because they refused to see an allopathic doctor. Sad as it was, that remained there choice.
I’d like to see more synergy between them. If I have to see an allopath, I prefer the nurse practitioners. In general they seem to be easier to talk to and deal with than doctors, in my experience.
Thanks for hearing me out.
He has repeatedly stated that he wants to end the royalties program. He has said that he as President would use an executive order to ban marketing on TV by pharma
I am very familiar with addiction, not personally but we all have the capacity. I have known many addicts, addicted to heroin, amphetamine, and things people don’t think are addictive like religion, pot and cell phones. Many have cleaned up and gone clear the other way and are now addicted to the antidote.
I don’t really trust a reformed anyone. Mostly they have traded one crutch for a different one. Gone from weak willed to duped. Beware of true believers.
A shake up may be in order or inevitable but the next four years could well be a case of careful what you wished for. You Say You Want a Revolution.
And I have seen people utterly transformed, heal their past, and find a good way forward in life after cleaning up their act. Sure, some become true believers in one religion or another, but I’m not afraid of religion. It’s a part of the human experience. That doesn’t mean I a big fan by any means of fundamentalist religion. Or other fundamentalist.
I personally think people can have the experience of transformation from addiction and not get into the “one and only truth” trap. But hey, your mileage may vary.
I do hear you about careful what you wish for. I am a so called “double hater” and still feel politically homeless. Don’t really want a conservative Christian regime, and some of those involved have that. At the same didn’t want the woke religion either. And it is a religion because it requires faith in a particular creed.
I was hoping for RFK Jr. as prez and would still like to see both the republicons and demoncratic parties smashed to bits. I don’t know if I’ll ever see a viable third party in my life, but maybe the creation of some new parties after things get rebuilt. Who knows, but the shake up is here, however it plays out.
I have also known about a dozen addicts. Not a single one was transformed. The one I know who is doing the best was managing to be a top professional despite the addiction (alcoholism) and just quit cold turkey. No drama, just stopped out of perceived need to preserve his brain.
Fair enough. I know many who were transformed, many who weren’t. Some are in the middle. Some drop the habit, but don’t change the things that led them to it to begin with.
Alcoholism is a terminal disease if not interrupted. Often those in treatment seek out the support of others who have been through it before, and who can guide them to a better way of living.
To bring this back to RFK Jr. though, I think it is disingenuous to harp on his past heroin use, and not talk about how he pulled himself together after that, and the things he has accomplished since then.
Since the HHS also has an aspect that is to promote the mental health of our citizens, I think it is good to have someone who has been through addiction and gotten to the other side. Mental health issues are a big driver for substance abuse, and everyone knows we all get a lot issues in this country.
Thanks for the discussion, and for hosting this space.
Given that he clearly believes that water fluoridation and vaccines per se are greater threats to human health than the course of rolling SARS reinfections that humanity has had forced upon it, about which he has nothing to say (except, yknow, claiming that Covid was genetically engineered to spare Jews and the Chinese. Iconoclastic is certainly one word for it, I suppose.), who – pardon my frankness – gives a shit?
Why are people so easily impressed? is this (american?) need for idol worship so all-consuming that a foolish charlatan like RFKJr (“but he has some good ideas!!” jesus who cares?) can come to be considered as some sort of heroic guardian-of-human-health (just don’t mention the wee samoan kiddies)? Just absolutely miserable stuff.
But did Mayor Pete even try to do anything? I have seen no evidence he cared about this agency other than a parking place for a hoped step up to higher agency (Based on I guess his sexual orientation – certainly not competency). Meanwhile, US transportation infrastructure has continued its devolution, imposing vast (externalized) societal and business costs – JIT manufacturing does not work if the highways are parking lots.
ASCE says rate of repair of bridges has slowed.
https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges-infrastructure/
So there is a need for improvement….But RFK, Jr. is hardly the person to do that.
Yes, this is true, and it curiously mirrors Trump’s replacement of Biden. Trump is hardly the person to bring about actual change, one that steers away from the forever-war trajectory this country has been on over the previous decades. Trump is not going to change that, the only redeeming aspect of his nomination is that he is not Biden, and Biden administration had to be punished for its genocide in Gaza, war in Ukraine, mandatory vaccination policy. This is the same with RFJ Jr., the redeeming aspect is that he is different from the last disastrous administration that was running NIH. A strange way for “progress” to advance, if it is advancing.
