The Truth about RFK Jr

[bruto]

The crackpottery never ends:

https://people.com/rfk-jr-launches-...ffects-of-phone-and-wifi-frequencies-12139757

More and more I think that basically, the whole ANit Vax anti Science based medicine is just another variation on Ludditism: the emotion rejection of modern science with it's complexity in hopes of a return to a simpler world. O course the people who advocat this could not stand a single day of the "Good Old Days".

Lately I've been seeing a youtube ad for a hat that has...well, basically some kind of invisible tinfoil in it so that it looks normal. I wonder now if it's the coming thing with RFK backing it. RFK is probably immune because the hole in his brain treats stray waves much as it does facts, and sends them right out the other side.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The Guardian reported on the MAHA conference: "Medical and lifestyle data, from doctor’s visits to exercise, should be connected and shared with the government and independent researchers, where it can be searched by AI – including potential links between vaccines and health outcomes including autism and mortality, suggested Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a longtime vaccine skeptic...Using Medicaid and “linked real-world data”, officials are also studying vaccination during pregnancy and subsequent childhood outcomes. FDA researchers are using the Biologics Effectiveness and Safety (Best) System and Medicare data to “replicate and expand previous studies” on vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, aluminum and asthma, and maternal influenza vaccines and autism spectrum disorder, he said."

 

[xyv]

A homeopathic tinfoil hat?

 

[bruto]

A homeopathic tinfoil hat?

Maybe. If not, there's a new business idea. The aluminum content is so thoroughly diluted that it protects even against Jewish Space Lasers! For only $21.95 more,you can get the deluxe version. An empty box, because it's been diluted so far that there's no hat at all!

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The New York Times reported, "Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has frequently advised Americans not to trust medical experts, said on Tuesday that artificial intelligence can offer patients “a second opinion that is much better informed than any doctor in the country” and has the power to “free us from medical tyranny.”...Mr. Kennedy said OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, told him during a recent visit to his office that it would be “malpractice for a doctor to make a diagnosis or to make a prescription without at least checking A.I.” Mr. Kennedy apparently agreed."

They continued, "In effect, there are now two MAHAs: corporate, Trump-aligned MAHA, including the summit organizers, and grass-roots unaffiliated MAHA, which Democrats are now trying to court. In Michigan on Tuesday, Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate, announced a Build a Healthier America agenda...Journalists were excluded from the summit for the most part, although it was streamed online. Major news outlets that applied for press credentials, including The New York Times, were denied them. In an email, conference organizers said they had “limited space.” But the press section inside the hotel ballroom sat empty."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The New York Times reported, "The Trump administration’s widespread layoffs in early 2025 cut 18 percent of the C.D.C.’s staff. But new personnel data, compiled by a group of former federal scientists and reported here for the first time, indicate that the agency’s staff has dwindled far more, as large numbers of employees retired or resigned. As of May 2026, the C.D.C. had 30 percent fewer employees than it did before the layoffs, the data show." The NYT continued, "In past administrations, just two or three political appointees had purview over the C.D.C. Now, there are nearly 20 political appointees from H.H.S. who communicate with C.D.C. staff members, sometimes directing them to spend time and funding on dubious theories outside the agency’s scope, according to several officials."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Steven Novella commented on the CDC at SBM. He wrote, "Historically, the CDC has always been stretched thin. Its budget has also been relatively flat, which means functionally decreased due to inflation. By all accounts, the CDC was a lean and underfunded organization, doing heroic work that was relied upon by health professionals around the world. Now, former and current CDC employees tell a story of utter collapse. There are simply too few people to do the necessary work of the agency."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Some 160 MAHA leaders sent an open letter chastising Secretary Kennedy that was quoted at Science-based Medicine. "While the centerpiece of the MAHA and health freedom agenda has been removal of mRNA shots, you have failed to take decisive action on this front despite overwhelming credible evidence to the harm of this technology. Instead, your policies related to mRNA technology are neutered and self-defeating, putting pregnant women and children at risk, misleading parents and eroding their rights, and failing to help those harmed by vaccines."

Jonathan Howard wrote, "At one level, the sheer absurdity of banning voluntary vaccines in the name “health freedom” is comical, and it’s always nice to see MAHA turn on itself. I’ll never get tired of seeing Kennedy become be woven into the conspiracies he promoted and attacked by the forces he enabled now that he’s the establishment."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

MedPage Today ran an Op-Ed from Benedicte Callan. "If you think having accurate information about your health matters, then the U.S. has a problem. I know, because I've spent the last year working with a team to track Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s distortions, deceptions, and flat-out falsehoods, and analyze what we found. The results were shocking...Kennedy also likes to persuade using stories instead of data. Skilled propagandists know that gripping stories can be powerfully persuasive, and Kennedy tells them with relish."

 

[ahhell]

The crackpottery never ends:

https://people.com/rfk-jr-launches-...ffects-of-phone-and-wifi-frequencies-12139757

More and more I think that basically, the whole ANit Vax anti Science based medicine is just another variation on Ludditism: the emotion rejection of modern science with it's complexity in hopes of a return to a simpler world. O course the people who advocat this could not stand a single day of the "Good Old Days".

I have read somewhere I forget, probably one of the old skeptic books from prior to 20 years ago, that the symptoms of electro-sensitivity are very similar to illness reported as being due to trains being nearby when they were new.

I will defend the Luddites, they weren't anti-science but anti-technology because they thought it would take their jobs and they were right about that. Had they gotten their way, we'd all be a lot worse off now but that doesn't mean they were wrong.

 

[ahhell]

A homeopathic tinfoil hat?

I'm wearing mine now!

