What worries health experts most about RFK Jr. is what he leaves out of his health policy proposals

“I’ll let him be crazy about his health” – former President Trump he promised on Sunday at his rally at Madison Square Garden. – I’ll make him go crazy for food. I’ll let him go crazy on drugs.

Trump was talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former political rival that Trump is increasingly becoming promising will assume a health care role in his administration if elected to a second term.

Trump’s plans were met with concern in the public health community, not so much because of the specific policy proposals Kennedy laid out as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” platform, but over a key issue he sidestepped: vaccines.

“I think we see some attempts at rebranding in the weeks before the election, but it shouldn’t be taken seriously,” he said Dr. Jason Schwartzassociate professor at the Yale School of Public Health.

Kennedy who founded the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, which promotes anti-vaccination materials like this recent one documentary “Vaxed III: Authorized to Kill” has been focusing on chronic disease lately, not to mention its signature track in its September issue opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal or appearance Tuesday on “Fox and Friends.”

Instead, Kennedy advocated regulating chemicals in food – including the idea of ​​swapping sebaceous fat on seed oils, making McDonald’s fries healthier and reducing access to soda and processed foods through school lunches and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“He knows (vaccines) are a lightning rod problem and that it doesn’t help him,” he said Dr. Michael Osterholmdirector of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

However, Osterholm warned: “I can’t imagine anyone who would be more harmful to vaccines and the use of vaccines than RFK.”

Focus on chronic diseases

Kennedy’s spokesman did not directly respond to a question about whether he expected to lead the agency in the Trump administration, but said the former president had asked him to “free federal health agencies from conflict and corruption and return them to the tradition of the gold standard of science-based evidence.”

“He also asked him to address the chronic disease epidemic that affects more than 50% of Americans and has a devastating impact on the nation’s health, economy and global security,” spokeswoman Stefanie Spear said.

Kennedy has recently turned his attention to obesity and diabetes, as well as kidney disease, autoimmune diseases, cancer and addiction. He wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he wants to reform the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s funding system through user fees charged by the pharmaceutical industry, limiting drug prices to places in Europe, and revising guidelines for direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceutical products on television.

He also said he would bar members of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee from making money from food and drug companies, block funding from the National Institutes of Health for scientists with conflicts of interest and review standards for pesticides and chemicals.

“Americans are increasingly sicker, plagued by diseases that our medical system cannot effectively address,” Kennedy wrote.

During a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Trump raised his hand chart a comparison of life expectancy and health care spending around the world, with the United States being an obvious negative outlier in both cases.

“I’ll send it to RFK Jr.” Trump told Rogan, who replied, “I like the fact that you guys are teaming up.”

Donors and business owners warned Trump campaign ‘about the impact on the party and the country of being perceived as anti-science and having to deal with and deal with a surge in measles and polio epidemics’ – Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general under Trump , he told CNN.

Adams said Kennedy could “spread misinformation and take us back to the dark ages with respect to vaccine-preventable diseases,” but he hopes he will instead focus on “promoting overall well-being.”

Moreover, as Trump’s allies point out, it is difficult to deny that the US health care system could not be improved.

“Who can argue that we spend a lot of money on health care and don’t get any profit from it?” Joe Groganwho served as director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump administration, told CNN. “We have a mental health crisis, an obesity crisis, a chronic disease crisis, and we are plagued by addiction and overdoses. We are not healthy and we need to completely rethink where our money goes.

“Anything RFK can do to bring attention to this should be appreciated and welcomed by anyone who wants Americans to be healthy,” Grogan continued. “Regardless of political party.”

“Strange bedfellows”

Kennedy’s message, at least on food policy, appeals to some health experts.

“They call for repairing the food system, taking action to coordinate and address diet-related chronic disease, reining in corporate power, eliminating conflicts of interest between industry and government, removing toxic chemicals from the food supply, and doing everything possible to refocus on the food environment and dietary health advice,” Marion Nestle, food policy researcher he wrote on his food policy blog.

She meant a round table a nutrition and policy discussion led by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, in which they participated Kennedy and others whom Nestle described as “mainly influential”.

“I have been writing about it here for years,” Nestle wrote on its blog. “It’s hard to argue with that and I won’t.”

Still, she noted that “politics, as they say, makes strange bedfellows.”

Nestle expressed more skepticism when contacted by email, telling CNN that while it shares some of the same goals, “we have no evidence” that Kennedy “can or will” achieve any of them, “and plenty of evidence coming from the presidency Trump that public health, education and health care will suffer.”

On the medical front, Kennedy’s omission of vaccines from his recent policy discussions does not assuage the concerns of public health experts. Schwartz noted that anti-vaccination advocates often claim: without credible evidence – links between vaccines and increases in chronic disease, suggesting that the focus on vaccines is just beyond the surface of Kennedy’s current message.

Kennedy also issued warnings that he planned to gut federal agencies such as the FDA and NIH.

“The FDA’s war on public health is coming to an end,” he said sent Friday on “Pharma company.”

“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Save your records,” Kennedy continued, “and 2. Pack your bags.”

Then this warning appeared comments Kennedy called for an end to NIH research on infectious diseases, which put doctors in a difficult position.

“Infectious diseases are very much a part of our present and will be very much a part of our future, and he wants to stop dealing with them?” he said Dr. Paul Offitdirector of the Vaccine Education Center and infectious diseases physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“Science Negotiator”

Offit said Kennedy continued to make misleading or false statements about the safety of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine – including some that were connected to the deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa – even if the evidence shows that they are false. As for vaccines, Offit said, “it’s the denial of science.”

Schwartz called Kennedy’s recent departure from the vaccine discussion “an eleventh-hour attempt to cleanse his reputation and rebrand himself as a no-nonsense advocate for chronic disease prevention — likely to gain a position in a potential Trump administration,” which he said “is simply not the case.” unbelievable.

Osterholm, who noted that he has served in a health policy role in every presidential administration since Ronald Reagan and considers himself an “unbiased public health soldier,” said he felt compelled to speak out publicly where he had not before, concerned on Trump’s potential policies and what he called Kennedy’s “pseudoscience.”

“Everything we see and know about what a Trump administration would look like would devastate public health in this country,” he said. “Destroy it.”

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