No, I do not accept the logic.
First, from what I can tell, and perhaps IM Doc can pipe up, the NIH is not involved in drug approvals. It is an entirely different part of the FDA, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).
Second, the NIH also had nothing to do with another big Covid operational and moral failure, the deliberate effort to make sure VAERS excluded many vaccine injury reports.
Third, the NIH has nothing to do with the CDC, which was the lead actor in poor Covid policies and messaging.
Fourth, Trump sponsored Operation Warp Speed.
So please tell me again why a blind attack on the NIH is sound? This looks like a bizarre act of pointless petulance against Fauci when he left the NIH at the end of 2022.
The root of the issue may lie at the feet of the NIH however. The continued awarding of grants to eco health alliance and others can be seen as facilitating the creation of Cv19. The origin debate is not resolved but there are many who fall on the lab side. Allowing the gaming of rules where research banned in one jurisdiction to be funded over seas as if this was a legitimate response of government funding agencies to government policies because the agency feels it knows better is inappropriate and unsafe. The NIH can advocate it’s case but should not just fudge the rules to get it’s way. Gain of function is a issue even if you can weasel word your way to saying it is not happening. While NIH is not a public health body it is a leading health science body. The frantic ass covering their top brass (fauci) certainly lead to confusion at the start of the crisis which had many knock on effects.
First, a recent study gives more backing for the idea of animal origin of Covid.
Second, if the problems are gain of function and overseas research, those are specific issues that should be addressed, as opposed to simply firing people willy-nilly whether they had anything to do with those policies or not. The “fire 600 people” idea suggests that RFK, Jr. is a lazy, lousy manager.
The “fire 600 people” idea suggests that RFK, Jr. is a lazy, lousy manager. Thank you. IMO, the restoration of confidence in our public health institutions is short term critical given Covid and H5N1 (and the emergence of measles which has to be some kind of coal mine canary). Perhaps start firing people from the top, publicly pursuing any prosecution friendly actions during their watch.
RFK jr on X, “I will provide Americans with transparency and access to all the data so they can make informed choices for themselves and their families,” A silver lining if indeed he can deliver.
WaPo just released an article which is well worth a read. 10 RFK Jr. conspiracy theories and false claims, in his own words, (archived). “…his own words” are to be found here. Some of it makes sense to me, some seems out of touch with reality, for example raw milk in the era of H5N1.
Did that study find ANY repositories in the animal world, or people; where any evidence of infection prior to sept 2019 , existed?
Recently, both Bob Redfield, and a small discussion at Stanford which had several “experts”, have said that until that moment( a couple of months ago), there has been no evidence of prior infection of sars cov 2 in any animal.
And all hypothesis, for natural evolution, have for all other viruses, been verified by finding animal hosts. And NONE have been found so far.
Is this study saying this is not true? Seriously would like to know.
Bob Redfield even said that this sars cov 2 “bat” virus, is so different, bats don’t catch it.
which would be pretty astounding.
It took 15 years to find the animal origins of SARS. The new evidence at the wet market is pretty strong.
There is also no evidence tracing the outbreak to the Wuhan lab, which is the evidence standard you are applying to an animal origin. The lab immediately upon outbreak tested every one and no one had it. You would have expected the or one of the lab employees to be the index case, as opposed to them showing up at the wet market.
I agree that there isn’t any public “proof” one way or the other. Everything is a hypothesis , until it isn’t. Maybe we will find out. Maybe we won’t.
Another interesting thing bob redfield said is that they knew at the CDC that the Wuhan labs had entirely changed their hvac systems and ducts in august of 2019, but they didn’t know why.
And with all this speculation, it seems both respective governments have a reason to hide anything that would make them seem “responsible”. US/china mutual interests?
Maybe at least, RFK would open the files and look? maybe not?
My thinking was more from the perspective of “form” as opposed to your “content,” which is outside my scope of knowledge.
