Rav Arora
Rav Arora is an independent journalist based in Vancouver, Canada.
As Robert F Kennedy, Jr prepares for his highly anticipated confirmation hearing next Wednesday, a wave of opposition has surged from various groups and organizations determined to block his path to becoming the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. From conservative advocacy groups to mainstream medical organizations, the attacks have been swift and calculated, aiming to undermine his credibility and sway Republican senators to vote against his nomination.
Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom – a conservative advocacy group claiming to fight the radical Left and promote religious liberty and economic prosperity – is launching one line of concerted attacks against RFK, Jr in the hopes of discouraging Republican senators from voting in favour for him.
In a rather strange advertisement displaying its monetary backing (“six-figure ad campaign”), the AAF has launched a serious attack against Trump’s nomination of RFK, Jr as HHS secretary.
In a letter addressed to Republican Senators, AAF President Tim Chapman and Board Chairman Marc Short state several “concerns” they have regarding the “nomination of Robert F Kenndy Jr (RFK)” (sic) to head HHS, such as his views on vaccines, psychedelics, and abortion.
Tim Chapman is now doing media appearances to amplify his criticisms of RFK, Jr while Pence penned an op-ed in the Washington Times today “urg[ing] others in the pro-life community to join us in calling on members of the Senate to reject RFK, Jr and give President Trump a second chance to appoint a pro-life secretary who will defend the cause of life and ensure that HHS continually makes choices that guide our country towards life.”
Much of Pence’s vocal criticisms are totally irrelevant and distracting from Bobby’s core MAHA vision. As I suspected, a source close to RFK, Jr reassured me that he will be following Trump’s lead on major issues like abortion and marijuana (aligning with the Daily Wire’s piece interviewing Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) about Kennedy’s committed views). Pence’s bizarre line of attack on Bobby fixated on abortion makes little sense because it is not an issue he will have any clear authority on.
Before addressing more specific claims in the AAF’s full-fledged media attack against RFK, Jr – now featured in the New York Times – one must set the stage and recognize some of the AAF’s perverse incentives and affiliations. Bobby inarguably poses the biggest threat to Big Pharma. And – surprise, surprise – Mike Pence’s establishment conservative group has multiple ties to Big Pharma, one of which is just shocking.
For one, the AAF received a $100,000 donation from the Searle Freedom Trust in 2022, created by Daniel C Searle – founder of the pharmaceutical company GD Searle. Over the past decade, the trust has given over $200 million in grants to various conservative groups. GD Searle has been involved in a few controversies, such as its studies of artificial sweetener aspartame in 1970. An FDA task force criticized Searle’s studies as “at best…sloppy and suffering from…a pattern of conduct which compromises the scientific integrity of the studies.” The controversy was further fueled by perceived conflicts of interest, as several officials involved in the approval process later accepted positions linked to Searle.
(Searle also developed the first commercial oral contraceptive, Enovid, which was a major catalyst for the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s and faced significant resistance from religious groups and conservative organizations. I’m not exactly sure what Pence’s view is on this matter, but he tends to have far more conservative views on reproductive issues – far more than President Trump. It’s a bit strange he’s attacking RFK, Jr on the abortion front.)
Notably, GD Searle is no longer an independent pharmaceutical company.
It is now part of Pfizer.
In 2003, Pfizer acquired Pharmacia, which was the parent company of GD Searle following a series of mergers: Monsanto acquired Searle in 1985, and later spun off its pharmaceutical division to merge with Pharmacia & Upjohn in 2000, forming Pharmacia.
My only certain takeaway from this is that the Searle Freedom Trust would not ever donate to an organization critical of Pfizer. It would only support those in favour of its interests.
Here’s where it gets quite disturbing.
Marc Short – Pence’s former chief of staff during Trump’s first term and now the co-author of the AAF letter lambasting RFK, Jr – had $51,000 – $115,000 in Pfizer stock in 2020:
(Link: Pence Chief Of Staff Owns Stocks That Could Conflict With Coronavirus Response)
(Link: AAF Letter Opposing RFK, Jr.)
According to NPR, he also owned stock in Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Eli Lilly, and other companies involved in the federal Covid response worth between $506,043 and $1.64 million.
Short applied for a certificate of divestiture – an admission of a potential conflict of interest – but his application was rejected because of logistical issues:
Short’s application for a certificate of divestiture was not rejected because he was deemed to not have a conflict.
The ethics office rejected his application because some of his stocks are held in trusts that would be difficult to divest from. Some of Short’s holdings were in trusts created to benefit family members, and OGE would not grant tax breaks for Short unless all potentially conflicting holdings were divested.
(Source)
As NPR notes, many top government officials such as 2017–18 Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “pledged before entering office to divest from 156 companies he held a financial interest in.”
Marc Short flagrantly spoke about several pharmaceutical companies he had stocks in while serving as Pence’s chief of staff and head of the Covid task force:
On March 18, he mentioned the vice president’s trip to a 3M manufacturing plant to illustrate a point about liability protections. Records show that he holds between $65,002 and $150,000 worth of 3M stock. On March 20, he publicly hailed the work of Honeywell in producing respirator masks. According to public disclosure records, he holds between $50,001 and $100,000 worth of Honeywell stock.
Does this seem ethical?
