With this pick for responsibility over health and food safety, things could get mediaeval fast.
Reading at the weekend that Robert F. Kennedy Jr had been promised oversight of health and food safety in the all-too-probable event of a second Donald Trump administration nearly caused the Back Page’s toast to go down the wrong way, making us a casualty before his tenure has even begun.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump told one of his rallies, and “wild” sounds about right.
After running first for the Democrat nomination then as an independent candidate, RFK Jr. agreed in July to drop out of the presidential race as his campaign threatened to divert Trump voters, on the promise of a significant and preferably health-related role in government.
The Washington Post reports that he’d more likely be some sort of White House health czar, overseeing a range of agencies, than hold any post so official it required Senate endorsement, such as health secretary.
In this made-up new role and under the banner of MAHA – Make America Healthy Again – RFK Jr promises nothing less than “to end the chronic disease epidemic” and bring government health agencies back “to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science”.
Here’s an incomplete list of what this scion of the sadly diminished Kennedy dynasty believes:
- covid was a bioweapon designed to target caucasians and Black people while sparing Jews and Chinese people;
- Dr Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates exaggerated the pandemic to sell vaccines;
- ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are good for treating covid;
- childhood vaccines cause autism;
- prescription antidepressants like Prozac cause school shootings;
- mobile phones and wifi cause cancer;
- fluoride is a “dangerous neurotoxin”.
On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease. President…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 2, 2024
He will also end the Food and Drug Administration’s “war on public health”:
FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 25, 2024
Which, barring exercise and vitamins, which we didn’t know were aggressivly suppressed by the FDA, is as handy a list of pseudomedical fads as you’re likely to find this side of a Mind Body Spirit Festival.
Then there’s his whole seed oils thing.
Then there’s his whole brain worm thing.
But how, you ask, can we argue with evidence like this, posted on Twitter by a supporter (congratulations Dr Chant, sorry we missed your ascension to “Australia Health Minister”):
The scariest thing isn’t any of this – it’s that, considering the policy rollercoaster that Trump is likely to take Americans and the rest of the reluctant world on if he wins this week, little blips like the return of polio or skyrocketing measles may not even be worth mentioning.
Send brain worms and story tips to penny@medicalrepublic.com.au.
