RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.thefp.com/p/rfk-jr-health-human-services-flouride-vaccines-covid-trump-europe
The media describes the new HHS chief as a conspiracy theorist. But how many of his ideas are actually used in Europe? More than you’d think.

The media describes the new HHS chief as a conspiracy theorist. But how many of his ideas are actually used in Europe

A number of American commenters have been hand-wringing about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be the secretary of Health and Human Services, which would put him in charge of such critical agencies as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

“He supports people being able to purchase raw milk, don’t you know!” 

“He wants to discourage municipal water plants from adding fluoride!” 

“He says MMR vaccines cause autism!”

After Donald Trump nominated RFK Jr. for the post, Time magazine called him “a vaccine skeptic who spreads medical disinformation and conspiracy theories,” and quoted Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law as saying of his nomination, “I can’t think of a darker day for public health and science.”

But I think we need to draw distinctions. 

After looking at the whole range of RFK Jr.’s positions, I’ve come to the view that while some are extreme, others are genuinely worthy of debate—and still others are correct. And there is a way to sift the good from the bad and the debatable. When you hear one of RFK Jr.’s ideas, ask yourself a simple question: Do other nations do what he thinks the U.S. should do? If the answer is yes, then the HHS nominee’s idea is not necessarily apocalyptic, and we should be able to discuss it openly. 

Let’s take a look at some of his most controversial opinions:

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/rfk-jr-wants-disrupt-our-powerful-health-care-complex-terrified

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is right– the U.S. is flunking health care. 

Our country spends nearly twice as much on medical care per person than other wealthy countries but our outcomes – measured by life expectancy, infant mortality, unmanaged diabetes and heart attack mortality — are far worse. This is an industry that begs to be disrupted. 

Whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President-elect Trump has nominated to run the Department of Health and Human Services, is the man for the job remains to be seen. Give him this: he has been fearless in calling out the obvious failures of the status quo. 

The health care “establishment” is outraged by RFK Jr. ‘s nomination, but they only have themselves to blame. Gallup reports that merely 31% of the country thinks of our health care industry positively, while 51% have a negative view. Imagine: our medical establishment has lower approval ratings than Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Why would that be? First, disenchantment with our medical officials soared during COVID. Anthony Fauci and others in charge had no idea what they were doing but nonetheless made up rules on the fly that required toddlers to wear masks, closed schools, shut down businesses and — later on — mandated vaccines and lied about their efficacy. And yet, for all the Draconian measures, the U.S. lost more people per capita to the pandemic than most other prosperous nations.   

Second, people are not stupid; they know they spend too much for health care, that it’s too complicated and that the government’s ever-expanding intrusion into the field has made it inefficient. According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the U.S. spends about $1,000 per person solely on administrative costs related to medical services, “almost five times more than the average of other wealthy countries and more than [the country] spends on long-term health care.” That, folks, is the tail wagging the dog. 

https://www.city-journal.org/article/make-america-responsible-again

For several months, a telehealth company, Hims & Hers, has run full-page ads about obesity in the New York Times. The ads promote the idea that obesity is a medical condition that can be eradicated only with Ozempic and other new obesity drugs. They go on to demand insurance coverage for those drugs. The Sunday, November 17, Hims & Hers ad complained that “access to effective treatment” for extreme obesity “remains out of reach for many,” unlike treatments for breast cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and HIV. “It’s time to change that,” concludes the pitch.

The Hims & Hers argument—that obesity is a genetic disorder like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, largely outside the control of its victims—may be self-interested, but it has also been the position of the public-health industry for years. We are to believe that the sharp rise of obesity in the U.S. over the last several decades is due to genetic changes in Americans’ susceptibility to weight gain. To portray obesity as something brought on by behavior—overeating and under exercising—is to blame the victim and to commit “fat-shaming.” This insistence that being overweight is outside individual control is driven in considerable part by racial considerations, since black females are disproportionately overweight. But the rule against invoking personal responsibility is also part of a larger elite mindset. By medicalizing behavioral issues, the elites transfer power from the individual to themselves, the dispensers of technocratic responses to social problems.

It is absurd, however, to claim that Americans’ genes have changed in the last half century in such a way as to make Americans gain weight. (The same fallacy applies to the equally fat Brits.) Genes takes centuries, not decades, to change. The recent alteration in the Anglosphere’s diet and lifestyle is massive and obvious, however: snacking throughout the day, a diet of highly sweetened processed foods, and a lack of exercise or even of merely walking modest distances. Members of gyms wait several minutes for the gym elevator to arrive rather than walking up one flight of stairs, even though they are presumably there to burn calories, rather than merely to take advantage the gym’s inevitable snack-food vending machines.