TRUMP'S RACE TO THE BOTTOM ACCELERATES
The “word on the street” today is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the man who is perhaps Donald Trump’s most dangerous cabinet pick - in terms of the amount of widespread damage and chaos he can create - has moved a step closer to being nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
According to different “well-informed sources,” the announcement of Trump’s decision to inflict a misinformed former drug addict with a dead worm in his brain on the healthcare of Americans from birth to death (which may come sooner during the next four years), a man with a history of spreading lies, misinformation and disinformation about everything from Yellow Dye No. 4, to the crazy anti-vaccination fantasies that spread from the miseducated celebrities of the (Rich) People’s Republic of Santa Monica across the country over the past 40 years, to every other New Age bullshit health “theory” could be made as yearly as tomorrow.
Looking at this idiot’s lifelong career as a rich bullshit artist who - but for the accident of his birth - would have trouble organizing a wet cardboard box under a freeway overpass as his headquarters, I have long wondered if perhaps the wrong RFK got shot. If there is an afterlife, Dad must be spinning in his grave at a speed approaching orbital velocity and the thought of his least offspring being allowed to do more in public than opine on whether Chinese takeout should be ordered for lunch (He’d argue against, because of the MSG, I’m sure).
In his victory speech last week, Trump said of Kennedyu, “He’s going to help make America healthy again. He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him get to it/. Go have a good time, Bobby.”
Kennedy’s main claim to infamy - beyond the drug abuse, driving an ex-wife to suicide, leaving a dead bear cub in Central Park, driving 100 miles with a dripping whale head he had severed from the body with a chainsaw, and eating both roadkill and a dog (among may others) - is his belief in the long-debunked New Age myth that the MMR vaccine causes autism. He has also expressed disbelief in the efficacy of the COVID vaccines that broke the worst pandemic in a century.
As he has edged closer to the possibility of entering government service with the power to act on his fantasies, Kennedy has recently tried to downplay his reputation as an antivaxxer. On the Wednesday after Election Day, he anounced that “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody,” in an NPR interview. In a later interview with MSNBC, he said, “I’m going to make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them.” He went on to say he “has never been anti-vaccine.”
He also said the new administration would recommend against putting fluoride in drinking water, which has been added to drinking water for decades to fight cavities. Kennedy claims “it’s almost certainly” causing neurological development issues and loss of IQ in children. (No, you dumbfucking proof that rich people should be eaten, lightly sauteed with a nice Chianti - the IQ problem stems from the extensive presence of lead pipes in public water systems, which does cause a lowering of IQ among young children exposed to lead poisoning in the water they drink.)
Fortunately, the federal government has no role in any decisions about adding or removing flouride, so advise away, Brainworm Boy.
Even the judge in California who concluded that a “preponderance of the evidence” showed that fluoridation at 0.7 milligrams per liter, the level considered optimal in the U.S., poses unreasonable risk of reducing children’s IQ - who Kennedy cited as his authority - recommended that use of flouride continue, with the EPA regulating its use in drinking water.
Should Trump continue to fuck with the country and make this nomination, Kennedy will join Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Matt Gaetz on the list of nominees who can expect “interesting” nomination interviews in their congressional hearings.
I saw a study this morning that holds that 50% of American adults do not have the reading ability to comprehend the usage directions on a bottle of aspirin.
I think I can go out on a scientific limb here and say that I will not be surprised if a correlation is found between that state of affairs and the average Trump voter.
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I need a drink. I'm tying not to.
I'm going to ask my practice manager to put in a very strong pro-science statement into our clinic's website. I hope my colleagues in veterinary medicine, and in human medicine, will do the same. We've gotten more than a few new clients from the "holistic" vets in town after they became dissatisfied with the results of their "treatments" and the cost of same.
Already several of my FB friends have praised RFK The Much Lesser, and I've had to work to disabuse them of that notion. Unfortunately the anti-science/anti-Western medicine bias started by Wakefield and catalyzed by Jenny McCarthy (aided and abetted by Oprah Winfrey) is still very strong with some people. It's going to take all of us in medicine to push back.