GLENDALE, ARIZONA – AUGUST 23: Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr and former … [+]
We’ve grown accustomed to provocative statements by the Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. So when he says that if elected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can “go wild on well being … go wild on the medicines” it appears designed to set off opponents and elicit a unfavorable emotional response. But on the identical time it should be taken significantly in gentle of what Kennedy now says, specifically that Trump has promised him “management” over public well being companies in America.
Recognized for espousing conspiracy theories associated to well being, notably vaccines, Kennedy seems to be angling for a cupboard position in a potential second Trump Administration, in line with NBC Information. Kennedy has talked about dismantling core features of sure companies beneath the Division of Well being and Human Companies, which he says are captured by companies just like the pharmaceutical corporations. Take, as an illustration, what Kennedy posted on X final week, warning the Meals and Drug Administration that its “aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, uncooked milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, [and] hydroxychloroquine” was about to finish.
The medication ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine caught my consideration, as they have been embroiled in a tradition struggle in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic that pitted unproven remedies towards confirmed measures, corresponding to vaccines.
However maybe extra ominously, the Covid-19 pandemic appears to have introduced out vaccine skeptics like Kennedy in full drive, not solely towards coronavirus vaccines but additionally conventional childhood immunizations, like these concentrating on polio, tetanus and measles.
From smallpox inoculations—which started within the late 18th century and ended when the illness was eradicated within the Nineteen Seventies—to mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, polio and measles immunizations, vaccinations have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prevented crippling and life-threatening sicknesses from occurring.
As an example, mass vaccination applications with single or mixture—measles, mumps and rubella—pictures started within the Nineteen Sixties and rapidly suppressed the unfold of measles in most developed international locations. The measles vaccine is “sterilizing,” which suggests it not solely prevents sickness, but additionally transmission.
Nonetheless, there have periodically been upticks in childhood vaccine hesitancy. In the UK, for instance, vaccination charges dipped within the early 2000s after false claims of a hyperlink between the MMR jab and autism have been posted within the media.
Andrew Wakefield’s marketing campaign within the U.Ok. and globally on the flip of the millennium to attach the MMR shot to autism offers an notorious illustration of how the anti-vaccine group operates. Whereas such claims have been unsupported by proof, Wakefield’s trusted place as a physician-scientist helped his assertions dominate headlines, leaving a legacy of hurt that persists even right now, lengthy after his work was uncovered as fraudulent.
Regardless of the debunking of Wakefield’s allegations, Kennedy turned a outstanding American determine misinforming the general public by persevering with to take care of that there’s a hyperlink between childhood vaccines and autism. He joined the Youngsters’s Well being Protection group ten years in the past as a founding member of its board. Later he turned its chairman. CHD is accused of pushing discredited conspiracy theories linking situations like autism with vaccines and different environmental components. As just lately as August 2023, Kennedy went on Joe Rogan’s standard podcast insisting on there being a connection.
And on Rogan’s reveals and elsewhere Kennedy has backed quite a few Covid-19 vaccine conspiracy theories. In December 2021, Kennedy went as far as to name the Covid-19 vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made,” citing deaths reported to the Vaccine Opposed Occasion Reporting System. Such reviews don’t represent documented proof {that a} vaccine brought about the occasion. Nonetheless, Kennedy didn’t retract his assertion.
Peter Hotez, a famend researcher and professor of pediatrics, molecular virology and microbiology on the Baylor Faculty of Medication, has lengthy contended that 200,000 unvaccinated Individuals needlessly died in the course of the Covid-19 Delta and BA.1 Omicron waves in 2021 and 2022. Many, in his view, refused the vaccine due to widespread disinformation. Hotez describes this in his e-book The Lethal Rise of Anti-Science.
Additionally, critics of Kennedy assert that his actions led to five,700 Samoans contracting measles in 2019; 83 of them, primarily younger youngsters, died. He has denied any accountability. However the anti-vaccine entity CHD, which he has led, did assist unfold misinformation in Samoa that contributed to a decline within the measles vaccination charge which preceded the outbreak.
Since operating for president and subsequently endorsing Trump, Kennedy has tried to distance himself from the anti-vaccine motion. However that is arduous to sq. with the entity he’s aligned with, the CHD, and statements he’s made, corresponding to “no vaccine is secure and efficient.”
Kennedy defends himself as merely wanting placebo-controlled trials previous to licensure and no vaccine mandates. Nevertheless, the vaccines he rails towards are sometimes topic to such medical trials. Moreover, arguably the mandates Kennedy opposes, which have been in place for the reason that Nineteen Sixties, have helped to contribute to a dramatic decline in childhood infectious ailments.
