When America sneezes, the world catches a cold. Donald Trump鈥檚 renewed tenancy in the White House, with anti-vaxxer-in-chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr whispering in his ear, promises more than just sneezes. It heralds the return of vaccine-preventable illnesses, which do not stop at the border.
The anti-science movement is mere months away from being sworn into office in the United States. During Trump鈥檚 interregnum, a flock of medical contrarians and wellness warriors has coalesced around the figure of RFK Jr, who has now been chosen by Trump as聽聽in his upcoming administration. While neither crystal balls nor Tarot cards can predict the scope and extent of the damage we are about to witness to public health and trust in science, an examination of RFK Jr鈥檚 budding coalition reveals a dire situation. Trump鈥檚 Make America Great Again (MAGA) has repeatedly been called a 鈥渃ult鈥� by the media. It certainly is a cult of personality. RFK Jr and his campaign riffed on the slogan, creating Make America Healthy Again or MAHA.
Kennedy himself should inspire consternation. He has been a leading figure of the modern anti-vaccine movement聽since 2005, when a psychologist ascribed her son鈥檚 autism on the mercury found in vaccines and dropped a stack of papers alleging this link on Kennedy鈥檚 front porch. An environmental lawyer familiar with mercury鈥檚 effect on the environment, Kennedy believed the link was real and began his vaccine-blaming crusade, which he is now taking to Washington. He founded the Children鈥檚 Health Defense, whose聽鈥淭V channel鈥�聽fuels fear and mistrust of science and institutions, 补苍诲听聽in 2019 was partly responsible for an outbreak of measles, which made 5,700 people sick and killed 83 of them. Most of the deaths were in young children. New Zeal补苍诲听聽to Samoa to help with the shortage.
Kennedy鈥檚 virulent anti-vaccine messaging is now being sanewashed in the media in an attempt to bolster his reputation, but make no mistake. He does not want 鈥渟afer vaccines;鈥� he wants no vaccines at all. Much like the bailey at the foot of a medieval castle is harder to defend, Kennedy often retreats to the safer tower on the hill鈥攖he motte鈥攚hen pushed. Among anti-vaxxers, he calls mercury-containing vaccines aimed at children聽聽to NBC News, after Trump won the election, he聽, 鈥淚鈥檓 not gonna take away anyone鈥檚 vaccines. I鈥檝e never been anti-vaccine.鈥� I鈥檓 not sure if this is still a motte-and-bailey fallacy or if he is straight up lying now.
But Kennedy is not alone, as two siblings have rapidly been promoted as the shepherds of Kennedy鈥檚 MAHA movement: sister Casey and brother Calley Means. Their book,聽Good Energy, got them a spot on Tucker Carlson鈥檚 show, as well as a bevy of right-wing and alternative medicine podcasts like聽The Joe Rogan Experience, The Rubin Report,聽补苍诲听The Doctor鈥檚 Farmacy with Mark Hyman M.D.聽Casey then leveraged this media attention into political gold by bringing the flock together to Washington, D.C. for a live-streamed, suits-and-ties bit of pseudoscience theatre hosted by Senator Ron Johnson and en迟颈迟濒别诲听
The event was a masquerade, with contrarians donning the garbs of science and pretending to be the critical thinkers in the room. Their shared grievance was the claim that Americans are being poisoned by their food supply, leading to an apocalyptic epidemic of chronic disease. Universities and regulatory agencies have fallen prey to institutional capture: corporate money has rendered their testimonies hopelessly corrupt. Only the people present at the event can be trusted to save America from itself. They want to drain the science swamp but given their alignment with convicted criminal Trump and their own misunderstanding of the scientific process, they are more likely to trap Americans in quicksand than to end corruption.
Here are a few of the falsehoods they proclaimed in the Russell Senate Office Building:
RFK Jr himself claimed that rates of autism have increased even though 鈥渢here has been no change in diagnosis and no change in screening either,鈥� which is patently false:聽. He also boldly stated that cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and the old. This is not at all聽.
Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon who wrote an opinion piece in February 2021 for the聽Wall Street Journal聽迟颈迟濒别诲听聽and who continued to make bad prediction after bad prediction during the pandemic, declared that 鈥減esticides are driving our fertility rates down,鈥� even if this claim is based on deeply flawed research routinely picked up by a media hungry for sensationalism (see聽聽for example).
