Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has outlined quite a lot of guarantees to “Make America Wholesome Once more” beneath President-elect Donald Trump, vowing to fight an “epidemic” of continual ailments that he has described as an “existential” risk to America’s future.
All are beneath the banner of combating what Kennedy sees as a standard thread behind a broad swath of illnesses: that People have been “mass poisoned by huge pharma and large meals,” and that federal businesses have did not cease it. In response, he has additionally floated quite a lot of particular coverage concepts to remake the federal authorities’s public well being establishments.
“[Trump] requested me to finish the continual illness epidemic on this nation. And he mentioned, I need to see outcomes, measurable ends in the diminishment of continual illness inside two years. And I mentioned, Mr. President, I’ll try this,” Kennedy mentioned on Nov. 2.
Authority for a MAHA agenda
Kennedy’s allies say Trump’s election can be a mandate for his or her platform of well being proposals, which they are saying delivered key votes for the president-elect. Trump has promised to let Kennedy “go wild” on well being points.
“The American folks re-elected President Trump by resounding margins as a result of they belief his judgement and help his insurance policies, together with his promise to Make America Wholesome Once more alongside well-respected leaders like RFK Jr.,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman, instructed CBS Information in an announcement.
Some concepts in Kennedy’s wide-ranging platform have developed since his authentic longshot presidential marketing campaign. He has acknowledged Trump doesn’t agree with him on each coverage.
The president-elect has listed oil and fuel as one off-limits challenge for Kennedy. Previously, Kennedy has been essential of “huge oil” and pure fuel, over the deadly toll of fossil gas air pollution and local weather change.
A number of of Kennedy’s concepts would require presidential or congressional motion to implement, although it’s attainable that they could possibly be supercharged by emergency powers.
“I will urge President Trump on day one to do the identical factor they did in COVID, which is to declare a nationwide emergency, however not for infectious illness, however for continual illness,” Kennedy mentioned on Sept. 26.
Workers adjustments at federal businesses
Kennedy claims quite a lot of well being points have worsened on account of federal inaction, together with autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity dysfunction, sleep issues, infertility charges, diabetes and weight problems.
He goals to deal with that by changing many workers all through the businesses, which Kennedy has accused of being too sympathetic to massive meals and drug firms. As a co-chair of Trump’s transition, Kennedy has been vetting a slate of staffers who may fill high positions all through the Trump administration.
Kennedy has mentioned Trump tasked him with returning businesses “to their wealthy custom of gold-standard, evidence-based science.” He has additionally mentioned “medical experience” shouldn’t be the precedence for all workers picks.
“What we do not really want at HHS is extra medical experience. What we’d like is an experience on decoupling the company from institutional corruption. As a result of it is the corruption that has distorted the science,” Kennedy mentioned on Sept. 30.
Kennedy has mentioned he hopes “to have each dietary scientist” throughout the Division of Well being and Human Providers and U.S. Division of Agriculture “fired on Day One.”
Kennedy himself has been floated to go the Division of Well being and Human Providers, although some allies say he could possibly be simpler in a “czar” sort function out of the White Home.
“Get the chemical substances out” of meals
When speaking about his platform, Kennedy typically lampoons merchandise like McDonald’s French fries or Fruit Loops cereal as examples of how meals offered within the U.S. are made with elements which can be banned or discouraged overseas, or have modified for the more serious.
“It is easy to repair. We now have a thousand elements in our meals which can be unlawful in Italy and different international locations in Europe,” he mentioned on Oct. 29.
Trump agrees along with his plans to “get the chemical substances out” of America’s meals provide, Kennedy says, which additionally contains upending using widespread pesticides and herbicides by American farmers.
Kennedy has described the meals within the U.S. as “simply poison,” citing his personal anecdotal expertise along with his son scuffling with eczema whereas consuming pasta within the U.S.
“When he ate any type of pasta on this nation, he would get these horrible, horrible outbreaks, you recognize, actually agonizing. And he moved to Italy and he lived off of pasta for a 12 months and a half and he by no means bought a case,” Kennedy mentioned on Sept. 19.
