Let’s get one thing clear: the answer to venality and dodgy science is not equal and opposite venality and dodgy science. We’ve seen too much of that during the Covid pandemic, as the lockdowns-and-covid-vaccines-for-children fanatics went up against the equally fanatical hydroxychloroquine-and-ivermectin-cure-everything nutcases.
As the famous Family Guy meme goes: kids, kids… you’re both just awful. And few come more awful than Robert F Kennedy Jr.
This will, no doubt, have some Good Oil readers up in arms, because, Trump! Big Pharma! Which are two of the stupidest arguments in favour of Junior’s confirmation as Secretary of Health imaginable. Let’s get this straight: just because Trump is doing a buttload of really good things does not make him any more infallible than a mediaeval pope. Trump can make mistakes and nominate awful people: just look at his first term, or his personal pick of Oprah charlatan ‘Dr Oz’ to run in Pennsylvania.
And, sure, Big Pharma are deeply, deeply awful. But that doesn’t make Kennedy any better, just because he’s against them. It’s true, too, that Kennedy isn’t completely insane: his exhortations to encourage Americans to eat better and exercise more are worthy enough. But that doesn’t mean the bulk of his shtick isn’t complete and utter nutbaggery. David Icke makes some good points about the abuse of power by the elites – that doesn’t make the Lizard People from Venus real.
Just because RFK Jr advocates the laudable aim of making America healthy, doesn’t make his bullshit true. Some of the communists sincerely wanted to make everyone equal – how’d that work out, again?
Still, let’s look at what he actually believes. Then make up your minds.
He wants to clamp down on pesticides, limit pharmaceutical adverts targeting the public and to stop food stamps being spent on processed goods. He also wants to place greater emphasis on nutrition and clean living to stop Americans dying young.
That’s actually some pretty good stuff. I doubt many people would oppose those. The clampdown on pesticides may sound worrisome, but that’s because we’re used to such chemicals being well-regulated and absurdly safe. Certainly much safer than so-called ‘organic’ pesticides (yes, ‘organics’ use pesticides, too). The US food system does not operate quite the same way. There, new ingredients can be regularly added to food without notifying the federal drugs regulator (or the public). Dozens of pesticides are used in the US that are banned elsewhere.
But pesticides are also absolutely necessary to food production – at least, if you want to keep it cheap, plentiful, and nutritious. The scaremongering over most pesticides is exactly that: scaremongering by the scientifically illiterate.
Kennedy believes ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are driving obesity to record levels and fuelling chronic illness. Multiple studies have shown a link between UPFs and the risk of chronic disease, and rates of cancer, heart failure and autoimmune conditions are rising.
Improving nutrition is one way to combat this, he says, for example by stopping beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme (Snap) using food stamps to buy soda and processed foods, which accounts for 20 per cent of Snap spending. “It’s nonsensical,” Kennedy said in September.
He has called for greater federal funding of nutritional research and urged the government to reform farming subsidies, diverting funds towards making fruit and vegetables cheaper for consumers rather than subsidising crops such as soybean oil or high-fructose corn syrup, which are used in processed foods.
Kennedy has pledged to ban UPFs from school lunch programmes throughout the US and wants warning labels on junk food.
Again, hard to disagree.
His policy of restricting or banning pharmaceutical companies advertising to consumers is also worthy. The US is one of the few countries to allow this and Big Pharma exploits it with gusto: 30.7 per cent of advertising minutes on evening news programmes on the main US channels is dedicated to prescription medications.
Kennedy also wants legislators to “cap drug prices” for medicines such as Ozempic so companies cannot charge Americans “substantially more than Europeans pay”. To do this he will need to break the hold of the pharmaceutical lobby in Washington and persuade Republicans, who are not known for their love of big government, to regulate the sector.
Again, laudable stuff. But then it all starts to go crazy.
Kennedy has described fluoride as “industrial waste” and claimed that its presence in US water supplies was linked to arthritis, bone cancer and IQ loss.
Last year the National Institutes of Health’s toxicology programme determined “with moderate confidence” that there was a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in children. The agency based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the US recommended limit for drinking water.
Jim Dickinson, a professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Calgary, said multiple studies over the past 70 years had demonstrated the safety and effectiveness of fluoride in preventing tooth decay. “Removing it from water supplies would be a disaster,” he said.
Like many of the ultra-rich, Kennedy is also obsessed with ‘alternative medicine’ (including, by his own admission, self-medicating with heroin for decades). The only problem is that almost all of them are utter garbage that do nothing but take money from desperate people.
If Big Pharma is greedy and unconscionable, Big Alterna is just as bad, if not worse. At least some of Big Pharma’s stuff works.
But it’s on vaccines that Kennedy really makes it clear that that brain worm ate some pretty substantial part of his mind.
Kennedy today claims to be pro-vaccine and has assured the US public that he would not stop childhood vaccinations; he simply wants to make safety and efficacy data more available.
Except that’s clearly a lie. As late as last year, Kennedy was blithering that ‘there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective’. He also repeatedly parrots the long-debunked lie linking vaccines to autism.
He’s still doing it.
Robert F Kennedy Jr’s two-day Senate confirmation hearing should remove all doubt: He’s absolutely unfit to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
His testimony did nothing to change anyone’s minds about that.
Take his refusal to deny a link between vaccines and autism – despite mountains of scientific evidence refuting any such connections.
At this point, you may be stuttering, ‘But… but… the Covid vaccines!’ But here’s the thing: sure, they lied about the efficacy and safety of the Covid vaccines and rushed them to distribution without proper testing. Worse, they forced people, including those who absolutely didn’t need them, to take them. This is all true.
Although those championing Kennedy as Trump’s pick would do well to remember that most of that was at Trump’s behest and with his blessing. Anyone remember ‘Operation Warp Speed’? Hello?
In any case, that’s the Covid vaccines. It doesn’t apply to all vaccines, which are subjected to years of thorough testing before release. And they absolutely do not cause autism.
In fact, the activism of idiots like Kennedy is leading to a resurgence of deadly childhood illnesses that were all-but eradicated.
And you want this spoiled, indulged, loony, deeply creepy scion of the deeply creepy Kennedy clan to be in charge of America’s health?