A case can be made that Trump voters hope for a change to perennial U.S. wars, RFK Jr., holds out a hope for those that supported him that federal health policies/agencies, whether it be FDA/CDER, CDC, NIH or other alphabet agencies, changes for the better.
I agree with Brian Berletic opening statement to his podcast yesterday that, hope is the first step to either being let down, or illusion
. The National Institutes of Health is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. The NIH invests most of its nearly $48 billion budget in medical research seeking to enhance life and to reduce illness and disability. (from their website)
https://www.nih.gov/grants-funding
$48 billions dollars in grants. That grant funding power to direct medical research can be used openly, transparently, and without conflicts of interest. Or it can instead be used the way it has been used for the last 30 years. From the NYPost:
NIH official finally admits taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan — after years of denials
‘“Dr. Tabak,” asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, “did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?”
“It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak answered. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.” ‘
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/nih-official-finally-admits-taxpayers-funded-gain-of-function-research-in-wuhan-after-years-of-denials/ar-BB1mwcLr
It looks to me like the secrecy, the conflicts of interest, the attempts to control research in one direction only, (do not mention vitamin I), trough the use of grants, is a mess that needs to be cleaned up. / my 2 cents
I do not disagree but mass firings are not the way to do that.
I agree. The sledgehammer approach isn’t the way to go. Map the territory, find the worst nodes and processes, and deal with those.
Remember, it was the NIH (under Fauci) that gave Danzak’s Eco Health Alliance the funding to create the Covid virus in the first place. A blind attack is not sound, but an attack of nearly any sort is a start.
Sorry, that is a theory and not proven. Do not present it as fact.
I understand the ostensible reason for doing gain of function research, but to me it seems like there’s a lot of money available, while doing anything else would be too time consuming/complicated (as far as the outfits in question are concerned).
The spelling Google sites in Nature is Daszak. I can’t remember what in that publication used to be in a mode mostly available online. For some reason I believe there was one letter to Nature from a weighty party you could read in toto (it may have been “Beware the Spike Protein…” BMJ ?). I’m not paying $29 for the access I used to get on occasion for free; maybe someone out there could summarize?
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01305-z
I am not defending it. There are a lot of things experts get keen about, like AI, where it is not hard to argue that the risk and costs considerably outweigh the potential benefits. Way too much Sorcerer’s Apprentice behavior.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I had forgotten completely who said it, Arthur Clarke. Too many think that’s what it is.
NIH did blow a billion dollars on long COVID (RECOVER) and come up with a broad list of symptoms, and nothing else. That seems to me a shocking misallocation of resources. (NIH Spent $1 Billion on Long Covid Research, With Little to Show for It (April 2023))
That’s some serious walking around money.
And they. Ran. Out. Of Money!
Struggling Long COVID RECOVER Initiative Gets $500 Million Lifeline (Feb 2024)
That’s just insane. Malicious incompetence or astounding graft and corruption.
Maybe that’s small potatoes and not emblematic of an organization that needs to be brought to heel, I dunno.
Budget:
So the NIH did not have the skills and farmed it out to a network that screwed up.
This also sounds as if that initiative was not invented at the NIH but was dumped on them. Otherwise there would have been a leader, a project plan, all the normal rigamorole.
If you look at McKinsey’s entire record of consulting to governments, you’ll see this sort of thing regularly. Government entities are marks for private contractors.
The fault is not that a money was wasted, but that THIS MUCH money was wasted. They should have pulled the plug sooner.
But then they’d have to say they were doing no work on long Covid, which would be politically unacceptable.
I must point out that Trump’s model for his cost-cutting initiative is to use tons of private contractors……
McKinsey‘s record with Purdue Pharma was no exception to its tainted ethical standards. Having met Marvin Bower I doubt he would recognise what an ethical cesspit McK turned into
So, far, with Rubio’s exception, all suggested appointees would make Idi Amin proud.
I’m curious – why would Rubio be an exception in your view?
Because Rubio is so simple minded he can’t do too much damage?
Humbly Report, Sir
Not every man can have wisdom, Švejk pronounces. Stupid people have to exist too, because if everyone were wise then there would be so much good sense in the world that every other person would be driven crazy by it.
