President-elect Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Division of Health and Human Providers on Thursday. If confirmed, the company that oversees the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, the Meals and Drug Administration, and the Nationwide Institutes of Health could be run by a vaccine-skeptic who has repeatedly pledged to overtake the nation’s well being requirements.
Listed here are a few of Kennedy’s sweeping concepts for the nation throughout Trump’s second time period:
Take away Fluoride From Consuming Water
Kennedy has pledged the upcoming Trump administration would advise “all U.S. water systems” to take away fluoride from public water, claiming the mineral “is an industrial waste” linked to “arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”
That’s not true at ranges advisable by the Environmental Safety Company that have been lowered in 2015. The Nationwide Institutes of Health outlines some well being dangers of extreme publicity to fluoride at increased ranges, which might result in uncommon unwanted side effects. The NIH stated that some proof confirmed extreme publicity led to decrease IQ in youngsters however cited consultants as saying the proof was “weak and methodologically flawed.”
The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention stated there’s no convincing proof linking hostile well being results to fluoride consumption at advisable quantities.
Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral that has been added to a lot of the nation’s consuming water for many years and has been confirmed to dramatically scale back tooth decay. A 2017 examine additionally discovered the fluoridation program saves Individuals greater than $6 billion in dental prices.
Fluoridation has confirmed so profitable that the CDC lists it as one of many 10 best public well being achievements of the twentieth century, alongside vaccination and the popularity of tobacco as a well being hazard.
Whereas Trump has expressed assist for Kennedy’s stance, the president doesn’t have the power to ban fluoride in all public consuming water, which is below native, not federal, purview.
Undercut Federal Help For Vaccination Applications
Kennedy is among the nation’s main skeptics of vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories and junk science whereas claiming “no vaccine” is protected and efficient. He’s the founding father of the anti-vaccine group Youngsters’s Health Protection and has peddled debunked claims that inoculations trigger autism. Kennedy has additionally linked federal vaccination packages to the Holocaust.
All of these statements have been rejected by profession well being officers, who level to vaccines’ efficacy to eradicate smallpox, forestall hundreds of thousands of deaths from transmissible illness like measles and see the charges of polio fall 99% since 1988, in accordance with the World Health Group.
Picture by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Put up by way of Getty Pictures
Trump himself couldn’t singlehandedly ban a vaccine, though he might exert stress on federal businesses that approve them. And putting in Kennedy as the pinnacle of the company that oversees the CDC and the NIH has anxious well being advocates.
Kennedy has insisted he has not particularly referred to as for an finish to vaccination, and he has pledged to not ban them. However his longstanding claims that federal officers have muddled security knowledge has troubled well being officers.
Mandy Cohen, the director of the CDC, informed The Washington Put up she was deeply involved by his choice.
“I don’t want to go backwards and see children or adults suffer or lose their lives to remind us that vaccines work,” she informed the paper.
Change America’s Meals
Kennedy has made broad pledges to take away processed meals from college lunches and restrict the usage of meals dyes. He lately went on MSNBC to lambast colourful breakfast cereals, asking: “Why do we have Froot Loops in this country that have 18 or 19 ingredients and you go to Canada and it’s got two or three?”
That’s not appropriate: Froot Loops in Canada have an analogous variety of substances to these bought within the U.S. However Canada has restricted the usage of sure meals dyes. Regardless, the FDA says the bogus meals dyes it’s authorised are protected based mostly on a “totality of scientific evidence.”
He additionally attacked Trump’s personal weight loss plan, saying the “stuff that he eats is really, like, bad.”
“Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is, like, just poison,” Kennedy stated throughout a latest interview. “You have a choice between — you don’t have the choice, you’re either given KFC or Big Macs. That’s, like, when you’re lucky, and then the rest of the stuff I consider kind of inedible.”
Intestine Elements Of The FDA, Promote Uncooked Milk And Different ‘Suppressed’ Therapies
Kennedy lately informed a reporter he believes total departments of the Meals and Drug Administration “have to go.” He particularly referred to as out the diet division on the company, claiming consultants there weren’t “doing their job” and “not protecting our kids.”
He went on and stated he would root out unidentified corruption in federal businesses: “Once they’re not corrupt, once Americans are getting good signs and they’re allowed to make their own choices, they’re going to get a lot healthier.”
Kennedy has additionally espoused the advantages of uncooked milk in opposition to authorities recommendation. The FDA warns the product, which isn’t pasteurized, has usually been linked to outbreaks of sickness.
He stated final month different objects in his sights embody the “aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.”
Democracy In The Stability
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Freedom To ‘Go Wild’ On Health
Within the waning days of his marketing campaign, Trump stated he would endow Kennedy with the power to “go wild” on well being as a part of his imaginative and prescient to Make America Nice, and Wholesome, Once more. That included a broad pledge to be answerable for “women’s health.”
The scale of his potential function at HHS will put many different aspects of on a regular basis life below his purview, with many questions on how he’ll act as Republicans proceed to focus on entry to abortion, well being look after transgender youth and the Inexpensive Care Act.
“We have a generational opportunity to bring together the greatest minds in science, medicine, industry, and government to put an end to the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy wrote Thursday. “I will provide Americans with transparency and access to all the data so they can make informed choices for themselves and their families.”