Kennedy suspects that was attributable to glyphosate, utilized in Roundup model weed-killers, which Italy moved to start out limiting in 2016. Italy’s choice was over worries that it may pose a most cancers threat, and a few advocacy teams within the U.S. have additionally voiced comparable considerations.
Agricultural commerce associations have defended glyphosate as “one of many most secure, handiest” instruments farmers should handle weeds and help “essential conservation practices.”
Kennedy’s plea to crack down on meals components and chemical substances comes because the FDA is in the midst of launching its personal new effort — and is looking on Congress to step up funding for — scrutinizing chemical substances presently allowed in meals.
Meals business teams have usually voiced help for the FDA to step up its vetting of chemical substances in meals, in hopes that it “negates the unwell suggested and disruptive state by state patchwork” of legislatures drawing up their very own restrictions.
Decreasing unhealthy and processed meals in federal packages
Kennedy has additionally promised to “get processed meals out of faculty lunch instantly” and voiced frustration over the quantity of federal meals help for low-income People that goes in the direction of sugary drinks and processed meals.
A technique Kennedy may attempt to get at this challenge is thru the federal dietary pointers course of, collectively run by the USDA and HHS, which is within the remaining phases of crafting the following version of suggestions that affect a broad vary of presidency vitamin packages.
“Children should not be consuming grains. They need to positively not be consuming seed oils. And so they for positive shouldn’t be consuming sugar. And but that’s what we’re forcing them to eat,” he mentioned on Sept. 26.
On seed oils, Kennedy has claimed that the change away from oils like beef tallow which had been excessive in saturated fat in favor of vegetable oils was a mistake, and is responsible for an increase in weight problems charges. That places him at odds with longstanding suggestions to restrict saturated fat.
“The steerage round this has been reviewed many occasions since, and has solely change into stronger in its conclusion for the function of saturated fats, significantly in its relationship with increased dangers of heart problems,” Deirdre Tobias, a researcher on this 12 months’s Dietary Tips Advisory Committee, mentioned final month.
Grains have been extra divisive at this 12 months’s committee and the broader scientific group, which has debated setting decrease limits to total grain consumption alongside suggestions to change from refined to complete grains.
Setting new limits is tough, scientists on the panel have mentioned, as a result of the one supply of some key vitamins for a lot of People is cereals and breads fortified with nutritional vitamins.
Kennedy has additionally been essential of the panel of exterior researchers put collectively to create the scientific report underpinning the suggestions, however acknowledges broader adjustments can even be wanted to maneuver the needle.
Whereas Kennedy says he personally would “by no means eat something in a package deal” as a rule of thumb, he acknowledges “most individuals do not have entry to the assets I’ve.”
“We have to begin forcing these firms to internalize their prices. So the phantasm of low cost meals goes away, proper? As a result of for those who’re consuming Coke and it appears low cost and it provides you diabetes over the long term, that is not very low cost,” he mentioned on Sept. 30.
Curbing the affect of drugmakers
Kennedy has known as for a “overview” of pointers that govern promoting by pharmaceutical firms.
The FDA presently regulates promoting about prescribed drugs, going after drugmakers that misrepresent their merchandise. Duty for some different medical merchandise is shared between the FDA and the Federal Commerce Fee.
Kennedy has urged Trump to go additional, saying he’s advising the president-elect to “ban pharmaceutical promoting on TV” over considerations that it’s influencing information protection of well being points.
He has additionally urged reform of the Prescription Drug Person Payment Act, which expenses pharmaceutical firms hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for the price of the FDA vetting their functions to determine whether or not to approve new medicine.
“We have to finish the corruption. 50% of FDA’s finances comes not from the taxpayer, however from the pharmaceutical business,” he mentioned on Sept. 26.
Kennedy has not mentioned how Congress or the Trump administration would make up the distinction from the charges in the event that they had been reduce, which quantity to round $3 billion out of FDA’s finances.
Undoing the charges may go away taxpayers successfully subsidizing a hefty invoice beforehand paid for by drugmakers — or a return to the numerous delays for brand spanking new medicines that originally spurred the creation of the charges.
Selling options to medicine
Kennedy has accused the FDA of waging a “battle on public well being” which he says contains “aggressive suppression” of something “that advances human well being and cannot be patented by Pharma.”
