Trump’s Health Secretary Pick Is Crowd-Sourcing Health Treatments
The nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services is open-sourcing cures from anyone with a song.The FAQ for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” website features a relatively banal assortment of questions, from how to troubleshoot merchandising orders to how to stop recurring donations to RFK Jr.’s defunct presidential campaign. But among the bullet points hides a strange prompt that one wouldn’t expect from a man on the cusp of overseeing the nation’s health policies: an invitation to email him whatever medical therapies you’ve got lying around.If you “have a cure for something,” the website reads, “please send an email to info@teamkennedy.com.”The request plays into Kennedy’s larger conspiratorial ideas on modern medicine, effectively equating old wives’ tales and snake oil elixirs with thoroughly researched and studied science-backed treatments.Kennedy—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist who doesn’t believe that AIDS is caused by HIV, insists that WiFi causes cancer, and has shared he has brain-eating worms in his head—has promised to completely reshape America’s approach to public health.Under Trump’s helm, Kennedy has sworn to remove fluoride from all public water systems—reversing a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association. During the “plandemic,” Kennedy likened 2020 vaccination efforts to the Nazi testing on “Gypsies and Jews,” referring to the jab as “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare.” As part of Trump’s Cabinet, Kennedy reportedly has plans to strip not just the Covid vaccine but older, irrefutably effective vaccines from the market, as well.But Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracies aren’t just easily refutable hogwash—they’ve caused legitimate, real-world harm. Prior to a deadly measles outbreak on the Pacific islands of Samoa in 2019, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines, sending the nation’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles—an illness that was declared eliminated by the United States in 2000 thanks to advancements in modern medicine (read: vaccines)—as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases, from rabies to polio and smallpox, from our collective culture—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.
The nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services is open-sourcing cures from anyone with a song.
The FAQ for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” website features a relatively banal assortment of questions, from how to troubleshoot merchandising orders to how to stop recurring donations to RFK Jr.’s defunct presidential campaign. But among the bullet points hides a strange prompt that one wouldn’t expect from a man on the cusp of overseeing the nation’s health policies: an invitation to email him whatever medical therapies you’ve got lying around.
If you “have a cure for something,” the website reads, “please send an email to info@teamkennedy.com.”
The request plays into Kennedy’s larger conspiratorial ideas on modern medicine, effectively equating old wives’ tales and snake oil elixirs with thoroughly researched and studied science-backed treatments.
Kennedy—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist who doesn’t believe that AIDS is caused by HIV, insists that WiFi causes cancer, and has shared he has brain-eating worms in his head—has promised to completely reshape America’s approach to public health.
Under Trump’s helm, Kennedy has sworn to remove fluoride from all public water systems—reversing a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association.
During the “plandemic,” Kennedy likened 2020 vaccination efforts to the Nazi testing on “Gypsies and Jews,” referring to the jab as “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare.” As part of Trump’s Cabinet, Kennedy reportedly has plans to strip not just the Covid vaccine but older, irrefutably effective vaccines from the market, as well.
But Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracies aren’t just easily refutable hogwash—they’ve caused legitimate, real-world harm. Prior to a deadly measles outbreak on the Pacific islands of Samoa in 2019, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines, sending the nation’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles—an illness that was declared eliminated by the United States in 2000 thanks to advancements in modern medicine (read: vaccines)—as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.
Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases, from rabies to polio and smallpox, from our collective culture—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.
