Topic: The Dune Worm, Junk Science, and Messing With The Meds

[Firestarter]

I knew that fool RFK JR would get appointed to the Health shit. I knew our country was going down the toilet, and that Orange Cheetolini would appoint that Worm-Eating-Brain heroin addict to be in charge of our health.

That overly cooked idiot, is wanting to come for the antidepressants, and other drugs, like mood stabilizers and antipsychotics. I take the latter. That gross, greasy, ignorant sack of dogshit, is going to cause a massive mental health crisis if he gets his way.

I'm taking it to it's own thread cause we got to track this. That idiot thinks these drugs cause the mass shootings. This guy breaks down the insanity. Talks about vaccines too.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrE9nkuPqZQ

[Firestarter]

A little more on this:

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5276898/rfk-drugs-addiction-overdose-hhs-confirmation-trump

RFK Jr. says he'll fix the overdose crisis. Critics say his plan is risky
January 29, 20257:00 AM ET

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talks about the journey that led to his growing focus on health and wellness — and ultimately to his confirmation hearings this week for U.S. secretary of health and human services — it begins not with medical training or a background in research, but with his own addiction to heroin and other drugs.




"I became a drug addict when I was 15 years old," Kennedy said last year during an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman. "I was addicted for 14 years. During that time, when you're an addict, you're living against conscience ... and you kind of push God to the peripheries of your life."

Kennedy now credits his faith; 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous-style programs, which also have a spiritual foundation; and the influence of a book by philosopher Carl Jung for helping him beat his own opioid addiction.

If confirmed as head of the Department of Health and Human Services after Senate hearings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, Kennedy would hold broad sway over many of the biggest federal programs in the U.S. tackling addiction: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

While campaigning for the White House last year, Kennedy, now 71 years old, laid out a plan to tackle the United States' devastating fentanyl and overdose crisis, proposing a sprawling new system of camps or farms where people experiencing addiction would be sent to recover.

"I'm going to bring a new industry to [rural] America, where addicts can help each other recover from their addictions," Kennedy promised, during a film on addiction released by his presidential campaign. "We're going to build hundreds of healing farms where American kids can reconnect with America's soil."

Some addiction activists — especially those loyal to the 12-step faith- and values-based recovery model — have praised Kennedy's approach and are actively campaigning for his confirmation.

"RFK Jr is in recovery. He wants to expand the therapeutic community model for recovering addicts," Tom Wolf, a San Francisco-based activist who is in recovery from fentanyl and opioid addiction, wrote on the social media site X. "I support him for HHS secretary."

A focus on 12-step and spirituality, not medication and science-based treatment
But Kennedy's approach to addiction care is controversial, described by many drug policy experts as risky, in part because it focuses on the moral dimension of recovery rather than modern, science-based medication and health care.

"He clearly cares about addicted people," said Keith Humphreys, a leading national drug policy researcher at Stanford University. "But in terms of the plans he's articulated, I have real doubts about them."

According to Humphreys, Kennedy's plan to build a network of farms or camps doesn't appear to include facilities that offer proper medical treatments for seriously ill people facing severe addiction.

"That's a risk to the well-being of patients, and I don't see any merit in doing that," Humphreys said.

"I think [Kennedy's plan] would be an enormous step backward," said Maia Szalavitz, an author and activist who used heroin and other drugs before entering recovery.

"We have spent the last 15, 20 years trying to move away from treating addiction as a sin rather than a medical disorder," she said. "We've spent many years trying to get people to take up these medications that we know cut your death risk in half, and he seems to want to go backwards on all that."

Health
U.S. overdose deaths continue a rapid decline
The vast majority of researchers, doctors and front-line addiction treatment workers agree that scientific data shows medications like buprenorphine, methadone and naloxone are game changers when it comes to treating the deadliest street drugs, including fentanyl and heroin.

The Biden administration moved aggressively to make medical treatments far more affordable and widely available. Many experts believe those programs are factors in the dramatic national drop in overdose deaths that began in 2023.

