I agree with Kennedy, we should stop fluoridating water!
BTW, RFK supports abortion rights. Bet you didn't know that.
The Strange World of RFK Jr.
From vaccines to GMO food, his views put him on the anti-business left.
By The Editorial Board, WSJ
Updated Nov. 15, 2024 6:20 pm ET
Donald Trump II is a brave new world, and look no further than his strange choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department. Only months ago Mr. Trump was calling the Kennedy family scion a “liberal lunatic,” yet now he wants to hand RFK Jr. the power to “make America healthy again.” Good luck making sense of this nomination.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation,” Mr. Trump said in his nomination statement. HHS “will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives.”
Say what? That riff could have been written by leftist activists who view corporate America as the root of every public-health ill. Mr. Kennedy comes out of that movement, whose goal is to ruin the U.S. drug, agriculture and grocery industries—not improve or reform public-health agencies.
***
That Mr. Kennedy has risen to this political position owes much to the Covid pandemic. America’s health institutions forfeited public trust by invoking dubious science to shut down businesses and close schools. They then overreached by mandating Covid vaccines while overstating their ability to prevent infections and obfuscating potential adverse effects, such as myocarditis in young men.
Government health agencies certainly need a shake-up. The National Institutes of Health has become too focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, and it funds much dubious social-science research. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has failed at its core mission while extending its mandate into other areas like gun violence.
The Food and Drug Administration is too slow to approve novel therapies but has also been too slow to pull some medicines from the market when evidence shows they aren’t safe or effective. Bureaucrats apply inconsistent standards for drug approvals that generate suspicion about political favoritism.
Alas, Mr. Kennedy isn’t the person to fix all this, and he could make things worse if he puts government power behind his views. Start with his longtime campaign against vaccines. “There is no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective,” he told CNN last December. None? Has polio nearly vanished on its own?
“A mountain of scientific study links autism to early vaccination with certain vaccines,” he told NBC News in March. No, it doesn’t. The Wakefield study that was the basis for this claim was the result of fraudulent research.
Mr. Kennedy has toned down his anti-vaccine evangelism of late, and he now says he merely wants parents to have a choice of vaccinating their children. But places in the U.S. where parents have sought exemptions from school vaccine mandates have experienced more community outbreaks of measles.
He has suggested that “wifi radiation” is increasing autism, food allergies, asthma and chronic illnesses. “I think it degrades your mitochondria and it opens your blood-brain barrier,” he told podcaster Joe Rogan last year. There’s no evidence for that either. Nor for his claims that chemicals in sunscreen are hazardous.
Mr. Kennedy has blamed chemicals in water and consumer products for every health ill from cancer to gender dysphoria among young people. Genetically modified foods are another RFK Jr. villain. He has proposed that the government create organic-farming communes to treat drug addictions. The American diet could certainly improve, and processed foods have contributed to obesity and chronic diseases. But Americans don’t want to know how high food prices would be if it were all produced “organically.”
Like vaccines, genetically modified crops have been one of the modern age’s greatest inventions. They have increased crop yields, reduced spoilage and pesticide use, and enabled farmers to end starvation. Perhaps Mr. Trump is unaware of Mr. Kennedy’s animus against U.S. farmers, who have been among his most loyal supporters.
“Large-scale hog producers are a greater threat to the United States and U.S. democracy than Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network,” Mr. Kennedy declared in 2002. He spearheaded the trial-lawyer assault on the Roundup herbicide despite little evidence of cancer-causing risk. Ballooning litigation costs have spurred Bayer to consider pulling Roundup from the U.S. market, which would benefit competing Chinese manufacturers.
The same is true of Mr. Kennedy’s anti-business agenda. Beijing would like nothing more than for Mr. Kennedy to use his clout at HHS to hobble U.S. biotech innovation and American drug makers. By the way, where does Mr. Kennedy think most of the “natural supplements” that he touts as alternatives to medicines are produced? The answer is China.
***
Some Republicans have rallied in support of Mr. Kennedy because they think he will make public-health agencies more transparent and weed out alleged collusion between Big Pharma and government. But he lacks the experience and temperament to manage, let alone reform, HHS’s unwieldy bureaucracy. Mr. Kennedy’s expertise is as a gadfly.
Mr. Trump’s desire to focus on America’s health agencies is welcome, but RFK Jr. won’t make America healthier. He’s more likely to harm public health by spreading confusion and attacking the American companies that are saving lives and feeding the world.
Comments