“I’m going to let him go crazy about health. I’m going to let him go crazy about food. I’m going to let him go crazy about medicine.”
This is how Donald Trump spoke at a recent rally in New York. The one he is going to let “go crazy” is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the American attorney general assassinated in 1968 and nephew of the former president assassinated in 1963.
It is also a outspoken anti-vaccine activist, masks and other public health measures such as fluoridation of drinking water.
All voices indicate that he will be responsible for shaping the future of health care in the North American country after Donald Trump’s electoral victory this Tuesday. And he has already announced that he is laying off “entire departments” of some health agencies.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began the year as an independent candidate for the U.S. presidency after leaving the Democratic Party a few months earlier. At the end of August, he decided to withdraw from the electoral race and support Trump.
Since then, he has met the politician several times and, in the environment of the new president, no one seems to doubt that he will dictate the country’s health policy.
During a video meeting with his supporters, Kennedy assured that Trump had promised him control of agencies related to public health, reported Washington Post.
This would involve taking charge of the Medicare and Medicaid programs (the American public health system), the regulation of drugs and health devices, and even food regulation.
However, it does not seem easy for him to be named head of the Department of Health and Human Services, the equivalent of our Ministry of Health, because it is a position that must be validated in the Senate, which could be complicated by having been arrested in the past for possession of marijuana or heroin, as well as having extramarital affairs.
Overall, no one doubts that his influence over Trump is such that he is guaranteed a position in the administration from which he can implement his agenda.
From environmental health to human health
And what an agenda. Kennedy was known for his fight as an environmental activist. A lawyer for various NGOs and professor of environmental law at Pace University (New York), he has advocated for decades to impose and extend environmental protection, from the Hudson Basin to the land indigenous tribes.
But for some time now, his interests have turned to health. He is president of Children’s Health Defense, a lobby that campaigned against vaccines, fluoridation of drinking water or the 5G communications network.
Among other things, he is a promoter of the hoax that vaccines cause autism in children, he even wrote a book about it, despite the fact that the article which gave rise to this theory was retracted for years and his author’s license was revoked. .to practice medicine for openly manipulating data.
He also reported that the deaths of two babies in Samoa in 2018 were due to mercury in the MMR vaccine, while it was due to the mistaken administration of a muscle relaxant.
His anti-vaccine activism led several members of his family (two brothers and a niece) to write an open letter in the magazine. Policy in 2019, repudiating him for causing distrust in science through the spread of hoaxes.
Evidently, he attacked coronavirus vaccines, and after the pandemic his conspiratorial activism only grew, accusing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of corruption and preventing “everything that which advances human health and cannot be patented by the pharmaceutical industry.”
Their latest battle is the removal of fluoridation of drinking water, a measure that became widespread in this North American country in the 1960s and has improved the oral health of several generations.
Interviewed on Joe Rogan’s podcast, one of the most listened to in the United States, Trump said that eliminating water fluoridation “sounds good to him.”
Paraphrasing MAGA’s motto (Make America Great Again‘Make America Great Again’) of Trump supporters, created the MAHA platform (Making America Healthy Again“Make America Healthy”) to implement their agenda in the next administration.
In an interview with the North American television channel MSNBC, he attacked the FDA and warned that “in certain categories, it was going to eliminate entire departments”, such as nutrition. “They need to go, they are not protecting our children.”
Sources close to the future president cited by media as Washington Post Kennedy is said to already have a list of people who could fill positions in federal agencies and departments related to health and food.
The leading candidate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is Joseph A. Ladapo, a physician and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was tapped by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to post of surgeon general (chief advisor for public health). ) of the State after reading it Wall Street Journal attack coronavirus vaccinesmasks and other measures taken during the pandemic.
Like Kennedy, Ladapo spread messages about messenger RNA vaccines that later turned out to be false, such as that they interfered with the DNA of vaccinated people or that they generated a high risk of cardiovascular death in people. young adults.
The U.S. Department of Health manages a budget of more than $3 trillion and, in addition to coordinating public health services, vaccine and drug approval, and management of infectious outbreaks, it is one of the major funders of biomedical research. the country.