Kennedy, who studied law and political science, not health care, before becoming an activist on subjects ranging from pharmaceuticals and vaccines to the American diet, has remained largely silent on the subject of science-based medical treatments for opioid addiction.

His campaign film included a scene that appeared to blame methadone — a prescription medication that has been used to treat opioid addiction since the 1970s — for some of the high-risk street-drug use visible on the streets of San Francisco.

In public statements, Kennedy has also repeated the inaccurate claim that the addiction and overdose crisis isn't improving. In fact, fatal overdoses have dropped nationally by more than 20% since June 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, falling below 90,000 deaths in a 12-month period for the first time in half a decade.

"What we have mostly heard from Kennedy is a skepticism broadly of medications and a focus on the 12-step and faith-based therapy," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on drug policy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

"That appeals to a lot of crucial groups that have supported President Trump in the election. But we know what is fundamental for recovery and stabilization of people's lives and reducing overdose is access to medications," Felbab-Brown said. "Unfortunately, many of the 12-step programs reject medications."

She's worried that under Kennedy's leadership, the Department of Health and Human Services could shrink or eliminate funding for science-based medical treatment and instead focus on spirituality-based approaches that appear to help a relatively small percentage of people who experience addiction.

Kennedy's views on other science-based treatments, including vaccines, have sparked widespread opposition among medical researchers and physicians.

Kennedy boosts an Italian model for addiction recovery that has faced controversy
Another concern about Kennedy's addiction proposals focuses on his interest in a program for drug treatment created in Italy in the 1970s.

"I've seen this beautiful model that they have in Italy called San Patrignano, where there are 2,000 kids who work on a large farm in a healing center ... and that's what we need to build here," Kennedy said during a town hall-style appearance on the cable channel NewsNation last year.

According to Kennedy's plan, outlined in interviews and social media posts, Americans experiencing addiction would go to San Patrignano-style camps voluntarily, or they could be pressured or coerced into accepting care, with a threat of incarceration for those who refuse care.

But the San Patrignano program has been controversial and was featured in a 2020 Netflix documentary that included images of people with addiction allegedly being held in shackles or confined in cages. The farm's current leaders have described the documentary as biased and unfair.

RFK Jr. made $856,559 in referral fees from the law firm Wisner Baum, which is suing Merck over claims its HPV vaccine caused cervical cancer, according to new filings with the Office of Government Ethics.

RFK Jr. plans to keep a financial stake in lawsuits against the drugmaker Merck
Kennedy, meanwhile, has continued to use the program as a model for the camps he would like to build in the United States.

"I'm going to build these rehab centers all over the country, these healing camps where people can go, where our children can go and find themselves again," he said.

Szalavitz, the author and activist who is herself in recovery, noted that the Italian program doesn't include science-based medical care, including opioid treatment medications. She said Kennedy's fascination with the model reflects a lack of medical and scientific expertise.

"It really is great to include people who have personal experience of something like, say, addiction in policymaking. But you don't become an addiction expert simply because you're someone who struggled with addiction," Szalavitz said. "You have to engage with the research literature. You have to understand more beyond your own narrow anecdote. Otherwise you're going to wind up doing harm to people."

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/rfk-plan-america-healthy-again-110006190.html

RFK's plan to make America healthy again? Send people with mental health conditions to farms
Amanda Marcotte
Wed, February 19, 2025 at 3:00 AM PST7 min read

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "make America healthy again" motto is meant to convey that he is sincerely interested in helping Americans avoid getting sick in the first place. During his Senate confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, all Kennedy and his newfound Republican supporters could talk about was how in love he is with "prevention." "We should be moving to value-based care, which includes prevention," Kennedy confidently declared. The committee chair, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, described Kennedy as "passionate" about "preventing and managing chronic disease, improving health outcomes, and reducing health costs."

