And then we have RFK for head of Health and Human Services
It’s no surprise at all, although if you’d have said a year ago that it would happen, most people would say you’d lost your mind.
I’m not a big RFK fan (see this, for example), but I can’t say I’ve done a deep deep dive into some of his ideas that I question, and so I’m open to seeing how he performs in this particular job if he’s confirmed. However, I most certainly don’t automatically discount his views because some health “experts” disagree with them:
President Donald Trump’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services “is an extraordinarily bad choice for the health of the American people,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, warned Thursday.
“I was worried we could go low but not this low,” Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of the Emory School of Medicine & Grady Health System, wrote of the pick.
Although Trump signaled in the runup to the election that he planned to let the vaccine skeptic “go wild” on health, food and medicine, Kennedy’s official selection for the nation’s top health post sent shockwaves through the public health world, concerned about his potential effects on vaccination rates, research on infectious diseases and misrepresentation of established science.
The article leaves out the fact that Dr. Jha was Biden’s COVID czar from April of 2022 to June of 2023. That seems relevant to me, although from a brief look at his policies it seems to me he wasn’t an extremist compared to some of his colleagues. But considering his former position in the Biden administration, I think it’s wrong not to mention it in the article and to lead people to believe he has no horse in this race.
But in general it’s a case of “physicians, heal thyselves.” The health establishment has a great deal to answer for in terms of COVID origins, the COVID vaccine, and COVID lockdowns, and if people have become skeptical of them and their recommendations regarding vaccines or anything else, I think that health authorities should point the finger at themselves.
I’m a middle-of-the-roader on all of this, as most regular readers here know. I was initially calling for a far less panicky approach to all of it, and continued in that vein (please see this post, for example). But I’ve also noticed that many of the most extreme anti-vax positions are also based on very faulty readings of statistics, and I’ve written many posts on that topic, too (see see this for one of them). But it cannot be said enough that if people have lost trust in health authorities, those health authorities are the ones who have undermined that trust.
Here’s Dr. Oz on the RFK appointment, for what it’s worth. Oz’s politics, at least, are well known:
I just hope he can do some good.
My Wife and I just got the COVID booster, first one since the boosters first came out. We did it because my Wife is seriously medically compromised. I got one to potentially help protect her.
I think it was Ace who characterized a physician’s study of early intervention in gender issues. Something like, “If the public finds out our work has been harming children, we might not be able to continue harming children.”
A leaked email from Vanderbilt medical, early on, referred to the gender biz as a “cash cow”.
The State Supreme Court of NY has ordered the rehiring of 1700 employees who were fired for refusing a vax mandate. Since it’s not a vax, according to the court, not stopping you from getting the crud, nor from spreading it. This is going to be a big deal, since it includes back pay and likely pension credits. And they’ll have to be fit into wherever they came from which no doubt has organized to get along without them.
Similar case with the same assertions in the Ninth Circuit.
Took two jabs for my wife and I to finally get Covid.
What’s going on with autism? Is there more of it? Expanded diagnoses? Recent report of women ingesting some “pollution” while pregnant.
Is mercury the terriblest poison in the world, or can we go back to playing table hockey with globs of it in chem class? Is the only safe thing shooting it into our kids?
Remember when you could be smarter than illiterate hillbillies by sneering at their concern about fluoride in water? Search for “fluoride”. “child” “intellectual”. Seems the illiterate hillbillies were right. Now what?
Point is, there are always questions and an excess of arrogance will turn on the medical world.
Richard Aubrey:
I’ve dealt at length with the autism diagnosis issue. See this for one example. It’s over 15 years old, though, and a bit rusty, although I think the main conclusion – that the increase is an artifact of diagnostic and reporting changes – is correct.
China Virus was second biggest Hoax in human history. COVID deaths went up – most other deaths went down. Trump was played like a rookie.
Govt paid more for a COVID death than other deaths. How many COVID deaths had autopsies to actually prove the death was by COVID?
Democrats got the precedent set for the future – Govt can shut down churches, synagogues, businesses, etc. Govt can fire workers who do not agree with Govt policies. Govt can force people to wear paper masks in order to protect them from ‘Thangs that have escaped from a Level 4 Biolab. Those are just some that I noticed, but who knows how long the actual list is…
Yeah, Trump did just fine with RFK Jr. for HHS, IMHO.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/15/mike-pence-reject-rfk-jr-trump
I’m no fan of Pence since he went Never Trump, but I agree with him here. It’s a bit odd, since the Dems are pro-abortion.
Mike Pence is in the history book. The Abortion issue is in the State’s hands now, and should be left there…
With abortion now a state issue, what actual authority over abortion policy does HHS have?
If RFK Jr. can doe something about the obvious corrupt practice of NIH grant-makers getting ongoing royalty payments from drugmakers, he’ll be doing a wonderful thing.
Neo
Something causes autism. Nobody seems to know what. An advocate named “Escher” has two grown autistic kids. She’s wondering. Why one? And two? And nobody knows why?