 

[Chris_Halkides]

At The Hill Attorney Richard Sauber discussed the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which came into being in 1986. He wrote, "The secretary is also pursuing an additional tool, one that will eventually destroy the program while enshrining one of his central conspiracy theories in the law: He wants autism to be listed as one of the presumed causations of vaccines. Listing autism as an injury that is “presumed” to have been caused by vaccines seems likely to flood the system with claims that will ultimately drain the funds and collapse the whole enterprise."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

At Ground Truths Eric Topol discussed his interview with Michael Lewis, the author of the book Blockers. Professor Topol wrote, "His ability to talk with the silent civil servant heroes of multiple government agencies (the Blockers), members of the DOGE destruction team, and much more from the current US government administration...I won’t review all the things we discussed here, but the chapter on the NIH reads like an Agatha Christie murder mystery. We learned a whole different version of what happened that differed from what was previously reported."

 

[dann]

Newborn circumcision is not linked to autism, large U.S. study finds (PsyPost, Oct 6, 2026)

Jonathan Howard on bsky, Oct 7, 2026
Crank RFK Jr. blames circumcisions for autism (Jonathan Howard on YouTube, Oct 10, 2025 – 35 sec.)

It isn't quite true. RFK Jr. isn't actually talking about circumcision as the direct cause of autism, which confuses people in the bsky thread. He is talking about the painkiller administered to (male) babies being circumcised:

There's two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism, and it's highly likely because they're given Tylenol.

RFK Jr. uses Cuba as an example:

Cuba has the highest –> lowest level in the world of acetaminophen use, and it has the lowest autism rate in the world.

Trump made a similar claim:

Trump says Cuba has 'virtually no autism.' That's news to Cuban doctors. (CNN, Sep 23, 2026)
While Cuba has reported much lower instances of autism than many developed countries – 0.36 cases per 10,000 people – the island's health professionals concede that may in part be the result of lack of resources needed to more widely diagnose the condition.

RFK Jr. and Trump should both know the reason why Cuba doesn't have access to many kinds of otherwise easily accessible medicine: the U.S. blockade.

 

[dann]

Katherine Eban on bsky, Oct 8, 2026
SCOOP in @rollingstone.com
CDC has set aside new $1.6M for controversial hepatitis B vax clinical trial in Guinea-Bissau, halted earlier amid uproar over medical ethics. CDC director's office resurrected it, taking $$ from global health security funds: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

CDC Is Moving Forward With a Previously Shelved Controversial Hepatitis B Vaccine Study ('Rolling Stone, Oct 7, 2026)
“It’s a wholly unethical trial, and it shouldn’t be allowed,” says Dr. Paul Offit

 

[dann]

Sheryl Gay Stoiberg on bsky, Oct 8, 2026
NEW: RFK is planning a major vaccine injury initiative, including more research, a clinic at NIH, and a new billing code so doctors can be reimbursed for filing reports of side effects. Experts say more research is needed. But they're wary.
RFK Jr. Plans Vaccine Injury Initiative, Drawing Wary Eye From Experts (NYT, Oct 7, 2026)

Jonathan Howard on bsky, Oct 8, 2026
"Experts say more research is needed."
Of course they will say that about everything.
Who is going to say "no more research is needed"?
But this framing implies the research has been neglected.
The numbers here are out of date, but the point stands.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

At Inside Medicine Jeremy Faust reported, "Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a former CDC official told Inside Medicine that [CDC Chief of Staff] Zadeh’s behavior at that time seemed to be “deeply anti-vax,” and that she was “trying to undermine the scientific process of the ACIP.”...Another former CDC official understood that during her brief tenure as CDC director, Dr. Susan Monarez sought to have [Dr. Mina] Zadeh removed from her role at ACIP, but that Monarez was subsequently informed that she was permitted neither to make staffing nor policy decisions."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Dr. Zachary Rubin rebuts the administration on vaccine safety and vaccine injuries in this video.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

At SBM Jonathan Howard quoted an NYT article about a letter from a division of government under Ken Paxton's control (within the state of Texas). The article read in part, "The letter also requested her practice’s vaccine policy, and said that it would not be sufficient to cite the childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr. Paxton has also implicated the nation’s largest organization of pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, in the alleged conspiracy over the workaday task of protecting children from polio, measles, meningitis and more than a dozen other dangerous and sometimes life-threatening diseases."

The New York Times reported, "She said that responding to the demand for her records had so far cost her nearly $15,000 in legal fees, and sent her digging for receipts for $18 vaccines given a decade ago."

Jonathan Howard also wrote about the proposed Guinea-Bissau experiment, "Finally, an article by Katherine Eban titled CDC Is Moving Forward With a Previously Shelved Controversial Hepatitis B Vaccine Study revealed the only thing out MAHA medical establishment learned from the infamous Tuskegee experiment is how to repeat it."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Some time ago at SBM David Gorski covered the proposed Guinea-Bissau experiment. He wrote, "Nowhere do I see among the primary outcomes to be tracked one that any vaccinologist would consider to be the most important, namely the incidence of hepatitis B in infants receiving the birth dose versus those receiving the current dose at six weeks of age, you know, the disease that the vaccine is designed to prevent. Nor do I find among any of the outcomes another critical outcome, namely the incidence of chronic hepatitis B, which is the form of the infection that produces an enormously elevated risk of liver failure and liver cancer during an individual’s lifetime. Of course, by design, a five year study is far too short to quantify beneficial effects of the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccination on long-term outcomes, which suggests to me that this study is clearly intended to generate data showing adverse health outcomes associated with the birth dose. (This ain’t my first rodeo.)"