…from The Good Soldier Švejk
A bull in the china shop comes to mind
He may be simple minded. He co-signed Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran. Apparently he was too simple-minded to realise that the letter was being sent to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran who just happened to have a Ph.D in International Affairs from a US university.
The levels of ignorance and arrogance were astounding.
oh my god!
Ben Norton at the geopolitical economy report did a segment on Rubio.
Damage is exactly what he will do.
Three-Quarters of U.S. Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese NYT archive
Food, automobiles and medications like antidepressants or antipsychotics… Garbage “food” is engineered to be addictive. Most people hardly walk and many communities are simply dangerous for walking and cycling. 11% of Americans aged 12 and older take antidepressants; weight gain is a very common side effect (I guess people are depressed because of obesity and loneliness caused by our sterile suburbs and rotting cities).
I am not optimistic that RFKjr or DJT can move the needle on health
Perhaps Trump and RFKjr can make “getting healthy or at least healthier” into a right-wing culture-war imperative.
” The healthier you get, the longer you can live, and the longer you can vote against the Left”.
And if the Right decides that is a good thing, maybe the Right can figure out how to make it more possible for more potential Rightist voters. How to get non-Garbage food instead of Garbage fuud, for example.
MAHA . Make America Healthy Again.
Who knows where it could lead?
In the plus column, RFK Jr would make OTC steroids available to anyone, of any age, in unlimited quantities.
I think the most salient recommend for the man is that his entire family – who are all Kennedys – have made public statements about him being bananas and also his former colleagues from Riverkeepers are all puling their collars and shuffling their feet and trying to explain that they thought they marque name would be good for fundraising and publicity but he slipped his leash and now they really feel terrible about him terrorizing the neighborhood.
Really? Link?
Hard to imagine anyone doing worse than Fauci, Birx, Walenski, and Redfield. But it could happen I suppose. / ;)
Fear not, Flora: it can always get worse.
I think the faint desperate outside hope is that it can get better.
RFK Jr has spoken for hundreds of hours over the past 4-5 years. He talks about this constantly. He is against the royalty system and wants to replace it with direct federal funding.
That is helpful but RFK, Jr. does not seem to be putting this high on his to-do list, when one would think he would lead with unassailable proposals. For instance, I did not hear him mention this issue in his very long interview with Tucker Carlson. He needs to talk about that now if he is to be seen as something other than with a vendetta and crackpot ideas.
an aside: here’s a good history about fluoride’s use in water as a dental cavity preventative. Don’t let the old political cartoon put you off. These were all big political issues back then.
Toxic Treatment: Fluoride’s Transformation from Industrial Waste to Public Health Miracle
https://origins.osu.edu/article/toxic-treatment-fluorides-transformation-industrial-waste-public-health-miracle
If Kennedy gets the nod (will anyone NOT get the nod?), it will be interesting to see if he gets after the GMO corn squabble with Mexico linked here at NC today.
If logic and policy are consistent, he and Trump should act on this and leave Mexico alone, and get after NAFTA (iteration I have lost count)… But then again Trump talked about invading mexico, too, so…
Fetterman may be on to something about the huckster in chief. Trump is sort of like Andy Kauffman in that regard?
Matt Gaetz as AG is already facing strong Senate headwinds, I believe. As far as I have read so far, the issues are the accusations of sex trafficking. Whatever the merits of that, he has been a vocal supporter of Lina Khan, Jonathan Kanter, antitrust in general, so I expect there is going to be huge corporate pressure to deep-six his nomination, even if his morals were as clean as Mary Bleedin’ Poppins.
Perhaps he was a sacrificial nomination from the start. If the other Senators agree with Senator Fetterman that naming Gaetz was God-tier trolling on Trump’s part, then the Republican Senators will find a few ( just enough) Sacrificial Republican Senators to vote against Gaetz to prevent his confirmation.
And then Trump will offer a nomination that the Koch Brothers would be happy with. And get him/her passed.
If Gaetz suspects that he may be voted down, I hope he turns his Confirmation hearings into Kamikaze hearings. I hope he leaves scars on every Senator’s brain that every Senator will remember.