It’s a human thing to seek patterns and causes when what’s happening looks random. And autism requires some serious medical stuff to go wrong all at once. “random” doesn’t satisfy.
Two “randoms” for the same woman is hard to fit into probability theory. Was at a public event about a year and a half ago. Religious in nature. Saw two families each with two autistic kids. Random? Hard to sell.
It is human nature to seek a cause, one which can be understood and, please God, controlled.
One they found out what Asperger’d been up to in his spare time, the Aspies disappeared. Presumably folded into the autism numbers. That’s true, right?
As a general rule, anything on a spectrum is subject to diagnostic extension.
More stuff to worry about. Maybe Trump will be put in the position of having to restrain some of his appointees, rather than vice versa.
I got Flu vaccine and RSV. Both are more effective than the Covid vax.
I’m not getting the Covid vax because Covid can be tested for at home and treated with Paxlovid. That’s what we did when we had it a year ago. That’s the plan going forward.
If RFK Jr. is confirmed, I hope he will commission a study of the Covid response with the goal of finding out what went well (not much, IMO), and what mistakes were made (Quite a few and obvious ones, IMO.). From what I see in our local medical practices, they all seem to believe the response was A-OK. There must be an analysis that makes sense and rebuilds trust.
Also, our medical system is overloaded. Too many EMTALA costs (illegal immigrants, and homeless.) to be passed on to those with insurance. Along with not enough new doctors and nurses coming into the profession they are becoming more shorthanded every year. I’m not sure what the answer is, but something needs to be done. Maybe RFK Jr. has some ideas.
Richard Aubrey:
They’ve been seeking a cause for a hundred years or so. That’s nothing new. And no one says it’s completely random; for example, they have identified certain parental traits that seem associated with it such as being engineers (see this), something already known when I was in college, if memory serves me. There’s also a maternal obesity correlation, as well as a genetic connection for a small number.
Autism is not unitary; it’s many different things, as well, and Asperger’s seems quite different from the more severe forms.
In addition, the guy who originally connected autism with vaccines was a charlatan; see this.
If we really want to do a deep dive into COVID, we would be far better served by skipping RFK Jr., who comes off as a weird crank at best and a dangerous crank at worst. There are plenty of brilliant Republicans with enough medical expertise to lead the Department of Health, and they would lend such a study the gravitas it requires. Give Jr. a commission to study food additives, or diabetes, or whatever horse he wants to ride, but don’t give him the COVID case unless Trump II wants to shoot itself in the foot.
It seems most likely to me that the HHS job was RFK jr’s price for dropping out and endorsing Trump.
Despite his detractors in both parties, he had enough of a following to get traction in the presidential race, although it was clear he would never win.
If he is correct (and he is right about some things IMO, such as food additives that we are better off without), then the Republican medical experts should support him.
If he is wrong, then they need to provide their arguments and evidence and let open debate drive the policies.
In considering RFK Jr., I was impressed by Theodore Dalrymple’s take on Kennedy’s book about Fauci in the Claremont Review. It includes this:
When I looked up at random five of the medical papers Kennedy cites, I found that he had misrepresented all of them. For example, an Argentinian trial which he describes as randomized and controlled specifically says in its text that it was unrandomized. In another instance, he claims “[t]he UK government’s latest Office for National Statistics report on mortality rates by COVID vaccination status shows that for age-adjusted mortality rate, the death rate by October was higher among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.” This is misleading. There are only numbers, no rates: Kennedy evidently believes in numerators without denominators. Furthermore, the age-adjustment to which he refers was not exactly fine-honed: it divided the population into those under 50 and those over 50. This is important, given the age distribution of risk of death. …
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/whats-up-doc/
“Dalrymple” is the pen name of Manhattan Institute fellow Anthony Daniels, whose career largely as a physician in British prisons has been eclipsed by subsequent decades of memorable commentary.
Neo.
Wrt autism: I know about Wakefield. Talked to a young woman in the field of scientific journalism. I believe they think they learned a lesson. We’ll see. Lancet took a hit on that one, but until they found out they’d been hosed, it was SCIENCE and you denied SCIENCE at your peril. Until it wasn’t, and the latter rarely makes the papers.
This got extra acceleration due to the terror of the result, and because a morning talk show host made it her crusade.
But, as I say, people want to see a cause, whether the boffins have found one or not, and if not…maybe the people will make one up. Because a cause is needed. And Wakefield filled a need.
I would suggest that the peanut allergy issue added to it. Not because of a connection, but because….it wasn’t a thing and now it is and nobody knows why or what to do about it. Stuff just….happens and why not something besides peanuts?
So we come to Covid…. And Covid didn’t just have a Wakefield, but entire governments. Censoring, lying, withholding. Fudging numbers.
So, ‘Tell me what to do!” “Make me do something!” “Make everybody do something!”
