“Trump really could empower RFK Jr. to wreck public health” proclaims the headline in Vox. “RFK Jr. Wants to Reshape US Health Policy. Good Luck With That” mocks a banner in Wired.
Likewise, the Wall Street Journal joined the frenzy, noting that “industry, doctors, and their supporters in Congress probably will resist Kennedy’s unconventional health ideas.” The alarmist reporting exposes the strategy to discredit Kennedy, claiming he’s a “conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic” who supports “dubious and unproven therapies,” and if Trump follows his dangerous agenda, “preventable diseases like measles and polio could make a comeback.”
These hit pieces, the first two dropping a week before Trump’s victory, were a red light flashing the abject fear of the revolving-door lobbyists and their corporate media allies over the prospect of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ending the K-Street scam that has led to the capture of our federal agencies by the very industries they are supposed to be regulating.
The palpable fear crosses party lines. As the Washington Post notes: “The prospect of Kennedy holding any senior administration role has increasingly alarmed public health leaders and federal workers who say that he should not be allowed anywhere near the nation’s public health infrastructure.” The reason for the dread: Kennedy’s goal of liberating the federal agencies from the grip that corporate and financial interests, from Big Pharma to Big Food, have exerted over them for decades. He’s Public Enemy Number One in the eyes of the lobbyists and bureaucrats who have been complicit in the continuing degradation of American health.
Kennedy has insisted that he would do nothing to prevent access to vaccines; he only pledged to carry out the safety studies that the pharmaceutical industry has prevented the health agencies from conducting with objectivity. Thus, armed with “informed consent,” Americans could weigh the risks and make the decisions for themselves and their children without compulsion. That’s a welcomed change from the current regime of a federally decreed vaccine schedule for children, enforced via hospital and school mandates.
Ironically, the same health establishment—sounding alarms about potential harms resulting from Trump giving RFK Jr. a central role in ending the conflicts of interest determining health policy in the United States—remains utterly silent about exploding autism rates among children in recent decades, the mental health crisis and soaring rates of teens on mood-altering prescription drugs, and a new USDA study revealing that a shocking 38 percent of teens now suffer from pre-diabetes. The same crowd panicking over the alleged dangers to public health were RFK Jr. able to remove conflicts of interest in the system show absolutely no interest in determining the cause of our epidemic of chronic childhood disease in this country.
While skepticism about the oversized influence of the pharmaceutical industry used to be standard on the political left, the Democratic Party is now the locus of pro-Big Pharma propagandizing. The COVID pandemic, coupled with a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, seemed to change that skeptical attitude virtually overnight, to the point that today we take it for granted that the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the latest unsafe and ineffective Pharma product will be found on the left.
We should therefore not be surprised by liberals taking potshots at RFK Jr.’s planned reforms. Zeke Emanuel, a key architect of Obamacare and COVID lockdown advocate, warns that “appointing RFK Jr. to a major public health leadership role could have serious and damaging consequences…making him a disastrous choice.” Dr. Paul Offit, a critic of Kennedy’s who had a leading role in amplifying Dr. Fauci’s COVID measures, cautions that “his science denialism makes him the wrong person for any kind of progress.”
But the Republican Party establishment forms a more insidious political opposition. Many in the old guard with strong ties to Big Pharma exerted an outsize role in the first Trump administration—they have much to lose in a disruption of the dysfunctional status quo. Now they are preemptively calling wolf: “It will be hard for a Trump administration to focus on other priorities, if government agencies are busy dealing with resource intensive and preventable measles and polio outbreaks” claims former US Surgeon General Jerome Adams, echoing the scaremongering on the pro-Pharma left. RFK Jr. shaping health policies raises “concerns about misinformation and harm,” he warns. Other GOP players are anonymously quoted in the Washington Post article urging “the Trump transition team to consider more traditional options to lead federal health agencies,” naming several options who toed the Big Pharma line in the first term.
The GOP opposition also includes members of the “conservative” punditry who hearken back to a pre-Trump brand of Republicanism. The institutionalist Right, already hostile to Trump for his apostasy from the post-Reagan “conservative” consensus in favor of mass immigration, globalist trade schemes that subsidized the mass movement of U.S. manufacturing overseas coupled with the easy importation of cheap foreign goods and labor, and interventionist adventurism abroad. Add to that a Make America Healthy Again agenda of directly tackling the corporate capture of government, and these self-appointed gatekeepers start seeing red more than they would at a MAGA rally. Curbing Big Pharma in setting policy and in buying off any potentially critical news coverage (through the intimidation factor of their enormous investment in advertising) is characterized as an attack on the sanctity of the Free Market.