Yves mentions “So there is a need for improvement.” Respectfully, I disagree. There is a need for an “overhaul” not just a few improvements. But, like she says “RFK, Jr. is hardly the person to do that.” On va voire.
IM Doc reports that the drug approval process worked well when Institutional Review Boards are allowed to do their jobs.
By contrast, RFK, Jr. has not given any indication that he has the foggiest idea of how to go about improving clinical drug trials, as in where in the process is most susceptible to Big Pharma bad faith and what it would take to combat that.
On top of that, despite better drug trials requiring a more stringent regulatory process, as well as his interest in outlawing probably unsafe food additives and colorings, elsewhere he seems to want to throw regulations out the window.
From a lay perspective, I am probably joined by many wishing for a more transparent and rigorous drug review and approval process. We are told to consider this drug, to ask our doctor about that med and so on. In the meantime, FUD is part of the process, along with self-dealing reviewers and shady processes. As if we didn’t have enough concerns about how to afford modern life!
Is it too much to ask for some return to credibility in the chain of drug inception through development, testing, review and such all the way to delivery? Not lip service, but actual, tangible, verifiable results.
The current review process IS rigorous. It costs drug companies over $100 million to complete a clinical trial. But there are ways the pharma cos can game the samples and statistics (among other things) and that’s where the FDA needs to be a lot more skeptical.
From the article: “All are (appointments) mavericks of a sort, though their ideas are not uniform. Yet the notion that they could elbow aside a century of science-based health policy is profoundly troubling to many health professionals.” Well, it may have been a century of “science-based health policy” but it’s been a few decades of corporate take over, censorship, and corruption as opposed to a helpful science based policy. We need a bit of elbow grease to clean these agencies and scientists up. A bit of accountability would be a start. I don’t know if 600 layoff would be good, but I’ll bet if you looked over 600 resumés in the CDC, FDA, etc., I’ll bet you’ll find 600 plus references to past jobs in “the industry”.
Some analyses don’t give enough consideration to the idea that this administration’s cabinet appointees are often picked in spite of, not because of their more ‘heterodox’ views. IE with RFK the logic may be that he will slash and burn the federal health bureaucracy and that while he is a crusader for anti-big ag policies, those who appointed him know they will never be implemented. The point about shifting from user-fees to federal funding is an example of this too – it is patently obvious that increasing federal funding is not a priority for this administration, so in effect this proposal would just be defunding the FDA.
As far as fluoridated water goes, shouldn’t it be the choice of the person drinking the water? If fluoride is so good for us, it seems people should be able to just get it and put the right amount into their own water themselves. I’m sure there is something I ignorant of about chemistry that would make that plausible. But I think people should have the freedom to opt in to something, rather than not having the freedom to opt out of it -unless they go to the pains buying all their water, etc. and not everyone will have that choice.
I see this as similar to the idea that male children should make the choice whether or not to be circumcised, and not have that pushed on families by the medical establishment.
Very little of the distributed water we depend on is consumed for drinking but the idea that people might self dose with something that is added to drinking water in parts per million makes fentanyl buffering look like child’s play. If you are worried about the assault on your personal bodily fluids (ref Dr Strangelove) buy unfluoridated bottled water. There is a choice available. Everyone buys their water. Are your utilities free?
Good point. No, my city water is not free.
I guess I think in terms of nature, water doesn’t have fluoride in its natural state. (Except maybe in some mineral spring somewhere? – I don’t know.) If it’s not there to begin with, do we really need to add it to everything. How many other countries do this?
I’m really just curious about why and how it got started, and why is such an issue to rethink it?
It got started because somebody noticed that people who drank naturally fluoridated water didn’t have any tooth decay, Their children may walk funny and not be capable of higher maths but in our new rekindled (elected) dog eat dog society they will procreate and, because they have no tooth decay, their children will become dominate in spite of the fact that they ain’t that smart. If all of the water is fluoridated then everyone will be in the same boat and no one will notice.
It got started either because they noticed water with natural fluoride had a positive impact on teeth AND there were industrial companies who had an excess of fluoride that something needed to be done with…?