It should have always been self-evident that Kennedy is not pro-prevention, since he built his career as a vaccine denialist. Yet much of the press seems to have been snookered. So it's especially noteworthy that Kennedy kicked off his new role with a broad attack on drugs people use to prevent depression, diabetes, and other such conditions.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that echoes Kennedy's lie that he wants to "make America healthy again." HHS is ordered to "assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs." But it's clear from the context that no good faith assessment is intended, as the order repeatedly cites a preordained conclusion that there is an "over-utilization of medication" and an "over-reliance on medication and treatments."

Kennedy has long had it out for these drugs, and repeatedly argues that the only prevention most people need is better willpower. Kennedy occasionally tosses a red herring about "environmental" causes of illness, but mostly he frames the issue as a matter of personal failing, focusing on people's diets and exercise habits as the "root causes" of nearly all illnesses. He regards anti-depressants as an "addictive drug," falsely claiming people have "a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they have getting off of heroin."

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Instead of letting people have drugs that keep them healthy, Kennedy's "solution" looks very much like punishing them for perceived personal failures by putting people into labor camps, which he euphemistically calls "wellness farms." As Mother Jones reported in July, people would be relegated to these "farms," where they would be denied their prescription medications. They would also be barred from having cell phones, computers, or other means to contact the outside world. They would be put to work full-time, presumably for little or no pay, growing organic food. He claims this process would "reparent" supposedly broken people, again framing mental health issues as not a medical issue, but a personal failure.

The racism underlying this vision of labor camps isn't just vibes, either. Kennedy has explicitly argued that Black kids need to "get reparented," ideally in a "rural area" where they are denied most contact with family and friends.

"Treating" Black youth by making them do unpaid agricultural work isn't exactly subtle, as far as racist fantasies go. This is why it's so frustrating to see mainstream journalists, as Reuters did Friday, blithely argue there's a "clash" between Kennedy's "long to-do list" and Trump's alleged eagerness to cut back on federal spending. When it comes to Trump's fascist inclinations to "purify" a country he repeatedly describes as having "bad genes" and "poison" in its "blood," price is no object. Trump has been bragging about his plans to create a concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay for immigrants he wishes to purge. While money is being illegally slashed from research, foreign aid, and regulatory agencies, Trump openly seeks to boost funding and other resources to his plan to deport millions of immigrants, both documented and undocumented.

Trump is hyper-focused on the racial "purity" aspects of his fascistic vision, but Kennedy's contempt for people he views as physically unfit fits well with the larger MAGA agenda. Fascism is always an ideology based on the belief that modern society has become weak and degenerate, and that the cure is purging certain people. Along with racialized minorities, fascists typically target queer people, so-called cosmopolitans who have feminist or socially liberal views, and people with disabilities. Kennedy doesn't even bother to hide his dehumanizing view of those he deems "unhealthy," a group he estimates is over half of Americans. "A healthy person has a thousand dreams," he declared during his hearing. "A sick person has only one," he added, reducing those with diabetes or depression to people who have no lives. He didn't call people with imperfect health the "Untermenschen," but the implication lingered throughout the hearing, as he repeatedly framed them as ignorant, lazy, and parasitical. As Rebecca Traister pointed out in New York Tuesday, "The administration has even added an 'A' to its DEIA code, indicating 'abilities' for extra-eugenicist oomph."

Kennedy's ugly attitudes keep getting sane-washed by the press as merely an interest in "promoting" healthy eating, which is nonsense on every level, starting with his belief that beef tallow is somehow better for your heart than olive oil. But it's also important to put his views in the larger context of what is increasingly looking like an all-out assault by the Trump administration on the lives of people they view as "weak" members of society.