While these political fossils may be failing to read the populist room after the electoral victory for MAGA and MAHA last week, no one should underestimate the ability of Big Food and Big Pharma—and their allies in the corporate-backed think tanks and media outlets—to gin up opposition to the very health agenda Kennedy has been given the mandate to advance. But the campaign may fail to gain political traction in the wake of the collapse in public trust for the healthcare establishment after the COVID debacle. Appeals to credentialed health experts no longer carry much weight with a public that was lied to and manipulated by this same crowd over the last four years. Many Americans are waking up to the fact that blind faith in medical and scientific experts lies at the very root of the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our once-healthy nation.
The time is opportune for a radical revamping of our corrupt health establishment, and RFK Jr. is just the right person at the right time under Trump to pull it off.
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Brian Robertson served for over a decade in the U.S. Senate as a senior policy advisor and worked for the Trump administration at both HHS and the Department of State.
I fail to see a roll for government in lecturing the public about its health at all except in the provision of impartial facts and information, which government is incapable of accomplishing. Increasing government intrusion into health, food, and every facet of life has had the opposite of the desired effect. Two modern trends prevent good health in Americans:
Big Food and the corporatization/concentration of food production and food processing. Government bureaucrats use the revolving door between government and industry to feather their nests instead of providing the expected regulatory oversight needed have resulted in concentrations in the food industry. The Great Costco Butter Fiasco is but one example of hundreds of thousands of completely absurd regulatory mandates necessitating the destruction of perfectly sound products for reasons having nothing to do with flaws, contamination, while the same regulatory bodies ignore the proliferation of high fructose corn syrup in everything from ketchup to Ritz crackers. High fructose corn syrup causes diabetes and obesity, yet it is not banned in food products? All of that traces to another government intrusion into farming and production of corn and wheat at the expense of other crops. Government subsidies distort every industry and the best thing we can do as a country is to shoehorn the federal government into its original purpose: guardian of our liberties and defense against invasion armies (which it now organizes).
Poor land use/zoning allowing for massive tract home developments with no yards, no public spaces, no parks and absolutely no recreational opportunities. A golf course is not “green space” and yet, many planning offices count them as such. Americans need space. They need to be able to get outdoors without a 5 hour drive to a state or national park somewhere. Even the simple act of walking to a store or just for pleasure has disappeared from the country as a sacrifice to the car gods. Sidewalks disappeared from new development. Garages now take front and center in almost all home design. Crapitecture is real and it’s destroying Americans’ health as much as Big Pharma!
Yes, most of the problems are generic to all of government. Government does what it should not be doing and doesn’t do what it should be doing. Less is more and less is what was originally designed. After all when anything becomes government it becomes close to immortal. The private sector survives on merit. Fascism is a government, private sector hybrid. It is designed to support what might otherwise be weak. Original intentions made a lot of sense. It’s amazing how stupid we have allowed ourselves to become since the 18th century.
You would love Savannah, GA. Every other block is set aside as a park.
The food pyramid that most of us grew up with was not based on scientific fact, it was a favor from a person in government to a friend who had a theory. All those who remember when, according to the experts, eggs were bad, avocados would kill you and butter was the root of all evil, please raise your hands.
Turns out, the majority of recommendations regarding food from the experts & our government are wrong and are the results of poorly-designed research models funded by private sector groups with their own agendas. Add agency watchdogs who are, quite frankly, not particularly good at their jobs nor knowledgeable about the subject of their scrutiny & corrupt to boot and you have the current state of our food supply & pharmaceutical industry.
There are a number of areas where I strongly disagree with RFK Jr but the idea that Big Pharma & Big Food are significant contributors to the overall poor physical and mental health of this country is not one of them. And if those sectors had nothing to hide, I don’t think the wailing & gnashing of teeth would be quite so loud.
I still follow the guidance of my father, who ironically enough, was a chemical formulator in the pharmaceutical industry in the 60s & 70s when it comes to lifestyle choices-- everything in moderation, eat as wide a variety of foods as you can, food cravings can often point out micronutrient deficiency if you pay attention to them, the human body was designed to be in motion and the closer what you eat resembles what came out of the ground or off the hoof, the better it is for you. It’s worked so far
I spent time in France when I was younger. They would never think of food the way we do, and never eschewed butter, or eggs and certainly not wine, even with lunch. I did not encounter morbidly obese people there. Your father was a very wise man, and clearly the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Unfortunately, like the meat processing industry, four companies control 60% of the global seed market. That results in broccoli which is half as nutritious as the broccoli cultivated a half century ago.
I loved Portland, Oregon, too, with abundant parks, but that city had a “City Beautiful” parks plan developed in 1903. Of course nothing replaces sane government and Portland lost that a very long time ago.