The Truth about RFK Jr

[Chris_Halkides]

At MedPage Today Benedicte Callan wrote, One of his favorite tall tales involves Americans having been healthierwhen his uncle, John F. Kennedy, was president. "I was raised in a time where we did not have a chronic disease epidemic," Kennedy testified during his confirmation hearing, suggesting that since his uncle's presidency, the percentage of children with chronic illnesses had surged from 2% to 66%. At times he's given different figures, but the message stays the same.

"His claims are nonsense. A 1960 National Health Survey, released during the Kennedy presidency, reported that 41% of the country had one or more chronic conditions. The numbers have indeed gone up a bit since then but, given that the U.S. population has gotten older (and people live with now-treatable conditions that would have killed their grandparents), those changes aren't a big surprise."

 

[a_unique_person]

At MedPage Today Benedicte Callan wrote, One of his favorite tall tales involves Americans having been healthierwhen his uncle, John F. Kennedy, was president. "I was raised in a time where we did not have a chronic disease epidemic," Kennedy testified during his confirmation hearing, suggesting that since his uncle's presidency, the percentage of children with chronic illnesses had surged from 2% to 66%. At times he's given different figures, but the message stays the same.

"His claims are nonsense. A 1960 National Health Survey, released during the Kennedy presidency, reported that 41% of the country had one or more chronic conditions. The numbers have indeed gone up a bit since then but, given that the U.S. population has gotten older (and people live with now-treatable conditions that would have killed their grandparents), those changes aren't a big surprise."

Life expectancy has risen and that means coping with chronic health conditions today are inevitable as we age. JR is more stupid than I thought possible. Formerly untreatable cancer can now be treated.

 

[bruto]

Yes, once upon a golden time, those extraneous people died before they could get the chronic diseases, and even better some of those chronic ones were nice and fatal too. Bring back the good old days and cull the herd. I mean, imagine how overpopulated some of those little New England towns would be now if half their population hadn't died of small pox! Not only that, but my iron lung stock is worthless now! Besides, what would Little Women do for drama without a good dose of scarlet fever? And what a deprivation it would be to grow up without the Velveteen Rabbit! Time to look a bit closer at those so-called "antibiotics!"

Those diseases only kill the weak. The proof is simple. Death is the greatest weakness. QED!

 

[Helen]

Being better at diagnosing chronic diseases also drives up the numbers. If doctors would just stop trying to find out what's wrong people, the numbers would look soooo much better!

 

[Norman Alexander]

Being better at diagnosing chronic diseases also drives up the numbers. If doctors would just stop trying to find out what's wrong people, the numbers would look soooo much better!

They say that about autism too.

Oh wait, no they don't. They try to blame it on vaccines instead.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Science reported, "Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Vikaas Sohal of the University of California San Francisco had not been formally offered the job leading the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which has a $2.2 billion research budget...This week, Sohal was informed that Kennedy, whose department oversees NIH, was going in a different direction. (In an email, Sohal declined to comment.) According to a third source with knowledge of the situation, Kennedy wants to offer the position to Shebani Sethi, a Stanford University psychiatrist who has pioneered a relatively new field called metabolic psychiatry, which includes using ketogenic and other special diets to treat mental illnesses."

 

[dann]

At MedPage Today Benedicte Callan wrote, One of his favorite tall tales involves Americans having been healthierwhen his uncle, John F. Kennedy, was president. "I was raised in a time where we did not have a chronic disease epidemic," Kennedy testified during his confirmation hearing, suggesting that since his uncle's presidency, the percentage of children with chronic illnesses had surged from 2% to 66%. At times he's given different figures, but the message stays the same.

"His claims are nonsense. A 1960 National Health Survey, released during the Kennedy presidency, reported that 41% of the country had one or more chronic conditions. The numbers have indeed gone up a bit since then but, given that the U.S. population has gotten older (and people live with now-treatable conditions that would have killed their grandparents), those changes aren't a big surprise."

U.S. Life Expectancy (1950-2026) (Macrotrends)
Years of life expectancy in the early 1960s, the Kennedy years: 70
Nowadays: 79.5

Life Expectancy USA (Our World in Data)
Almost the same as Macrotrends except for a dip in 2020-2021, the first two C19 years.

 

[dann]

The Bandim Health Project in Gunea-Bissau again:

The U.S.-Funded Plan To Kill Infants In Africa By Withholding Vaccines Has Been Thwarted (Defector, Oct 23, 2023)
This week, one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s most malevolent plots was finally brought to a halt when police in Guinea-Bissau raided the offices of Danish researchers who intended to carry out a hepatitis B vaccine trial that would have endangered thousands of newborn children in Africa and condemned some of them to an early, agonizing death. The trial was to be funded with $1.6 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I wish this would also end the influence that the SDU group has on Danish vaccine policies (and in particular the C19 vaccine policy), but I don't think there's much chance of that. The group is supported by influential reactionaries like the ignorant pandemic minimizers in the libertarian think tank CEPOS:

De ældre er vaccineret: Derfor bør vi fjerne (næsten) alle restriktioner (CEPOS, May 23, 2026)
Corona er netop nu formentlig mindre farligt end en almindelig influenza i højsæsonen.