Over the weekend, tech billionaire and shadow president Elon Musk launched a full-blown attack on Social Security. He and his "Department of Government Efficiency" are demanding access to the private records of all Americans held by Social Security offices. Musk claims Social Security is "the biggest fraud in history," and is pushing false claims that millions of people are drawing checks illegally. This is both obviously false and has been repeatedly debunked, but Musk persists, making it unavoidable that this is a lie instead of mere confusion. The purpose of the lie isn't too hard to suss out, either. Musk is building up a pretext to stop payment on checks that many elderly people need to survive. Characterizing their identities as "waste" and "fraud" works like Kennedy's disparagement of disabled people: It dehumanizes anyone fascists view as sapping the "strength" of American society. This goes hand-in-hand with Musk's obsession with raising birth rates and his fixation on the neo-Nazi "Great Replacement" theory. It's like Musk took a bunch of ketamine, watched nothing but Leni Riefenstahl film reels of blonde musclemen marching in parades to illustrate Aryan fitness, and mistook that for a reality he could will into being.

There's no need to take Kennedy's banal chatter about "healthy food" at face value, and not just because every American is educated in the concept of a "balanced diet" from well before they can eat solid food. Scratch the surface even a millimeter, and it's evident Kennedy has a hostile, even eliminationist attitude towards anyone he has decided doesn't meet his esoteric standard of physical fitness. The food gambit is so that, when health care is taken from people, he can say it's their own fault for not taking his "advice" on how unpaid farm labor is the cure for bipolar disorder. It's fascist rhetoric rebranded as "wellness."

[Firestarter]

So obviously per the third post, we can see the RFK JR madness, to take meds away, and somehow order and force a bunch of people with mental illness into not wellness camps, labor camps.

Now, think about it. If we kicked a bunch of immigrants out of the country, to then, sequester a bunch of folks with mental illness to farms to grow produce? Sounds like to me, they want to use the mentally ill as slave labor, and pay shit wages.

And his weird talk on black people and reparenting kids, absolutely racist rhetoric. So you are saying black people make their kids mental ill, let's take em away, and work them on farms?

And course, cut them off from phones and things, disconnect from outside world. Yeah, can't hear their cries for help!

So this flowerer, as far as I am concerned, is just as unhinged as the Orange Sack of Shit. I get his game here. If we kick out all those immigrants, and put together a force of mentally ill or homeless, we save on the meds, and we got forced and cheap labor. Absolutely stunning what this stupid flowerer is about.

[Firestarter]

And course right now, a bunch of farmers are about to lose their farms cause of USAID being crushed, and coming tarriffs. So then big corporations can come in, swoop up these farms, turn them into "wellness camps" which are basically, slave labor camps. Put a bunch of mentally ill folks in these farms, work them to the bone and call it "rehabilitation."

That's the game. I wasn't born yesterday.

[Firestarter]

She laid it out. God I hate Piers.


https://youtube.com/shorts/6r3-mZ25sDI?si=AskiZCMCWnuyEKLT

[Firestarter]

This FOOL.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rfk-jr-really-away-adhd-152947023.html

Can RFK Jr. Really Take Away ADHD Medications?
Elizabeth Yuko
Sun, February 23, 2025 at 7:29 AM PST9 min read

A recent executive order has sparked widespread concern about the availability of medications treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a condition that affects more than 22 million Americans. Entitled “Establishing the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission,” the executive order has Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s fingerprints all over it, focusing on several of the pillars of his MAHA campaign, from increasing Americans’ life expectancy to fighting chronic illness.

But the recent wave of anxiety about ADHD medications largely stems from a line from the executive order calling on the soon-to-be-formed MAHA Commission to produce a report on children’s health “assess[ing] the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.” Stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin are commonly used to treat ADHD in adults and children, along with behavioral treatment. This attack on ADHD medication comes more than two years into a nationwide Adderall shortage, which has already made accessing the medication especially difficult.

The language used in the executive order was an immediate red flag for Max Wiznitzer, MD, a pediatric neurologist at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland and co-chair of the Professional Advisory Board at CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder). “When they use the word ‘threat,’ it automatically implies there’s something wrong with this treatment, and ignores the mounds of scientific evidence about the utility of the use of medication in conjunction with a multi-modal approach towards target management of ADHD,” he tells Rolling Stone.

Positioning ADHD medications as a “threat” is in line with some of Kennedy’s previous remarks about the treatment in the context of his plan for “wellness farms,” where “addicts” taking illegal and legal drugs — including Adderall — could grow and eat organic food, learn a trade, and “learn to get re-parented.”