Dr. Casey Means, the glue of this group, who stepped away from her final year in residency as a head-and-neck surgeon to learn about the pseudoscience of functional medicine, stated that she never learned in her training that 鈥渕edical error and medications are the third leading cause of death in the United States.鈥� That is because聽it鈥檚 not, and the co-author of the聽聽that originated this misconception is none other than Marty Makary himself. She also claimed that medical specialties exist because 鈥渋t鈥檚 profitable to send people鈥� to them.
Her brother, Calley, who聽聽dubious wellness products like dietary supplements and infrared saunas, claims the infamous Flexner Report鈥檚 underlying medical logic was later proven to be wrong. This is absolutely not true, as聽I have written about recently, but it is a popular argument among critics of medicine who pray for an open-door policy on make-believe remedies.
Why are they all so ill-informed about illness? The desire to become a health guru is hard to resist for some. Antiestablishmentarianism and grievance-mongering, when fed on a diet of conspiracy theories, can sprout a lucrative career in wellness, prioritizing feelings over facts. Most of the people in this room, who are poised to influence American politics in the next year, have books to sell, companies to benefit from, and sponsorship deals to negotiate for their podcasts. Look at one of the panelists, Vani Hari, better known as The Food Babe, who is experiencing a career resurrection. After her chemophobic crusade was soundly debunked by many scientists (including聽our own Office鈥檚 Joe Schwarcz), she is now back as part of Kennedy鈥檚 congregation. She denounces the presence of allegedly toxic food dyes in products sold in the U.S. which are apparently banned in other countries, even though many of the examples she gives are simply聽. She is, of course, selling her own line of health products called Truvani, including fluoride-free toothpaste, because demonizing fluoride is popular in her circles. As聽颁辞苍蝉辫颈谤颈迟耻补濒颈迟测听co-host Derek Beres often says, watch what they say, then watch what they sell. And don鈥檛 forget to snag your聽听苍辞飞!
America鈥檚 diagnosis, according to Casey Means, is metabolic dysfunction, her one true cause of all (chronic) diseases. According to her, our cells can鈥檛 produce good energy anymore because of chemicals and toxins. It doesn鈥檛 matter that she is not a metabolic health expert or that theories claiming to have found a single cause for all diseases never pan out; it sounds good. Mikhaila Peterson Fuller, daughter of infamous psychologist Jordan Peterson, was there to promote her own would-be panacea:聽steak and salt, a ludicrous regimen introduced by Senator Johnson as 鈥渁 therapeutic and plant-free ketogenic diet.鈥澛�
These outcasts don鈥檛 want to fix the system; they want to burn it all down and replace it with institutions made of unicorn horns. They have become consumed with mirages, obsessed with toxins and chemicals they cannot see but imagine are debasing our bodies and impairing our minds. We are witnessing the institutionalization of pseudoscience.
Pointing out the lies and falsehoods of this meeting, however, does a disservice to the reader who has not watched these people鈥檚 speeches and seen the applause (and sometimes standing ovations) they received. It misses the point that聽they sound credible.聽There are real and important problems surrounding ultra-processed food. Produce is often more expensive than packaged items that are far less nutritious. Many chronic diseases are getting more common, and the revolving door between industry and government regulation is a well-known issue. These influencers have managed to put their finger on a significant problem, but their simplistic minds keep missing the real solution. This echoes the marketing victory of聽integrative medicine, which denounces failings of conventional medicine and spotlights magical thinking in the form of Reiki and essential oils as a solution.
Real solutions would involve addressing socioeconomic inequalities. It would require facilitating access to doctors, nurse practitioners, dentists, and dietitians. It would necessitate the price of healthy food to go down, and for people who hold two or three jobs to somehow find the time to cook nourishing meals. To arrive at a real prescription for America鈥檚 dietary woes would have required inviting actual experts to this panel. Behind the microphones, however, there were no registered dietitians, no toxicologists, no public health experts. How could there be? The panel would view them as corrupt. Instead, we were presented with folks like Max Lugavere, a podcaster with a degree in film and psychology whose show is sponsored by聽, and Alex Clark, a Food Babe in the making with no formal background in food science who sees crank opinions about nutrition as聽聽for her show.