Your comment made me laugh though! I thought their children could dominate because the parents can afford a full set of implants? American TV gives people false hope for their teeth, and looks in general. British television is more realistic about people not keeping up their appearances.
Peace to you, and thanks for engaging this discussion today.
You are thinking of Jackson Lamb !
“First, he intends to fire 600 officials at the NIH. Mass firings are never a good idea.”
It seems like that’s the way “in” to the Trump administration – say there will be mass firings of government employees.
It’s an ideology more than any concrete policy.
“I am not sure Trump can get the votes for his approval.”
Mr. Market may already be trying to put the fear into the pharma stock holding Congress critters.
Quite a few drops today.
IMHO, and reinforced by 50+ years of eating local organic food and not red meat. I haven’t had a flu or anything more than a sniffle of a cold since the 80s. I declined the COVID vaccines and not one cough. I have been diligent about masking and avoiding indoor spaces when possible. I’m retired, so I have that luxury. We have a PhD genetic immunologist in the family. She got the vaccinations, scared. She didn’t want to.
It’s just what RFK says, they weren’t tested thoroughly, the testing was a setup. And, …, there is research showing the spectrum correlation with Thiomersal. I can’t take a scientific position on this, not having really studied the controversy from both sides. But IMO, RFK is anything but a conspiracy “theorist” as the well censored media claims on virtually ever mention of the dude; in fact that’s his media title.
My motto is “if you’re healthy, you’re not sick!” (ie get `healthy and stay healthy). I also gave up antibiotics and fealty to the top-down corrupted pharmaceutical industry. I’ve worked in market analytics for a couple of big ones, the better ones even, but it’s all about the money. Marketing a new drug could cost $300M – that’s optimized for sales. In ’04!
My Homeopath has cured Lyme disease for me and many others. I used antibiotics for the first 2 infections (’98 and ’07), but then I got really sick from chronic Lyme a couple of years after the second. This homeopath fixed that – chronic Lyme takes 6 months. Subsequently I was infected another half-dozen times living right in the darkest red spot on the Lyme heat map. I had 6 deer-tick bites one June: no problem, fixed right up.
And did you hear the one about the relationship between our intestinal biome and Parkinson’s Disease? yeah. Not only do malignant flora cause it, healthy flora can treat it even after onset. Add Alzheimer’s to that, and forget about pharmaceutical antibiotics. What then? Another topic. I’m done her for now.
IIRC RFK is focusing hard on junk food. Let’s talk about that, and big ag.
If RFK can get more light shed on vaccine safety, and investigations into how these interventions are tested and approved, that would be more than any other candidate is likely to achieve.
Here is Aaron Siri deposing Paul Offit, one of the primary vaccine developers (and paid $millions for them)
“Earlier, Mr. Siri had established clearly that none of the vaccines for children were tested with a group of children who received an “inert placebo,” making any conclusions drawn about side effects nearly impossible to corroborate. Dr. Plotkin was forced to agree.”
Get that? NO TESTING AGAINST PLACEBO. Deposed under oath.
Read more (and it’s horrifying) at
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=bd2f489a45&view=lg&permmsgid=msg-f:1810735275408086273&ser=1
No drugs are tested on children. They simply scale down adult dosages.
One of the best things I learned from RFKJr was from before this election go round when I first knew who he was. The suggestion that I learned from his Children’s Health Defense was that vaccines given individually instead of grouped together could be safer for kids.
This was important to me because my first child was vaccine reactive. Like, high fevers after every round of vaccines, and sick for a week or more. Just awful. These reactions were NEVER reported. That first child was diagnosed with Aspergers. Is it related? I don’t know, I don’t care.
A close family member’s child had seizures and a high fever after the MMR vaccine. Pediatrician said it wasn’t a vaccine reaction, even though it is listed as a side effect. She is clearly high-functioning Asperger’s, but isn’t diagnosed.
My second child followed a 1 vaccine per month schedule, and only reacted to 1 vaccine (not MMR), and the reaction was much more mild. It also gave me an opportunity to ask a nurse questions once a month. I had to shop for a pediatrician who would let me do this, they have since retired.
I welcome re-evaluating the vaccine schedule for kids under RFK Jr.
