On certain issues, it hardly seems that John Kilian and Allison Cecil are part of the same political movement.
Kilian, a retired IT professional and nurse in Middletown, Conn., spent part of 2021 analyzing Covid immunization data for the U.S. military, and he clearly saw the benefits. He is concerned about the vaccine hesitancy that led to the 2019 measles outbreak, and as he puts it, it is “a highly contagious disease and the risk-reward ratio favors vaccination.” He plans to get a flu shot. “The last time I got the flu was the last time I didn’t get a flu shot,” he said.
Cecil, a high school teacher in Owensboro, Kentucky, is skeptical about the ingredients in vaccines. If she were to have a child today, her answer to some recommended early childhood photos would be “no.” She should think more about others. She wouldn’t want her baby to get measles, but she also wouldn’t want to inject the child with substances that she doesn’t trust the government to fully investigate. “You can always vaccinate, but you cannot unvaccinate,” she said.
Yet they are both supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – not just superficial admirers, but dedicated enough to organize campaign events. Their disagreements show how Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement, or MAHA, has created a political home for the disaffected of all stripes.
It brings together former Bernie Sanders die-hards and evangelical MAGA supporters, stay-at-home parents and small business owners, mom bloggers and brother podcasters, and is about more than just vaccines — although vaccines are a central argument. Many people are concerned about the increase in chronic diseases, fear that diseases will affect their family if they are not already, and want a clear answer to the source of the problem. Concerns about chemicals in food are also high on the list.
Behind all these issues is a disturbing sense that the health care system and its regulators do not have people’s best interests at heart. For MAHA fans, financial interests prevent government officials, scientists and healthcare providers from being candid. Some view health guidelines as dogma and believe that the underlying data is not shared transparently, even by scientific journals. They want such findings and recommendations to be openly discussed, even if they are largely considered established science.
Now that Kennedy is about to be nominated as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, his followers are hoping their administration will start taking their concerns about vaccines, food and pharmaceuticals seriously. Previous marginal concepts have the potential to become policy. In some cases, however, MAHA fans are also concerned about how Kennedy’s platform will fare under the industry-friendly ethos of newly elected President Donald Trump.
Distrust as a starting point
Some were first drawn to MAHA by a chronic illness, a death in the family or the need to care for aging parents. For Ailyn Carmona of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, concerns started long before Kennedy’s presidential bid. Her mother suffered a massive stroke in 1988 and had frequent contact with the healthcare system for decades until her death in 2018. That gave Carmona an eye on things. Although she has known many caring and attentive physicians, many others did not deserve her trust.
Small mistakes can lead to serious problems. Once, when her mother was in a long-term care facility, Carmona visited her late at night and noticed that one of her hands was purple. Someone tied a tourniquet around her upper arm after blood was drawn, Carmona claims.
Another time, her mother was hospitalized for breathing problems and doctors quickly sent her for a CT scan. Carmona told STAT that she thinks the scan damaged her mother’s pacemaker, and doctors had to rush her into surgery to place a new one. Research shows that the chance of such problems occurring with modern devices and machines is small, but not zero. “Personally, I think they just wanted to drive up the insurance bills,” she said. “I am very biased based on personal experience.”
If those cases gave rise to distrust, social media provided ample fuel. Why is the number of cancer cases increasing? What does fluoride do to the body? The questions lingered in her mind, and the answers she found eventually led her to RFK Jr. Carmona, who leans conservative, became convinced that the increase in cancer cases was fueled by problems with our food supply, and that fluoride in drinking water could compromise the ability of numbs people to think critically. (A 2019 study There is a controversial link between small declines in children’s IQ and maternal fluoride exposure, but other researchers say the paper does not prove that fluoridation caused the lower IQ scores measured years later.)
Concerns about chemicals in our food are top of mind for many MAHA supporters. That’s what first drew Marci Kenon of New York City to the movement. She read about the loophole that allows companies to market uncontrolled food additives by saying they are “generally recognized as safe,” for example allowing chemicals in our meals that are not allowed in Europe. “This has pretty much evolved into the food industry deciding what is safe to put into our food supply,” said Kenon, a wellness educator and anti-toxin activist.
Those concerns are neither marginal nor right-wing. In fact, it is widely shared. Policy and nutrition professors at Harvard, New York University and Tufts have written about it. Democratic Sens. Edward Markey, Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation to try to address it. The Food and Drug Administration announced earlier this year that it plans to improve the review process for food additives.
Less accepted among public health experts is many MAHA fans’ distrust of vaccines. Large amounts of data show that vaccinations against diseases like polio and measles are among the most effective medical tools we have. However, many of Kennedy’s followers say security data is hidden, inadequate or missing. In other cases, they allege that public health officials have covered up information about side effects or ignored real cases of vaccine harm to protect pharmaceutical interests.
The pandemic as a turning point
Covid was a baptism for many who belong to the ranks of MAHA. Kenon did not get a Covid vaccine even though her brother-in-law died early in the pandemic, partly out of fear of what mRNA, a key component of the Pfizer and Moderna shots, would do to her body. Carmona also found herself regretting letting her son, now 20, get all the recommended childhood vaccines while watching a documentary by a right-wing commentator who called vaccines “poison.” She said if she had a child today, it would not be vaccinated.
For Shelly Cobb, 60, of Santa Barbara County, California, the pandemic provided a similarly transformative gateway. Her mother was a nurse, so she had never questioned vaccines. But the new mRNA technique used for the Covid shots made her have doubts. When she asked her doctors about it, she found their answers unsatisfactory. From a video of Kennedy, she learned about the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which provided liability protection to vaccine makers and established a compensation program for people injured by vaccines.
“I was blown away,” she said – and decided not to get a Covid shot. She lost friends and was kicked out of a book club as a result, even though she was willing to take tests and wear masks to make others feel comfortable. “I was treated like I was the devil,” said Cobb, a longtime Democrat and environmentalist. “I just felt very isolated and it was a very difficult time for me.”
Amid that loneliness, Kennedy’s presidential campaign announcement in April 2023 felt like an opening. She immediately volunteered, hosted farmers markets, organized an Earth Day event and helped get Kennedy on the ballot in California. Cobb felt the kind of excitement she had when Bernie Sanders ran for office, but she was even more excited by the idea that Kennedy could ease the political tensions that had strained relations during Covid-19.
Even Kilian, who has seen the benefits of Covid vaccines, has some lingering doubts about the pandemic. He thinks closing schools, for example, has done more harm than good. He has some questions about how HPV vaccines were tested. One thing that initially drew him to MAHA was the feeling that the Democratic Party, with which he identified, excluded Kennedy. It caused Kilian to investigate Kennedy’s claims more seriously.
As for the election, Kilian says his emotions are mixed. He’s excited that Kennedy might realize some ideas he agrees with, but he doesn’t trust Trump. “There are thousands of lies that man has told,” Kilian said. Cobb is willing to back Trump if Kennedy aligns with the newly elected president.
“I voted for Kamala,” Kenon said. As a black woman living in Spanish Harlem, she is afraid of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric — afraid for her immigrant neighbors, and afraid that people like her will get caught up in the raids. For her, Kennedy’s possibility as health secretary is a bright spot. With a self-styled businessman in the Oval Office, will RFK actually be able to implement his policies to curb Big Food? “This is going to be the $100 million question,” she said.