The elderly have been vaccinated: That's why we should remove (almost) all restrictions
Currently, coronavirus is probably not as dangerous as ordinary influenza in the high season

That one really didn't age well, but much like Tegnell in Sweden and the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration in the USA, they wanted the whole population to get infected as soon as possible, preferably pre-vaccination. Infection wants to be free!!!

Remember that the Danish SDU group has also influenced the anti-vaxxer policies of health authorities during RFK Jr.'s regime, e.g. not to C19 booster vaccinate people younger than 65, not to vaccinate children against Hep B and chickenpox. Denmark now considers vaccinating kids against chickenpox.

RFK Jr.’s Misleading Line on the Chickenpox Vaccine (FactCheck.org, May 16, 2025)
Speaking before Congress, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. misleadingly claimed that Europe doesn’t vaccinate children against chickenpox because a study shows that when you do, “you get shingles in older people.” While that is a theoretical concern, studies have not borne that out — and parts of Europe do vaccinate kids.

Even if it were true, it would be grotesque to let children get chickenpox to protect the elderly from getting shingles.
Vaccinating adults against shingles is the way to go.

Sorry about going into so much detail about Denmark, but anti-vaxxers inspire each other across borders.
It's the globalization of disinformation.

Jonathan Howard on bsky, Oct 25, 2026
Sensible Medicine’s finest

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The New York Times reported, "Ending the practice of immunizing all newborns against hepatitis B, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recommended, would sharply increase the number of chronic infections and put more than half of Americans at risk of the disease by age 20, according to a new study published on Monday...The results are broadly consistent with those from two other studies published in April in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. One found that delaying vaccination until two months of age would lead to $16.4 million in added medical cost for infants born in one year. The second study found that preventing the increase in infections would require doctors to screen hundreds of thousands more pregnant women for hepatitis B than they currently do."

MedPage Today discussed the same study: "In a single-year U.S. birth cohort of 3.6 million infants, delaying the first vaccination dose until age 2 months would increase chronic HBV infections by 19% (255 to 303 cases), while the shared decision-making approach would increase chronic infections by 83% (467 cases), reported Amir Mohareb, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues in the Annals of Internal Medicine."

 

[Mojo]

U.S. Life Expectancy (1950-2026) (Macrotrends)
Years of life expectancy in the early 1960s, the Kennedy years: 70
Nowadays: 79.5

Yes, but longer life expectancy probably means more sick people. RFK Jr is determined to do something about it.

 

[Planigale]

The New York Times reported, "Ending the practice of immunizing all newborns against hepatitis B, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recommended, would sharply increase the number of chronic infections and put more than half of Americans at risk of the disease by age 20, according to a new study published on Monday...The results are broadly consistent with those from two other studies published in April in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. One found that delaying vaccination until two months of age would lead to $16.4 million in added medical cost for infants born in one year. The second study found that preventing the increase in infections would require doctors to screen hundreds of thousands more pregnant women for hepatitis B than they currently do."
MedPage Today discussed the same study: "In a single-year U.S. birth cohort of 3.6 million infants, delaying the first vaccination dose until age 2 months would increase chronic HBV infections by 19% (255 to 303 cases), while the shared decision-making approach would increase chronic infections by 83% (467 cases), reported Amir Mohareb, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues in the Annals of Internal Medicine."

This is weird because why wouldn't you want to screen pregnant women? In the UK all women are screened every pregnancy. HIV Hep B Hep C & other stuff. It is a good time to catch them, if you want to eradicate infections you need to find the infected and treat them. All persons who attend ED in UK are offered screening for HIV and Hep B&C, it is part of the eradication policy for HIV and hepatitis.

Since all pregnant women are screened in the UK we don't do universal neonatal vaccination for hepB, only for high risk groups the rest are vaccinated later along with the rest of their child hood vaccines (8 weeks 6 in 1 DTaP/IPV/Hib/HepB; Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Polio, Haemophilia b, Hepatitis B).

 

[Helen]

This is weird because why wouldn't you want to screen pregnant women? In the UK all women are screened every pregnancy. HIV Hep B Hep C & other stuff. It is a good time to catch them, if you want to eradicate infections you need to find the infected and treat them. All persons who attend ED in UK are offered screening for HIV and Hep B&C, it is part of the eradication policy for HIV and hepatitis.

