Public health experts are concerned that, if confirmed, Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – Robert F Kennedy Jr – could upend access to pharmaceutical drugs in favor of more experimental treatments.
Kennedy, who the president-elect picked earlier this month, has repeatedly expressed distrust for pharmaceuticals, and criticized the FDA for its “aggressive suppression of psychedelics”. On his podcast, he called the US “the sickest country in the world”, blaming its healthcare system for devoting billions to “the pills and the potions and the powders rather than on actually getting people healthy, building their immune systems”.
Kennedy is a surprising choice for a number of reasons. He’s an attorney who lacks government public health experience and has criticized Trump harshly during his own independent presidential campaign.
What, as opposed to the secretary of the Department of HHS under Biden?
But, like Trump’s other cabinet picks, Kennedy has expressed a conspiratorial mistrust for the agency he has been tapped to run. Matt Gaetz, who had been tapped to become attorney general before withdrawing himself from consideration on Thursday, believes the January 6 insurrection was a government sham intended to cover a stolen election while Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s national intelligence pick, has parroted Russian propaganda about US intelligence.
Kennedy has likewise promoted conspiracy theories about the healthcare system he would oversee, including the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Even the New York Post, which has praised Kennedy in the past, warned in an editorial board opinion that Kennedy’s confirmation would be disastrous for public health, citing a 2023 interview when “he told us with full conviction that all America’s chronic health problems began in one year in the 1980s.”
Except he’s distanced himself from comments about vaccines causing autism, plus he’s never been against vaccines – he just believes in taking a holistic approach.
[…] During his campaign, Kennedy repeatedly villainized Adderall and SSRIs, and claimed that, if elected, he would legalize cannabis and use the tax revenue to create “wellness farms” where “we’re going to repair people” with addiction, including to “psychiatric drugs” such as “Adderall”. People who rely on Adderall and SSRIs are worried Kennedy might criminalize their medications.
This is, of course, pure fear mongering. Oh, and I thought the left was all for legalising cannabis?
[…] While traditionally, HHS defers to agencies such as the FDA, “there may be instances where they have the authority to override agencies.”
Ramachandran explained that Kennedy would face legal challenges if he attempted to change the legal status of Adderall, for example, but that he is an expert in liability law and theoretically, he could do it.
More scare mongering.
Ramachandran is especially concerned that Kennedy will overturn recent FDA decisions he has criticized: in 2020, the FDA pulled hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment, citing safety concerns and lack of evidence. This year, the agency rejected Lykos Therapeutics’ MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. Some trial participants described adverse effects, including suicidal thoughts and attempts, which they attributed to the trial, but which they say Lykos hid in their clinical trial results – including phase 2 trial results originally published in the journal Psychopharmacology. Psychopharmacology retracted those results as well as two other papers this year by MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which founded Lykos and conducted the trials). That earlier 2015 Phase 2 trial was already plagued with ethical issues, including a sexual relationship between a therapist and a trial participant, who alleged it was assault. MAPS released a statement condemning this conduct in 2019, four years after it happened. Notably, MDMA increases suggestibility.
As far as I know, there was a suicide attempt by one of those participants but it was unrelated to the trials. MAPS/Lykos did stuff up: they should have had measures in place to prevent what was alleged to have happened. As for MDMA increasing suggestibility, this is the first time I’ve heard that it does. I know quite a lot about MDMA and have taken it numerous times. While MDMA does change consciousness, it does not impair judgement and does not put you in a hypnotic state.
Oh, and the reason why the FDA rejected Lykos Therapeutics’ MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD was because it was not possible for the trials to be double-blind trials: participants would know when they’ve been given MDMA and when they haven’t (the FDA was criticised for having double standards.)
Neşe Devenot, a bioethics researcher affiliated with Johns Hopkins University and the psychedelic harm reduction non-profit Psymposia, organized opposition to Lykos’s treatment. Their research, which has not yet been published, found “the therapy component was based on pseudoscience very similar to Facilitated Communication,” a discredited technique ostensibly intended to help disabled people communicate, that actually gives their “facilitator” power to speak for them.
Hoo boy, where do I start? ‘Not yet published’ means not put through the wringer yet. MDMA-assisted therapy based on talking through a traumatic event is a valid therapeutic technique. MDMA dampens the fear response, allowing patients to go over traumatic events where it would normally be too painful to do so.
This article was amended on 26 November 2024 to clarify that references to suggested adverse effects of the MAPS-sponsored Lykos trials were as described by some participants, and to include a response from Lykos. It was also clarified that the ethical issues concerning a sexual relationship and alleged assault arose in the 2015 Phase 2 trial; a link to a statement in response from MAPS was added.
In other words: ‘We got caught out’.
This has to be one of the most appalling pieces of journalism I’ve read in a long time, even given that it’s from the Guardian.
If Harris had won and Kennedy were part of her team there is no doubt that the Guardian would be praising him and writing about how he’s going to shake up Big Pharma.