So, do parents of children with ADHD and adults with the condition need to worry? Does Kennedy actually have the power to take away or restrict access to people’s medications? Rolling Stone spoke with medical and legal experts to find out what Kennedy does — and doesn’t — have the authority to do, and why this messaging on ADHD medications from the federal government is both stigmatizing and dangerous.

What does the executive order say about ADHD medications?
The MAHA Commission executive order focuses on the use of stimulants to treat children with ADHD. It begins by claiming that the “health burdens” of chronic conditions in children — including allergies, asthma, and fatty liver disease — “have continued to increase alongside the increased prescription of medication.” The example provided is ADHD: specifically, that 3.4 million children are currently on medication for the condition. That figure comes from a 2024 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study, which also indicates that the 3.4 million children ages three to 17 who are taking medication for ADHD represent 53.6 percent of the kids with the diagnosis.

Later, the executive order stipulates that the MAHA Commission — with Kennedy at the helm — has 100 days to submit a report assessing “the prevalence of and threat” posed by stimulants used to treat ADHD, as well as other mental health medications, including mood stabilizers and the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

“For now, the White House is only calling for an assessment of how these drugs are being administered and their impact on patients,” says Ana Santos Rutschman, a professor of law at Villanova University specializing in FDA law and policy, noting that the commission’s findings won’t be legally binding. In other words, the executive order “does not and cannot make a change in law, nor a change in the FDA’s approval of any medications,” says Elizabeth Y. McCuskey, professor of health law policy & management at Boston University. “Congress has set the procedures for that.”

The dangerous part of this executive order, Wiznitzer says, is that there’s a good chance that this report will be based on opinion, inaccurate facts, and preconceived notions rather than science. “When using the term ‘threat’ [in relation to ADHD medications], there’s a concern that they’re not going to be looking at this in an objective manner, but they’ve got a preset agenda that is to be addressed — and that’s not the scientific method,” he says. “The scientific method is asking a question in an unbiased manner and then investigating that question in order to come up with an answer.” This is problematic because the commission’s report(s) “will almost certainly be the policy basis for a couple of agencies to then take steps to make changes,” Rutschman tells Rolling Stone.

Plus, even if experts with appropriate training and expertise are appointed to the MAHA Commision, Kennedy’s still the one in charge. “Putting a secretary with zero epidemiological, medical, or scientific training or professional expertise in charge of studying and interpreting mountains of data is a cause for concern in itself,” McCuskey says. And if Kennedy were to say that ADHD medications aren’t medically necessary, that could create a conflict between the federal government and medical professionals and “make it a more chaotic environment for patients,” says Richard Pan, MD, a pediatrician who prescribes ADHD medications and former Democratic state lawmaker.

Does Kennedy have the power to ban ADHD medications?
Banning or restricting access to any medication currently used in the treatment of ADHD would have to involve the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which falls under and follows the policies of the Kennedy-led Department of Health and Human Services, Rutschman says. “These ADHD drugs have been approved by the FDA — which by law has to make a determination that a drug is safe and effective before a company can sell it,” she says. “Also by law, the FDA can withdraw approval or restrict distribution if new evidence suggests that an approved drug is not safe or effective.” So, banning or restricting access to these drugs would require some sort of FDA-initiated decision based on data raising concerns about a specific ADHD drug.

According to Rutschman, the MAHA Commission report itself wouldn’t be a sufficient source of this data; rather, it would need to come from several studies reflecting the current “scientific consensus” demonstrating that a specific ADHD drug was causing issues, or was not effective. “If the FDA makes a decision that does not reflect that consensus, then the decision could be challenged in court,” she says. Plus, as McCuskey points out, the FDA has to go through review processes and consider evidence before revoking the approval of a drug or imposing stricter prescribing or dispensing requirements.

