When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was fighting mercury contamination in fish, he was considered a champion of environmental health and a “Hero for the Planet” by Time magazine.
Ironically, his reputation sank when he set his sights on toxins in the vaccines we give to children. That “worst career decision…ever”—his words—cost him his family’s support and a lot more.
Kennedy deserves a chance, as would-be Secretary of Health and Human Services, to prove himself and restore his former reputation.
Fight the knee-jerk temptation that pervades our political discourse, and consider what real change might look like.
First, America is sick. It needs healing.
The United States, the world’s dominant power, is 48th in life expectancy, lagging behind every western European country. Infant mortality is higher than 56 other countries. The U.S. obesity rate leads 130 other nations and is driving liver disease in teenagers, whose cancer rates are also rising. Working-age disability has soared to 8.6 million and shows no sign of slowing.
Inconceivably perhaps, the U.S. spends more than any nation on healthcare, 38 percent higher than second-ranked Switzerland. That’s $13,432 per person in 2023. It should buy us better health.
Addicted to Pharma
Driving America’s sorry health trends, at least in part, is a diet rich in processed foods that fuel obesity and chronic illness. A pharmaceutical-addicted medical system only manages this epidemic, often with costly drugs. It lacks the time or inclination to prevent disease or support healing.
Congress and the nation’s public health agencies—the FDA, CDC and NIH—have done little to address a crisis that Kennedy alone made a campaign issue. On the contrary, the FDA rubber stamps pricey drugs based not on supposedly “rigorous” examination but on trials funded largely by drug makers.
An egregious example is the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, approved in 2021 after the FDA “inappropriately collaborated” with the pharmaceutical company Biogen and ignored both the lack of supporting data and its own advisory panel’s unanimous rejection, a House oversight report found. The cost: $56,000 a year.
In other tip-of-the-iceberg examples, pharma companies spent billions to settle charges that they fraudulently downplayed drug risks; hid data showing ineffectiveness; and manipulated findings to promote wider, and harmful, use. Four million Americans took the arthritis drug Vioxx before FDA acknowledged it was lethal to some 27,000 to 60,000 people.
The reason this goes on? The pharmaceutical industry spent more than $300 million in the last election cycle to curry Congressional favor. Pharmaceutical television advertising, meanwhile, is measured in the billions, dominating cable and network news programs that rarely expose the fraud and dangers of industry practices.
So-called “direct to consumer” drug advertising—permitted in only one other country—imbues new drugs with happy images and makes them household names; it also drives up healthcare costs, and undermines the doctor-patient relationship.
Kennedy wants to end that.
He also wants to repeal legislation that shields vaccine makers from near-complete legal liability, and has long advocated for vaccine research that is independent and unbiased. He would improve national nutrition, for one by removing additives from ultra-processed children’s cereals and other products that only minimally resemble food.
Following the ‘Playbook’
Few public figures have been subjected to the ferocious media attacks on RFK Jr. over the last year. Half the world believes that he is “anti-vax,” an all-inclusive label nurtured by well-funded public relations agencies. Their clients like the current system as it is, which is what this struggle is about.
Kennedy threatens the profitable status quo. The fight to silence him, as a government and corporate critic, is not unprecedented.
During the war on smoking, Big Tobacco honed a devious strategy to tame dissent, later dubbed the Disinformation Playbook.
Its tenets: Pass off counterfeit science as real. Harass scientists who speak out. Manufacture uncertainty where there is none. Buy credibility in academia and business. Manipulate government officials to influence policy.
Very deep pockets have helped orchestrate the campaign against Kennedy.
In its wake, the lock-step, overheated media should examine its conscience. The pandemic censorship that got Kennedy banned from Instagram and Facebook, along with millions of other countervailing views, should forever be ended.
The real work should begin.
Dr. Pierre Kory, M.D., a pulmonologist and critical care specialist, is president emeritus of Independent Medical Alliance, formerly FLCCC, and medical director of Leading Edge Clinic. Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative reporter and author.
Reposted with permission from the authors.
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