Since all pregnant women are screened in the UK we don't do universal neonatal vaccination for hepB, only for high risk groups the rest are vaccinated later along with the rest of their child hood vaccines (8 weeks 6 in 1 DTaP/IPV/Hib/HepB; Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Polio, Haemophilia b, Hepatitis B).

I suppose screening would be far too expensive for many US women, so they'd skip it?

 

[Flo]

I suppose screening would be far too expensive for many US women, so they'd skip it?

In France, screening for HepB, along for several other illnesses, is automatic during the first of the 7 obligatory medical visits during pregnancy; they are of course covered by Sécurité Sociale.

 

[Helen]

In France, screening for HepB, along for several other illnesses, is automatic during the first of the 7 obligatory medical visits before the 3rd month of pregnancy; they are of course covered by Sécurité Sociale.

Yes, it's the same here. But being pregnant and giving birth can of course be very expensive in the US, and I would expect there to be some overlap between women at risk, and women with financial difficulties.

 

[Planigale]

Yes, it's the same here. But being pregnant and giving birth can of course be very expensive in the US, and I would expect there to be some overlap between women at risk, and women with financial difficulties.

American exceptionalism.
Whilst the rest of the world supports women through pregnancy, the US adopts a 'least we can get away with' approach. Which explains why maternal and perinatal mortality in the US is much higher than in the rest of the developed world.

List of countries by maternal mortality ratio - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

 

[P.J. Denyer]

American exceptionalism.
Whilst the rest of the world supports women through pregnancy, the US adopts a 'least most we can get away with charging' approach. Which explains why maternal and perinatal mortality in the US is much higher than in the rest of the developed world.

List of countries by maternal mortality ratio - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

FTFY

 

[dann]

Paul Offit on X, Oct 26, 2026
Beyond the Noise 115: Why RFK Jr's Next Vaccine Move Is So Dangerous
https://youtu.be/Zb7y2wenELA?si=P4JSiWLBYT1V-Lc2 via @YouTube
RFK Jr.'s latest weapon in his war against vaccines.

Why RFK Jr's Next Vaccine Move Is So Dangerous (MicrobeTV on YouTube, Oct 26, 2026) – 18 min.)
RFK Jr.’s claim that the public’s concerns about vaccine injuries have been dismissed or gaslit isn’t supported by the facts: when issues about vaccine safety have been raised, researchers have performed studies carefully and rigorously to determine whether vaccines were causing harm.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

At Science-based Medicine David Gorski discussed the new vaccine injury clinic. He wrote, "First of all, I can understand why NIH staff don’t want to be associated with this new clinic, if such is the case. They recognize an ideological, political, and pseudoscientific endeavor when they see it. I also note that not wanting to be associated with this new clinic is not the same thing as not wanting to conduct research into vaccine adverse events. Indeed, the NIH has, as mentioned above, conducted research into vaccine adverse events for decades. What NIH staff don’t want is to conduct research that is poor quality and unethical in which the outcome is predetermined, which is what this clinic is clearly going to be all about. Clinical Center Board members Leslie and Green could clearly see that when they pointed out that the new clinic was being shoehorned into space that had long been dedicated to studying vaccine adverse events and that the labeling of some of the participants of the roundtable held at the ribbon-cutting ceremony as being definitely “vaccine injured” gave the game away, signaling that the results of this study are already predetermined."

 

[Andy_Ross]

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Novel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature. All of that tradition has been destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood."

video in link


Just to point out
Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel in Literature in 1988. Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel in Chemistry in 1999, after winning the Wolf Prize. Omar Yaghi won the Nobel in Chemistry in 2025

 

[Planigale]

Remember that the Danish SDU group has also influenced the anti-vaxxer policies of health authorities during RFK Jr.'s regime, e.g. not to C19 booster vaccinate people younger than 65, not to vaccinate children against Hep B and chickenpox. Denmark now considers vaccinating kids against chickenpox.

Even if it were true, it would be grotesque to let children get chickenpox to protect the elderly from getting shingles.
Vaccinating adults against shingles is the way to go.

Sorry about going into so much detail about Denmark, but anti-vaxxers inspire each other across borders.
It's the globalization of disinformation.

Kids vaccinated against chickenpox less likely to develop shingles, analysis finds​

Kids vaccinated against chickenpox less likely to develop shingles, analysis finds

While shingles rates are declining in younger people, they are increasing in older adults.

www.cidrap.umn.edu

First Birth Cohort Eligible for Chickenpox Vaccine Had a Sharp Drop in Shingles Cases

The share of adults diagnosed with shingles between 2019 and 2026 rose steeply with age, from about 7 per 10,000 among those born between 2006 and 2008 to 182 per 10,000 among those born between 1968 and 1975.

www.epicresearch.org

Chicken pox vaccine as MMRV is routinely given to children in UK