I think the primary mass firing RFK has targeted is the Nutrition Department, and I don’t think he is wrong. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-taps-rfk-jr-lead-department-health-human-services
Ah yes, the Food Pyramid. Completely actually damaging, as advice goes.
If RFK Jr can increase the levels of integrity, honesty and genuinely independent and unbiased scientific research and development, then it will be a huge win for the US. He may well have some misguided beliefs, but he has more personal integrity than most.
Equally, if he can reduce the ubiquitous conflicts of interest throughout the food and health industries, he will help improve the overall health – even if at the cost of the vast profits so many in those industries make. There is a vast amount of misinformation about food and medicine that is often deliberate to hide or distort the truth.
I think he is realistic enough to know that he personally can only make a small dent in the industry, but he can start the much-needed clean up.
Like so many profitable industries, it is riddled with corruption and conflicts of interest – and doesn’t work for the benefit of the people it supposedly serves! That’s the point here.
Let’s not nitpick the details of his quirks and beliefs, and instead focus on the reality of the state of these industries, and the failing health of the people they serve.
Hear! Hear!
Just now he *may* succeed at changing much that needs changing, and there are no other similar persons of integrity and courage stepping up to the mark.
Scientist fear for the truth to come out, do they? And that they might be discredited for their collusion with their funders to promote false findings?
And so they should. Their loss of independence is a national tragedy, that has cost people dearly – in many cases, their lives! Covid is a prime example.
They should have the same Hippocratic Oath as doctors, “First, do no harm”.
Hippocrates Oath is folklore. It was never sworn by German doctors and is rarely administered today in any medical schools. It ranks alongside reading the Will in the library for literary interest
I did notice something interesting about the article. Although the title of the article says that “Scientists fear what’s next for public health”, all of the anti-Kennedy quotes in the article come from either anonymous sources, which in my view are always suspect, or from doctors (usually holding official positions) or from bureaucrats. Unless my cursory reading missed something important, there didn’t seem to be a single scientist who had been polled on the topic, despite the title.
Of course this does not mean that Kennedy would be a desirable person in the position (although it seemed to me that it was what he was always in line for, so nobody should be surprised) but it does suggest that the article was a bit disingenuous, in which case I would be a bit suspicious of its conclusions. Haven’t we had quite enough ot mock-science disguising itself as absolute authority?
I don’t mean to seem like I am coming down hard on you, since I generally value your comments. However, I have scolded you before for not undertaking adequate investigation before making claims and forcing me to issue corrections to what you have written. My alternative would be to not approve your comment. The reason for the stringency is that precisely because you are generally sound, readers will be pre-disposed to take your counter-factual statements at face value.
You did it again. The very first bio of someone you presumably lumped in the bureaucrat category, Robert Cardiff, a former Commissioner of the FDA, shows he is a scientist:
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-leadership-1907-today/robert-califf
Real problem is that the term “scientists” has lost credibility. “Scientists” “saying” something doesn’t mean much. It’s like “billionaires saying” or even “Zelensky saying”. Science was never about authority to begin with. “Fear” is another word that is commonly abused in titles. I have come to the point that phrases like “scientists fear” have totaly opposite effect on me than the one desired. My knee-jerk rection is let him go wild and see what happens, and take notes. If you take notes, that’s science.
While the immediate effects may be upon drug and device product availability, I fear impacts upon regulatory compliance of drug and device manufacturing. My career had been spent in Process Validation in accordance with 21 CFR Part 211, where I had been introducing procedures for Statistical Process Control and Statistical Design of Experiments. When I retired the FDA started embracing Quality Engineering rather than a rules based compliance model. My view is that QE provides assurance of consistent good manufacturing that protects the users of drugs and devices.
I see the promotion of deregulation and perhaps a “starve the beast” ideology as threatening the safety of patients if regulatory activities are curtailed. I had seen similar during the term of George Bush when the FDA treated manufacturers as customers rather than regulated entities. One result of that was encouraging a laxity in proper risk assessment that led to adulteration of Heparin with oversulfonated junk protein (from China) that killed and injured patients.
With Kennedy, I think patients’ safety will be at risk.