Last week, I talked about the clown car that is sending doofus after doofus to Washington to run the Trump cabinet. Jan. 20 is going to be a bloodletting in federal circles. To some, this will be a welcomed and long overdue purge. To others, critical governmental services, jobs, and infrastructure will be slashed overnight.
The cabinet Mr. Trump is assembling has some of the most unqualified people running some of the most important departments in the world. And then there’s Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who might be, when it’s all said and done, the man to do the most damage to not just the country, but the world.
Kennedy, long the black sheep of the Kennedy family, has subscribed to many alternate philosophies about health and human services. So why not put him in charge of that? It’d be like putting a vegan in as the head chef at Q39. Or installing the world’s premiere opera singer as the second baseman of the Kansas City Royals. (Although, it might be an upgrade?)
The appointment was made as a quid pro quo to get him out of the presidential race. And now, he’s going to be affecting health policy for the country. A country that is increasingly sick thanks to the long-running effects of the COVID pandemic along with an aging population. He has been charged with ending these problems as well as “return to evidence-based science and medicine,” to quote Trump’s direction to him.
So the first few indications of what he will do on Jan. 20 are doozies. Let’s start with his controversial and conspiracy-backed claim that vaccines cause autism. If you were really serious about it being evidence-based science, countless peer-reviewed reports have said this is patently false. One report that was not based in science and gained popularity on the Joe Rogan podcast among other places, say that vaccines will grow you unicorn horns and cause all kinds of problems. It was the same argument with the COVID vaccines as well.
From the BBC: “This theory was popularised by discredited UK doctor Andrew Wakefield. But Wakefield’s 1998 study was later retracted by the Lancet medical journal. Multiple studies since, across many countries, have concluded there is no link between vaccines and autism.”
His second major one is the removal of fluoride from drinking water. This is about as out of left field as you can get. But some of us remember having to stand at the front of the class for two minutes swishing around fluoride and then spitting it into a cup. Fluoride is good. It is safe. It is in our drinking water to help the population. Again, conspiracy theorists claim it grows you a second nose.
In his post on X, Kennedy said fluoride was “associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”
Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.
The point here is that this is a guy that believes in junk science (along with his cabinet buddy, Dr. Oz) and is going to make the country less safe claiming “science” behind all of it.
The issue grew large during COVID, but we have got to as a society agree that scientists know what they’re talking about (given the appropriate controls, research, peer review, etc.) And podcasts hosts and TV doctors don’t. Period.
If we can’t agree on that, then we are in for a long few years.
(Get more from Chris Kamler on Twitter, which some people–but not Kamler–call X, where you can follow him as @chriskamler)