Separately, the FDA can impose extra hoops to jump through or conditions for dispensing approved drugs, McCuskey says. One example of this is when the FDA established — and later removed — a restriction on the abortion medication mifepristone, requiring patients to take the pill inside the doctor’s office. But Kennedy can’t simply order the FDA to implement restrictions on ADHD medications: the FDA still has to go through the processes and produce the required justifications for these restrictions that Congress has defined.

“The Secretary absolutely can and certainly does influence FDA’s conduct and what it investigates, but he cannot dictate it,” McCuskey says. “There is cause for concern, but the administrative processes put in place by Congress and challengeable in court are designed to pump the brakes a bit on what any one political appointee can do to an approved drug.”

How else could this impact people taking ADHD medication?
Even if nothing comes from the executive order, the fact that it’s based on unfounded opinion rather than scientific fact is damaging in itself. “When executive orders are vague and not grounded in science, there’s a real disservice, because it’s undermining things that have been established to be true: like that ADHD exists, has profound impact on individuals, communities, countries, and their performance, [and] that it’s very treatable,” says Craig Surman, MD, director of the clinical and research program in adult ADHD at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Along the same lines, Surman’s concern is that people have access to reliable sources of scientific medical information so they can make informed decisions about their health and their children’s health. “I think it’s particularly concerning to be sowing any kind of distrust or confusion when there’s already quite a hurdle to clear for people to get good information,” he tells Rolling Stone. “There’s lots of misinformation about ADHD on TikTok, for example, and I would hope that the government can support entities that are conveying scientific information, because otherwise it’s all just guesswork and storytelling, and people don’t have access to treatments they need.”

Suggesting ADHD medication is a “threat” also casts a negative light on a treatment that for many has been life-changing. “For someone to stigmatize the medication after we’ve had all this positive feedback and these years and years and years of research showing us the benefits of what these medications can do for people, I think, is really to ignore the science,” Wiznitzer says. Casting doubt on the effectiveness of ADHD medication also does a disservice to people living with developmental disabilities, who may not be able to learn how to successfully manage the condition without medication, he adds.

Should access to stimulants be restricted, Surman is concerned that adults prescribed ADHD medications could begin self-medicating with alcohol, other substances, or “street” Adderall, which may be fake and contain fentanyl. “Having an FDA-sanctioned way for people to continue to function is pretty important,” he says.

So, what does this all mean for people living with ADHD? “Right now, I’d say don’t panic,” Pan says. “And hoarding medication probably is not going to be very productive. It’s unlikely that suddenly the medication is not approved, or that your health plan will say, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re not covering your ADHD medicine.’”

Even so, Wiznitzer says that it’s important to consider the impact that stigmatizing ADHD medication could have on the 22 million Americans living with the condition, as well as their families and society as a whole. “We know what happens when you don’t manage ADHD appropriately,” he says. “Productivity is down, there’s a greater risk for a negative impact on one’s health, a shortened life expectancy, increased suicide rate, and an increased chance of risk-taking behaviors, including substance use. Those are things that are not acknowledged by that executive order.”

[Firestarter]

America has not had a death due to measles in ten years. Death seems to follow RFK JR like in Samoa. I'll just let Roland drop it. I saw the letters MF and it warmed my heart.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkNmkJ0bUL8

[Firestarter]

We got a Measels outbreak in Texas, and many say RFK JR, while saying folks should "consider" vaccinations. This whole "it's a personal one" no, it's a matter of life and death, and also prevents unnecessary suffering. We have had the vaccine for years, you dimwit! But he seems to think a little Vitamin A will do the trick!

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/measles-texas-rfk-jr-response-vaccines-doctors-wary-rcna194510

Doctors are wary of Kennedy's response to measles outbreak
As cases in Texas keep rising, some say Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s latest statement is a 'wink and nod' to anti-vaccine groups.

March 4, 2025, 8:11 AM PST
By Juhania Edwards
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hesitant response to the Texas measles outbreak — hinting that vaccination is important, but never fully embracing it — has left many experts wondering: Does the nation's top health official support vaccines or not?