In his view, that features remedies like psychedelics, which lately fell quick of FDA approval, and meals like uncooked milk, which officers have stepped up warnings towards amid this 12 months’s unprecedented fowl flu outbreak on dairy farms.
Kennedy has additionally praised the dietary complement business for a courtroom win towards the FDA, after the company tried to take motion towards what it mentioned was an illegally marketed anti-aging drug.
Additionally on Kennedy’s checklist are issues like “clear meals” and train, which he needs to permit Medicare and Medicaid to cowl.
The promise has echoes of the “meals is medication” initiative, which has known as for the well being care system to supply extra monetary help for more healthy life-style habits.
“If a physician’s affected person has diabetes or weight problems, the physician ought to have the ability to say, I will advocate fitness center membership, and I will advocate, good meals and Medicaid ought to have the ability to finance these issues the identical as they might Ozempic,” Kennedy mentioned on Sept. 30.
Kennedy has additionally promised to advertise more healthy existence in different methods, starting from requiring vitamin lessons in federally funded medical faculties to reviving the presidential health take a look at in faculties.
“Knowledgeable selections” on vaccines
Kennedy has a protracted file criticizing the security of vaccines, together with latest deceptive claims that photographs have an “exemption from pre-licensing security testing” earlier than they’re permitted.
The truth is, the FDA requires new vaccines be studied for his or her security and efficacy in massive trials, outcomes of that are printed in peer-reviewed journals and publicly disclosed.
His activism on the problem dates again many years, together with a now-retracted article he printed in Rolling Stone in 2005 claiming a hyperlink between autism and an ingredient known as thimerosal that had been utilized in vaccines earlier than 2001 — which medical analysis has disproven. His focus has broadened since then.
“This does not imply vaccines is the one reason behind autism. Our youngsters right this moment are swimming round in a poisonous soup coming primarily from their meals that function alongside the identical organic pathways. However a few of it is coming from pharmaceutical medicine,” Kennedy mentioned on Sept. 19.
Kennedy has insisted that’s not “anti-vaccine” and wouldn’t search to ban them beneath Trump, as a substitute saying he needs to “restore the transparency” round them — echoing lawsuits by the group he chaired, Kids’s Well being Protection, over its Freedom of Data Act requests.
“[Trump] does not need me to take vaccines away from folks. If you wish to take a vaccine, you ought to have the ability to take it. We consider in free alternative on this nation. You should know the dangers and advantages of all the things you are taking,” Kennedy mentioned on Nov. 2.
However Kennedy has additionally asserted “there isn’t any vaccine that’s protected and efficient,” and inspired folks to “resist” CDC pointers on vaccines for teenagers — elevating concern amongst public well being officers, who level to the success of vaccination in saving hundreds of thousands of youngsters worldwide from debilitating sickness or untimely demise from preventable ailments.
Opposing water fluoridation
Forward of the election, Kennedy mentioned considered one of Trump’s first acts within the White Home can be to “advise all U.S. water techniques to take away fluoride from public water.”
Whereas quite a lot of well being dangers have been tied to increased ranges of fluoride, most are extraordinarily uncommon within the U.S. and contain far higher publicity than what’s added to consuming water.
Fluoride has been included right into a majority of U.S. water techniques for many years. The American Dental Affiliation estimates that the observe has lowered tooth decay by about 25%, although some analysis suggests trendy use of toothpaste with fluoride has lowered the coverage’s advantages.
Kennedy’s announcement does come because the Environmental Safety Company is now beneath a federal courtroom order to take motion over one particular threat: the priority that fluoride may decrease youngsters’s IQ “at dosages which can be far too near fluoride ranges within the consuming water of the US,” stemming largely from a report printed by the Nationwide Institutes of Well being.
Past influencing what rule the Trump administration’s EPA finally ends up pursuing in response to the order, Kennedy may additionally take purpose at fluoride by one other route: altering the CDC’s widely-cited assertion in regards to the observe, which hails water fluoridation as one of many best “public well being achievements of the twentieth century.”
Kennedy himself has described fluoride as “a poison” and praised the nonprofits for suing over the problem.
“The straightforward reply is I do not prefer it,” Kennedy mentioned on Sept. 30.
