Donald Trump recently called Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a ”leftwing nut case” from the radical wing of the Democrats. Now Trump has announced that as secretary of health and human services, Kennedy will investigate the link between vaccines and autism. How can we end this pandering to those opposed to vaccines?
The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Health and Human Services Department secretary may only look like a Donald Trump production as he smiles and teases the liberal media. Wrong. The president-elect has just told NBC that the department, headed by the black sheep of the Kennedy clan who made a spectacular about-face and jumped into Trump’s camp from the left wing of the Democratic Party, will investigate whether vaccines cause autism in children.
Interviewer Kristen Welker recalled that vaccines prevent the deaths of 4 million children a year, and there is no evidence that they cause autism. Trump responded in his typically simple way, “If you go back 25 years ago, you had very little autism. Now you have it Now you have it. Something is going on. I don’t know if it’s vaccines. Maybe it’s chlorine in the water, right?” Although he assured listeners he was not opposed to vaccines, which have eliminated polio, for example, he added “certain vaccines — are incredible. But maybe some aren’t. And if they aren’t, we have to find out. But when you talk about autism, because it was brought up, and you look at the amount we have today versus 20 or 25 years ago, it’s pretty scary,” the president-elect said.
Kennedy Will Look into a Link between Vaccines and Autism: A Long-Debunked Myth
On the surface, this is not a very disturbing statement. It is ambiguous, but let’s be honest, it’s quite balanced for Trump. Trump seems to be saying that nothing is necessarily wrong but that he just wants to look into it, what are you afraid of if you have nothing to hide? The problem is that he is not saying this as a celebrity, an eccentric U.S. presidential candidate, or even a member of Congress. He is saying this as a former and future president of the world’s largest superpower, home to some of the world’s richest pharmaceutical companies.
Another issue involves the opioid epidemic on American streets due to the greed of these companies and the confluence of politics and corporatism. For this reason, I even felt some slight satisfaction that Trump was sending the radical Kennedy to fight their monopoly. But instead of taking on the task of cleaning American streets from the zombie drug, he begins by spreading myths that have long been debunked by science.
Kennedy will not find a link between autism and vaccines no matter how hard he tries, although he has sought to do so for years with the anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense. The myth that MMR vaccines could be a factor in causing autism came from an article by Andrew Wakefield and 12 other doctors published in The Lancet in 1998. Errors in the methodology of research and even falsification of medical records and numerous other scientific errors emerged immediately, and the case ended in court. Eventually, 10 of the 12 doctors retracted their statements, and the article was removed from the journal. Wakefield lost his medical license in the UK. However, the theory fell on a fertile ground in the era of the internet and is taking its toll every year.
Kennedy’s Quirks: Does He Believe in Every Conspiracy Theory?
Kennedy is known for spreading absurd conspiracy theories. He argued that the COVID-19 vaccine was “the deadliest in history,” and that people should drink raw, unpasteurized milk. He championed the use of stem cells and accused the Food and Drug Administration of deliberately poisoning Americans.
A total oddity was his linking mass shootings in American schools with antidepressants. While Tucker Carlson, Trumpism’s mouthpiece, defended the right to the widest possible gun ownership with this argument, Kennedy struck by opposing medical corporations. On another occasion, President John F. Kennedy’s nephew claimed that HIV is not the underlying cause of AIDS. He didn’t miss the opportunity to speak about the harmfulness of 5G and chemical-poisoned water, which he alleged were affecting children’s gender identity.
There is a bright side to Kennedy’s fight for the health of the American people. For decades, he has been promoting organic food and sports (despite his age, he has an impressive physique), and firmly warned against the epidemic of childhood obesity.
Why Trump Needs Kennedy
I have no doubt that Trump is bringing Kennedy into his administration for cynical and purely transactional reasons. This is repayment for Kennedy’s withdrawal from the presidential race, during which Trump called him a “liberal lunatic” from the Democratic radical wing. It’s even possible that Trump believes Kennedy’s nonsense. But propagating an extremely harmful conspiracy theory — linking autism to vaccines -– he is once again playing with fire.
Trump did so on Jan. 6, when his fiery demagoguery about the “stolen election” caused his followers to storm the Capitol. At the time, his narcissistic and showman-like rhetoric shook the essence of American democracy. Trump later had an affair with the dangerous QAnon sect, which treated him like a prophet coming to save the world from the satanic-pedophile forces of darkness of Hollywood and the left-wing establishment. Now Trump is entering the thick of it as the U.S. president, who not only won in the Electoral College, but also the popular vote. It is a huge amount of social capital.
Will Those Opposed to Vaccines Enter the Mainstream Now?
The anti-vaccine movement is still a marginal, but a vocal group, which until now had no advocate in mainstream politics. Now, they have an ally in the Cabinet of the world’s most powerful politician. What’s more, they now have unrestricted access to the X social media platform, whose algorithms can significantly help wreak havoc on a global scale. All it takes is Elon Musk to snap his fingers, a man who is an unpredictable, capricious billionaire still excited by his vision of changing the world.
What will the consequences be? We don’t know, but sucking up to the niche and radical wing of one’s political camp once had a devastating effect. After all, Prime Minister David Cameron did not want Brexit, but decided to please the vocal radical margin of the conservatives. We all know how that worked out.
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