Medical doctors have not been forgotten in this coalition, though, with Dr. Marty Makary bringing in a large share of those credentials. Makary is part of a vocal group of COVID minimizers, who are referred to by聽鈥攚ho has conscientiously documented their rise鈥攁s the聽We Want Them Infected聽doctors. The name comes from an official in the first Trump administration who, in July 2020, proposed that young and healthy people should be infected by the novel coronavirus to build herd immunity. Months later, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Prof. Sunetra Gupta released the Great Barrington Declaration, another step in the direction of mass infections. It is unknown at this point how many of these contrarian doctors will be invited to contribute to Trump鈥檚 health plan. Events like Senator Johnson鈥檚 panel 补苍诲听, which portrayed RFK Jr and his associates as George Washington and his army crossing the Delaware, are auditions. Only some will make the cut and be given the power to make decisions in Trump鈥檚 upcoming reality TV show, until they are inevitably fired. Trump鈥檚 unpredictability and pride make it hard to foresee how many of these policy ideas will be enacted and how many will be rolled back, but there will be damage in the chaos.
The Heritage Foundation released a nearly-1,000-page document called聽聽which aims to be a policy template for the next U.S. president. It demands that environmental concerns (read: climate change) be removed from dietary guidelines; it claims that gender identity is political and comes from 鈥渞adical actors;鈥� and it asserts that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is 鈥減erhaps the most incompetent and arrogant agency in the federal government.鈥� It pushes forward an agenda that is anti-abortion-pills, anti-puberty-blockers, and anti-vaccine and anti-mask in the case of COVID-19. Meanwhile, Trump鈥檚 own聽聽speaks of the 鈥渃ensorship cartel,鈥� which must be 鈥渄ismantled and destroyed.鈥� It will ban social media platforms from moderating misinformation, fire federal employees who dared push back against falsehoods, and punish universities who have 鈥渆ngaged in censorship activities.鈥� This is the Orwellian warping of free speech to quell dissent, going so far as to call for the prosecution of people who have used the labels 鈥渕isinformation鈥� and 鈥渄isinformation鈥� in their work. If our Office were on American soil, our very existence would be jeopardized.
With Kennedy and his allies being allowed to weigh in on health policy at the highest level of government, we will witness the metabolic dysfunction of the entire American healthcare apparatus. Food safety will be endangered, health disparities will increase, and infectious diseases will rage on. That is not how they see the future, though. They are busy looking in the rearview mirror at a rose-tinted past: trim and fit children, happy with life. They want to recreate the circumstances that led to this, but they don鈥檛 understand science. In聽, RFK Jr confirmed he is all-in on pseudoscience. 鈥淔DA鈥檚 war on public health is about to end,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淭his includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can鈥檛 be patented by Pharma.鈥� I wasn鈥檛 aware the FDA was going after yoga instructors.
During the Second World War, Japanese troops followed by Allied forces established bases in Melanesia, a group of islands northeast of Australia which includes Papua New Guinea. Many of their Indigenous peoples had never met outsiders and were awed by the planes, guns, and medicines these soldiers brought to their islands. Veneration was also helped by some soldiers pretending to be revered ancestors of Melanesians. The war ended, and the 鈥渁ncestors鈥� took their cargo with them.
Charismatic local leaders then warned of a cataclysm, followed by the return of these ancestors bringing back the wealth they had briefly displayed. All Melanesians had to do was mimic the rituals they had seen the soldiers engage in. They practiced drills with fake rifles. They carved headphones out of wood and erected control towers. They lit torches alongside makeshift runways, hoping the planes would return. This phenomenon earned a name in 1945:聽.
Anthropologists now recognize that this view may have been simplistic and obscured some of the Melanesians鈥� anti-colonialist sentiment. But it became immortalized in scientific skepticism circles by physicist Richard Feynman, who used it to refer to pseudoscience as聽聽Irrational means are used to pursue rational ends. People go through the motions of science without understanding its core principles and nuances.
If MAGA is a cult, then MAHA is a cargo cult.
鈥淟et food be thy medicine鈥� is聽聽attributed to Hippocrates, the father of medicine. In reality, Hippocratic doctors knew the difference between food and medicines. But who cares when all we鈥檙e doing is lighting torches alongside make-believe runways and praying for the return of ancient idols and their precious cargo?
Correction: an earlier version of this article linked to an irrelevant article on the topic of pesticides and fertility. This has been corrected.
