Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has joined the Republican presidential candidate and former US president … [+]
Well, here’s something wild that former President Donald Trump said at his campaign event in New York City on October 27. Trump literally used the word “wild” when he told the crowd at Madison Square Garden what he would do to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ., if the 45th president would become the 47th. ‘I’m going to let him loose on his health. I let him go all out on the food. I’m going to let him go on medication,” said the 78-year-old Republican candidate. It looks like Trump could oil the wheels for Kennedy Jr. to determine what happens to health and science policy, operations, and research in the U.S. government.
Speaking of oil, Trump has pointed out one exception to what could drive Kennedy Jr. wild: “The only thing I don’t think I’ll let him even come near is the liquid gold we have under our feet. ”
This all lines up with what Kennedy Jr. told Tucker Carlson at an event in Wisconsin in mid-September: “[Trump’s] asked me to help him end childhood obesity and the chronic disease epidemic and make Americans healthy again.” Kennedy Jr. also said Trump wants Kennedy Jr. helps choose the heads of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. “President Trump specifically asked me to do two things,” Kennedy Jr. claimed at the time. “First, to help unravel the capture of the agencies by corrupt influence. In other words: drain the swamp.”
So in less than a year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. evolved from a Democratic candidate for president to an independent candidate and possibly part of the transition team for Trump. And if Trump retakes the White House, Kennedy Jr. will no longer be able to do anything FactCheck.org, a fact-checking project of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC), described as a “trail of false and misleading claims about health topics such as vaccines, autism and Covid-19” to help Trump choose the next leaders of the US government’s largest health and scientific organizations.
Kennedy, Jr. also has the distinction of being named on one of the “Disinformation Dozen” by the Center for Countering Digital Hate in 2021. It’s a distinction because there were only twelve. It’s also a distinction you probably wouldn’t mention on your resume or LinkedIn profile. The Center for Countering Digital Hate described the Disinformation Dozen as “twelve anti-vaxxers playing a leading role in spreading digital disinformation about Covid vaccines. They have been selected because they have a large following, produce large amounts of anti-vaccine content or have seen their social media accounts grow rapidly over the past two months.”
Here are just a few examples of what Kennedy Jr. has done and said over the years:
- To claim in one Fox & Friends interview“Vaccines are the only medical product not tested for safety prior to licensure.” That’s obviously not the case, as vaccines cannot reach the U.S. market without undergoing clinical trials that produce results reviewed by the U.S. FDA.
- Blaming antidepressants for school shootings which was actually the headline of an article by Miles Klee Rolling stone. Kennedy Jr. has not provided adequate scientific evidence to support this view. Daniel R. Stalder Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, prescribed Psychology today that “shooters prescribed antidepressants…make up less than a quarter of mass shootings,” but that guns “co-occur 100 percent of the time.”
- On several occasions questions have been raised as to whether HIV is really a cause or the only cause of AIDS as described in an article in the New York magazine. There is an abundance of evidence linking infection with human immunodeficiency virus to AIDS. For example, a New England Journal of Medicine article entitled “The discovery of HIV as a cause of AIDS‘ described the steps that led to, well, basically what the title of the article said. In contrast, those who deny HIV as the cause of AIDS have not provided adequate scientific evidence to support their positions.
- Repeatedly suggesting that chemicals in water “turn children homosexual or transgender and cause the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls,” as reported by Abby Turner and Andrew Kaczynski for CNN. See above about failure to provide sufficient scientific evidence.
And even though Kennedy Jr. is a lawyer without any formal scientific training, he was quoted by David Remnick for the New Yorker saying, “I don’t necessarily believe all scientists because I can read science myself. That’s what I do for a living. I read science critically.”
Reading science is one thing. Fully understanding what you read is another. Making health claims without providing sufficient supporting scientific evidence is something completely different. And giving someone with no real scientific background the power to decide how the U.S. government’s largest and most important health and science institutions will be organized, directed, and managed would be pretty, well, wild.
After all, would you want someone who simply says, “I can read science on my own” who takes care of your health? Wouldn’t that be a bit like someone with no legal background saying, “I can read the Constitution myself,” and then representing you in court or in the Supreme Court? Or how about someone who has never flown an airplane but claims, “I can read an airplane manual,” piloting your next flight? Doing any of these things can cause a very wild ride. And wild may not be the first word you want to hear when it comes to your health.