Kennedy, the Health and Human Services Secretary, wrote in an editorial published by Fox News on Sunday, that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine “is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease.”

Behind the scenes, however, Kennedy, a vocal, longtime vaccine skeptic, appears to be taking steps to minimizing the importance of vaccination. Under his leadership, two meetings to discuss next steps for vaccines were canceled. And he’s “collecting names of potential new members to put on a committee that recommends which vaccines Americans should get and when, according to people familiar with the matter,” The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, 158 measles cases had been confirmed in Texas, the state’s commissioner of the Department of State Health Services told state lawmakers Monday. Most of the sick people, including a young child who died, hadn’t been vaccinated against the virus.

Kennedy acknowledged in the editorial that measles — one of the most contagious viruses in the world — is especially risky to unvaccinated people. He stopped short of urging the public to get the MMR vaccine.

“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” Kennedy wrote.

Some pediatricians and public health experts have balked at the editorial, saying it was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to comfort his anti-vaccine supporters amid backlash after he appeared to downplay the outbreak during a Cabinet meeting at the White House last week.

“While he kind of gives some lip service to the vaccines,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, “the fact that he used phrases like ‘personal’ choice is a wink and a nod to the anti-vaccine movement. They know he’s their man.”

Dr. Molly O’Shea, a Michigan pediatrician and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the fact that Kennedy didn’t fully back vaccines is “concerning.”

“He certainly did not disparage vaccination in the way he worded it, but he did not come out with a strong statement of support for vaccination,” O’Shea said. “Vaccination is by far the most effective strategy at reducing morbidity and mortality from measles. That was not his go-to message.”

It’s a stark contrast in messaging from the previous Trump administration.

In 2019, when two measles outbreaks in New York threatened to reverse the United States' status of having eliminated measles, then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar didn’t mince words.

“Measles vaccines are among the most extensively studied medical products we have, their safety has been firmly established over many years,” Azar said in an April 2019 HHS statement.

He went on to say that “measles is not a harmless childhood illness, but a highly contagious, potentially life-threatening disease.”

At the time, Kennedy told members of the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit that he founded, that the MMR vaccine is worse “than the illness it’s pretending to prevent.” He didn't provide scientific evidence to back up the statement, flummoxing vaccine experts.

“Vaccination is far and away the most effective means to protect individuals and their communities against measles,” said Dr. Ofer Levy, director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. “If you want to get on top of this thing, that’s the answer.”

A spokesperson for HHS didn't respond to questions about Kennedy’s editorial.

The vitamin A theory
Kennedy’s editorial doubled down on a questionable treatment for measles: vitamin A.

“CDC has recently updated their recommendation supporting administration of vitamin A under the supervision of a physician for those with mild, moderate, and severe infection,” he wrote, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s true that vitamin A is sometimes given to help treat measles in low-income countries where malnutrition is a factor, according to the World Health Organization. Most people in the U.S., however, have normal levels of the vitamin and don’t need any kind of vitamin A supplementation. Too much, experts say, is toxic.

Vitamin A is fat-soluble, meaning it accumulates in the body rather than exiting through urination. That is, the more vitamin A you take, the more it accumulates in organs like the liver.

“You can easily overdose on vitamin A,” Dr. Ronald Cook, chief health officer at both the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock and the city’s Health Authority, said in an interview Friday. “It’s not to be used over the counter for anybody who says, ‘my kid has the sniffles. Maybe it’s measles.’ Don’t do that.”

Anti-vaccine influencers and organizations have rallied around vitamin A as protection against and treatment for measles for years. During outbreaks, anti-vaccine groups have organized drives to fundraise and send vitamin A to affected communities.

Adalja of Johns Hopkins said Kennedy’s references to vitamin A only serve to discourage the MMR vaccine among his followers.

“When RFK Jr. is talking about vitamin A, people are going to say, oh, that’s his code word that we should be doing that, not the MMR vaccine,” Adalja said.

[Firestarter]

Here is a couple of doctors breaking down RFK JR and his stupidness.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO76jSqnCB4