5 of RFK Jr.’s Wildest Ideas

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. If confirmed, the agency that oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health would be led by a vaccine skeptic who has repeatedly promised to overhaul the nation’s health standards.

Here are some of Kennedy’s sweeping ideas for the country during Trump’s second term:

Kennedy has promised that the incoming Trump administration will advise “all American water systems” to remove fluoride from public water, claiming the mineral “is an industrial waste” linked to “arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss , neurodevelopmental disorders and thyroid problems’. disease.”

That is not true at levels recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency reduced in 2015. The National Institutes of Health outlines some health risks of overexposure against fluoride in higher concentrations, which can lead to rare side effects. The NIH said there is evidence that overexposure has led to diabetes lower IQ in children but quoted experts as saying the evidence was “weak and methodologically flawed.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yes no convincing evidence linking adverse health effects to fluoride intake in recommended amounts.

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral that has been added to much of the country’s drinking water for decades and has been proven to dramatically reduce tooth decay. A 2017 study also found that the fluoridation program is saving Americans more than 6 billion dollars in dental costs.

Fluoridation has proven so successful that the CDC lists it as one of the following 10 largest public health achievements of the 20th century, in addition to vaccination and the recognition of tobacco as a health hazard.

While Trump has done that support expressed Under Kennedy’s position, the president does not have the ability to ban fluoride in all public drinking water, which is under local, not federal, authority.

Kennedy is one of the nations leading vaccine skeptics, who spread conspiracy theories and junk science, while claiming that “no vaccine” is safe and effective. He is the founder of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense and has spread debunked claims that vaccinations cause autism. Kennedy did that too linked federal vaccination programs against the Holocaust.

All these explanations have been rejected by occupational health officials, who point to the efficacy of vaccines to eradicate smallpox, prevent millions of deaths from communicable diseases such as measles and polio percentage drops by 99% since 1988, according to the World Health Organization.

Trump himself could not ban a vaccine on his own, although he could put pressure on federal agencies to approve them. And Kennedy’s appointment as head of the agency that oversees the CDC and the NIH has health advocates worried.

Kennedy has insisted he did not specifically call for an end to vaccination, and he has pledged to do so not to ban them. But his long-standing claims that federal officials muddled safety data have alarmed health officials.

Mandy Cohen, director of the CDC, told According to the Washington Post, she was deeply concerned about his selection.

“I don’t want to go backwards and see children or adults suffer or lose their lives to remind us that vaccines work,” she told the newspaper.

Kennedy has made broad promises to remove processed foods from school meals and limit the use of food dyes. He recently went on MSNBC to look at colorful breakfast cereals and asked, “Why do we have Froot Loops in this country with 18 or 19 ingredients and you go to Canada and it has two or three?”

That is not correct: Froot Loops in Canada have a similar number of ingredients to those sold in the US. But Canada has restricted the use of certain food dyes. Anyway, the FDA says the artificial food colorings it is approved and safe, based on a “total of scientific evidence.”

He also attacked Trump’s own diet, saying that “the things he eats are really bad.”

“Campaign food is always bad, but the food that ends up on that plane is just poison,” Kennedy said during a recent interview. “You have a choice between – you have no choice, you get KFC or Big Macs. That’s if you’re lucky, for example, and then I consider the rest of the stuff inedible.

Kennedy recently told a reporter that he thinks entire departments of the Food and Drug Administration “should go.” He specifically called the agency’s nutrition department, claiming that the experts there were “not doing their job” and “not protecting our children.”

He continued, saying he would root out unidentified corruption within federal agencies: “Once they’re not corrupt, once Americans get good signals and they’re allowed to make their own choices, they’re going to be a lot healthier. ”

Kennedy did that too embraced the benefits of raw milk against government advice. The FDA warns that the product, which is not pasteurized, is often linked to disease outbreaks.

He said last month that other things he has his sights on include the “aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and everything others that are making progress include. human health and cannot be patented by Pharma.”

In the final days of his campaign, Trump said he would give Kennedy the opportunity to “go wild” on health as part of his vision to make America great and healthy again. That included a broad pledge to take charge of “women’s health.”

The scope of his potential role at HHS will bring many other facets of daily life under his purview, with many questions about how he will act as Republicans continue to focus on access to abortion, health care for transgender youth and the Affordable Care Act.

“We have a generational opportunity to bring together the greatest minds in science, medicine, industry and government to end the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy wrote Thursday. “I will provide Americans with transparency and access to all data so they can make informed choices for themselves and their families.”