Yet, Marc Short – now the chairman of the board of Pence’s advocacy group – is attacking RFK, Jr on a number of ethical, scientific, and ideological grounds.
He and his co-author Tim Chapman outright lie about RFK, Jr’s apparent involvement in the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa:
In 2019, RFK played a major role in halting measles vaccinations in Samoa. 83 Samoans, many of them children, would go on to die because of RFK’s crusade against the measles vaccine. RFK has never apologized.
In reality, the measles vaccine was halted in July 2018 by the Samoan government in response to the tragic deaths of two infants due to incorrectly prepared MMR vaccines (they wrongly used an expired paralytic). The suspension lasted for 10 months, which led to a dramatic fall in vaccination rates (58% in 2017 to 31% in 2018). The nurses who administered the MMR vaccines were later convicted in 2019 for manslaughter.
As Dr Vinay Prasad highlights, a number of serious factors contributed to the 2019 Samoan measles outbreak — RFK, Jr not being one of them:
The Samoan measles outbreak occurred because of a constellation of factors including a impoverished population, a recent history (in historical terms) of having measles, longstanding poor vaccination rates, the manslaughter of two children, a cover up, poor health literacy, poor health infrastructure, poor government messaging, suspending MMR vaccination by the government, and a country drawn to traditional ideas of health and medicine.
Pence’s “conservative” advocacy group ought to stop trusting mainstream media sources and parroting fallacious talking points.
Once again, RFK, Jr’s pro-vaccine critics miss the point – his MAHA vision isn’t about enforcing blanket vaccine bans but about promoting transparency and rigorous scrutiny of the data, empowering the public to make informed health decisions. Here’s what he explicitly told NBC after the election:
“I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines,” Kennedy told NBC News when asked whether there were specific vaccines that Kennedy would want to remove from the market.
“If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away. People ought to have [a] choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information,” he said.
“So I’m going to make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them,” Kennedy added.
Marc Short and Tim Chapman make another self-defeating, nearly laughable criticism of RFK, Jr:
As a presidential candidate, RFK promised to legalize marijuana and increase access to psychedelics while creating government “wellness farms” to “heal” individuals with addiction to “psychiatric drugs,” including attention deficit disorder (ADD) medication
To reiterate, a reliable source close to RFK, Jr has confirmed he will be following Trump’s position on marijuana. I doubt any major changes will be made on this front. More importantly, to merely mention RFK, Jr’s interest in increasing access to psychedelics – some of the most remarkably effective treatments for depression, PTSD, end-of-life distress, and more – as some kind of blistering criticism is ludicrous.
The latest Phase 3 study on MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD showed 71.2 per cent of participants in the MDMA therapy group (three eight-hour sessions of MDMA therapy followed by integration) no longer met the criteria for PTSD compared to the 47.6 per cent in the placebo with therapy group (which indicates, in part, the effectiveness of Lykos Therapeutics’ rigorous psychotherapy protocol). In a bipartisan letter to President Biden in August, lawmakers of all stripes expressed serious concern for the PTSD-rooted suicide epidemic in the veterans community (over 20 a day on average) and the promise of MDMA therapy as a treatment for severe PTSD.
RFK, Jr has expressed support for increasing such profoundly life-changing root-cause therapies for those struggling with mental illness, particularly veterans.
Does Mike Pence’s “conservative” advocacy group really have a problem with that?
As for the other apparently self-explanatory criticism of RFK, Jr — his support for “wellness farms” (something he has not advocated specific policy on since his alliance with Trump and the election win and only ever supported in a documentary released last June) – I will highlight quotes from this comprehensive recent article in the New York Times:
“We’re going to build hundreds of healing farms where American kids can reconnect to America’s soil, where they can learn the discipline of hard work that rebuilds self-esteem and where they can master new skills,” he continued. [...]
At drug rehabilitation farms, he has said, residents would grow organic food, receive training in trade skills and “learn to get re-parented.” Cellphones would be prohibited. Residents could remain as long as they wanted. The farms could also be available to young people who no longer wished to take anti-depressants or medications such as Adderall, which is used to treat ADHD. [...]
The typical stay is 60 days, said Mr Guinn, a former kindergarten special-education teacher. The men learn how to tend to livestock, operate tractors and repair barns. Referring to working on the farm as “therapeutic gardening,” Mr Guinn drew an analogy between weeding, digging and planting and the hard work of addiction recovery. The day also includes meditation, 12-step meetings and yoga.
Wow, yoga, meditation, and immersion in nature – not that these modalities have been used for centuries across cultures!
Does this sound like some insane, kooky idea?
Or a refreshing departure from the psychiatric establishment – which is intertwined with Big Pharma – that almost never cures the root-cause of addiction, such as trauma, lifestyle factors, and a lack of meaning and spiritual purpose?
Once again, RFK, Jr has made no commitments to legislation on holistic mental health programs. Yet, Mike Pence’s advocacy group chose to spotlight this in their absurd one-page letter, seemingly grasping for reasons to oppose him reflexively, all while disregarding his stated policy positions since the election and his nomination to lead HHS.
Let’s hope he is confirmed to lead the nation in combating the chronic disease epidemic and mental health crisis which mainstream medicine and Big Pharma have made worse.
Republished from the author’s Substack by the Brownstone Institute.