The vax was pure gold. Couldn’t miss and you were a failed shaman if you doubted. The stuff was issued under an Emergency Use Authorization, which, among other things, said that if there were an effective therapeutic, the ERA was void. IOW, if we could reliably and consistently treat anyone with the Covid, the better path was to let it run through the population as opposed to shooting people up with this untried compound.
No such therapeutic was visible, unless some reports of success with HCQ managed to pass the censors. So…nobody knows or knew.
To put it another way, the autism/vaccine issue, and the entire Covid phenomenon were gigantic social and cultural demonstrations of…what can happen. And the governments know how to do it.
RFK’s book on Fauci is nothing less than an indictment of the entire govermnet/pharmaceutical research complex and exposes its utter corruption. My first knowledge of problems there was Dr. Robert Gallo’s false claim of discovering the AID’s virus back in the 80’s. After reading Kennedy’s book that notorious incident appears as just a tiny harbinger of much, much worse to come. If the book has a few erroneous references, so what? The overall accuracy is backed up by hundreds and hundreds of references and quotes rarely seen in a book for popular consumption. Now if Kennedy was writing a doctoral thesis maybe Dalrymple’s “gotchas” would have some real merit. We’re talking editing problems, not purposeful deceit – that would be the entire NIH complex of kickbacks, backscratching, and incompetence.
Robert Kennedy, Jr. is the perfect guy to take on and hopefully break up this government evil black hole of corruption.
“The Other Chuck” thinks the problems with RFK Jr.’s book pointed out by Dalrymple are “editing problems.” Uh uh. Choose five references in the book at random and find a misrepresentation in each one … then we’re talking big-time sloppiness or even dishonesty.
Chuck, who’s apparently read the book (I haven’t), should actually follow up on a few of those “hundreds and hundreds of references and quotes” as Dalrymple did: Do the ones Chuck samples actually say what Kennedy attributes to them?
I hope RFK Jr. is confirmed, and does a great job. I admire his passion. But the problems with his book are a warning that he may let his passions get out of control and, in his enthusiasm, do something that blows up in his face … to the detriment of the cause.
While I believe the overall accuracy of RFK Jr.’s book is good there could be errors which hopefully are not intentional. I certainly did not go down the rabbit hole and check out every reference let alone the accuracy of every quote while reading it. The Covid section was written during and shortly after the vaccine was being distributed in 2021, so it would not be surprising if there was sloppy editing while the book was being rushed to print. However, the extensive section on Fauci’s involvement with the AIDs epidemic was a real eye opener. As a gay man, I lived through that watching friends suffer and die while taking AZT. To say I have intimate and extensive knowledge acquired over a 40 year span is an understatement. We were led to believe that Anthony Fauci was a kind of savior. Kennedy’s exposé in this book demolished that completely, and in the process cast doubt on his entire career including and especially this Covid fiasco. If you add in the royalty payments, the huge network of pharmaceutical lobbyists, and the circumventing of gain-of-function controls by Fauci, the picture emerges of a totally corrupt, and (no other word describes him accurately) evil man. The system that allowed this to happen needs to be disassembled and, in my belief, Kennedy is the hammer that can achieve it.
@ The Other Chuck > “The system that allowed this to happen needs to be disassembled and, in my belief, Kennedy is the hammer that can achieve it.”
I was not aware of Fauci’s involvement in the AIDS programs, but once that information came out during Covid, my biggest question was about how he could not only NOT be fired, but was promoted and enriched.
Or, to quote from that general era, “If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the evening” all over the CDC.
The corruption in the health industry needs serious hammering, and I doubt even 4 years would be long enough without a DOJ that would roll out an entire department devoted just to prosecuting the criminal activity in that field.
And anything not criminal was unethical.
I don’t see how anyone in the Deep State or Bloated Bureaucracies can criticize Gaetz or any other Trump nominee with a straight face.
h/t Liz “tomorrow” for this post by VD Hanson.
https://x.com/VDHanson/status/1857579416471372198
See also The RFK Jr. Tapes in Tablet.
Yes, RFK Jr. has baggage, unfortunately, but I think he was generally spot on WRT to Covid, which was a sophisticated, multi-level scandal, right up there with other Democratic Party criminal efforts of the past 15 years. RFK could benefit from strong backup.
To this end I would hope that Trump could bring back Scott Atlas, at least in some kind of role.
He’s experienced; he has integrity; and his warnings, prescriptions and suggestions WRT Covid turned out to be correct and judicious, and would have saved lives and returned the lives of the citizenry to some kind of normalcy.
Of course, the depraved Democrats couldn’t have that. Nor could the devious pharmaceuticals.
And so Atlas took a lot of crap from those Democratic Party thugs and their media groupies when he took on that psycho Fauci about things on which Atlas has been subsequently exonerated.
So who knows if he even wants to get involved in that character assassination racket again…
Correction: Instead of “subsequently exonerated” let’s try “subsequently vindicated”…
@ Banned Lizard > “See also The RFK Jr. Tapes in Tablet.”
If you see this note, I just wanted to thank you for the link.
That was a fantastic article!