What American Health Authorities Fail to Understand About RFK, Jr.
A time to look inward
There are obvious reasons to be concerned about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation yesterday as head of Health and Human Services. He has accused the FDA of suppressing sunshine. His niece, Caroline Kennedy, claimed in a public letter that “he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks.” He has insisted that the Covid-19 virus was designed to target specific ethnic groups while sparing others. Much about RFK, Jr., is alarming.
But understanding his movement and appeal is essential. On February 8th, the Lancet–a flagship British medical journal–published an editorial pitting the “health community” against the Trump administration. The sneering tone and utter lack of interest in Trump’s motives and reasoning is emblematic. The Lancet, which was founded in 1823, is exactly the sort of intransigent, legacy “establishment” institution that Kennedy likes to rail against. Despite asserting that “cooperation and constructive partnerships are vital,” the Lancet editorial makes no attempt to present any of the Trump administration’s actions in a sympathetic light.
It does make some sweeping claims, however, including that “everyone has a right to health,” and that “the health of Americans is contingent on the health of everyone, everywhere–and vice versa.” It also states that “equity–treating according to need–is fundamental to what medicine is.” It concludes,
The past 3 weeks have generated much anger, fear, and sorrow—but it is no time for panic. The medical and scientific communities must come together and stand up for this vision. In that spirit, The Lancet will be a focal point of accountability over the next 4 years, monitoring and reviewing the actions of the US Government and the consequences of its decisions for health.
The Lancet’s response to challenges by Trump, Kennedy, and the broader “Make America Healthy Again” movement, is to insist that it will change nothing about its approach, and to refuse to engage in any introspection. They present science not as a process of learning, with even the most marvelous discoveries subject to human error and open to improvement, but as a settled and incontrovertible good. The Lancet insists that “health is a right”—but as long as death remains inevitable, no one is meaningfully entitled to continual health. The idea that different health needs can be precisely weighed to ensure exact equity in providing treatment is similarly utopian–injuries and illnesses and disabilities vary so widely. They do not appear to examine or feel the need to explain how American health is contingent on the health of all the world and vice versa.
The Lancet editors complain of their own fear and confusion regarding Trump’s actions, but exhibit no curiosity about the fear and confusion that has led many Americans to distrust or even despise legacy scientific and healthcare systems.
Kennedy is not a creature of either the right or the left, conventionally understood. He rose to prominence due to a bipartisan, at least partially justified suspicion of American health authorities. Within the last year, the Washington Post has published at least half a dozen articles on microplastics, warning that they have been found in human brains and can be inhaled–the result of wearing a poly blend scarf or just walking down a city street.
In another alarming story, revisited by Michael Brendan Dougherty in National Review back in November, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the fat substitute olestra for use in “diet” foods in 1996, leaving customers to realize later that its side effects included severe gastrointestinal distress. Olestra also disrupts the body’s capacity to absorb essential vitamins. As Dougherty explained, “Eventually it was found that rats consuming olestra tended to overeat and grow even more fat, likely because this chemical concoction disconnected calories consumed, satiety, and nutrition in a way that mis-programs nature itself.” In short, olestra was marketed as a miracle weight-loss aid and proved to be a minor health disaster. As of 2015, olestra is no longer permitted as a food additive, but “P&G still markets it under the name Sefose; it is widely used as a lubricant for small power tools, and as a base for deck stains.”
Stories like those of olestra and of the mysterious world of microplastics–which have reportedly been found in everything from deep-sea fish to breast milk–have contributed to an environment of pervasive suspicion. If health authorities could get things so wrong, and undermine public welfare in such pervasive and shortsighted ways, the thinking goes, might it not be better to just burn it all down?
The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated this, of course, making health, medicine, and overall wellness all the more polarized. Health authorities across the country claimed that forcing children to attend class via screen was healthier than allowing them to engage with their peers in person–a position that turned out to be wrong in virtually every respect. Parents could see the immediate damage to their children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development, and later learned that Covid-19 actually posed minimal risks to young kids.
The forceful implementation of masking and vaccine mandates did little to assuage fears about an overweening government that was too often wrong, and that had failed to protect its citizens from Covid-19 in the first place. And because health leaders were loath to admit missteps–an attitude reflected in the Lancet article–many people attributed to malice what was very likely simple human error. Too often, frontline physicians faced the same kind of sneering condescension when they butted heads with research or other health authorities–despite their similar medical training and expertise. This, too, degraded trust.
In short, Kennedy is a symptom of a much larger set of problems in America’s health culture. Physicians and public-health officials should ask themselves serious questions about why these problems exist, and approach them with humility.
These ills are the literal “side effects” of increasingly centralized decision-making in what is inherently an individualized craft. The Lancet and HHS represent the decision-makers—they will naturally be defensive.