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    RFK Jr. to Kick Off MAHA Tour on Fighting Chronic Disease

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    After a second measles death in West Texas, the health secretary is expected to begin a tour through the Southwest to showcase nutrition legislation, among other priorities.A day after attending the funeral of an unvaccinated child who died of measles, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will kick off a tour through Southwestern states on Monday, spotlighting initiatives that emphasize nutrition and lifestyle choices as tools for combating disease.The Make America Healthy Again tour, which will take Mr. Kennedy through parts of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, is intended to draw attention to some of the secretary’s common-ground interests, but the first day is scheduled to end with a highly contentious one: a news conference to highlight Utah’s new law that bans adding fluoride to public drinking water supplies.The tour comes as questions grow about the federal government’s response to a measles outbreak in West Texas that has spread to other states. The death of an unvaccinated 8-year-old girl there last week was the second confirmed fatality from measles in a decade in the United States. Mr. Kennedy attended the girl’s funeral on Sunday and met with her family before continuing to Utah.Mr. Kennedy’s staff said that over the course of three days, he planned to visit multiple health centers, including a medical school’s “teaching kitchen” to train students on managing chronic disease using dietary choices. He is scheduled to meet with leaders of Navajo Nation to discuss the cultural and logistical challenges of providing high-quality health care to tribal groups and to visit a charter school in New Mexico that “integrates healthy eating and physical fitness into its daily student life.”During his first months in office, Mr. Kennedy’s policies have been unfurled with great brouhaha, but the secretary himself has been relatively low profile, particularly for an official with his degree of fame. The White House has encouraged Mr. Kennedy to take a more public-facing approach to his role, but the timing of his first major push out in the country will require toeing a careful line around the most conspicuous issue on the table.Public health experts say the measles outbreak that has now infected nearly 500 people in West Texas is driven by low vaccination rates. Mr. Kennedy, who is famously skeptical of vaccine safety, shifted his rhetoric after the little girl’s funeral, posting on X: “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Florida Surgeon General Urges End to Fluoride in Water, Backing RFK Jr.’s Push

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      Florida’s surgeon general issued guidance on Friday that called for a halt to adding fluoride to the water supply, backing a similar push by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, cited recent research that highlighted the potential risk of heightened exposure to the chemical — including lower I.Q.s in children. Health experts agree that excessive exposure to fluoride over a long period of time can cause health problems, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Dental Association say that fluoridated water does not pose any of these risks at the level currently recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency.“Due to the neuropsychiatric risk associated with fluoride exposure,” Dr. Ladapo’s guidance said, “particularly in pregnant women and children, and the wide availability of alternative sources of fluoride for dental health, the State Surgeon General recommends against community water fluoridation.”Dr. Ladapo has played a prominent role in Mr. DeSantis’s administration, often supporting the governor in political fights over pandemic-era health policy. More recently, Dr. Ladapo called for a halt to the use of Covid vaccines earlier this year, citing widely debunked concerns about contaminants in the vaccine.He also contradicted widespread medical guidance about the spread of measles, sending a letter to parents after an outbreak of the disease at an elementary school that said it was up to parents and guardians to determine when their children can attend school, even if those children have not been vaccinated for measles.The guidance on fluoridation in Florida follows heightened attention on the issue after recent statements by Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has no medical or public health degrees, and Mr. Trump. Mr. Kennedy declared on social media this month that, as president, Mr. Trump would advise communities to stop adding fluoride to drinking water. Mr. Kennedy described the chemical as “an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders and thyroid disease.”In a recent interview with NBC News, Mr. Trump said the idea of doing away with fluoridation “sounds OK to me.”Sheryl Gay Stolberg More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says Trump Will Seek to Remove Fluoride From Drinking Water

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Saturday that among the first acts of a second Trump administration would be to “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” a stunning potential reversal of what is widely considered one of the most important public health interventions of the past century.The statement, posted on social media, is among the more concrete pledges made by Mr. Kennedy — a former independent presidential candidate who is now backing Mr. Trump — in his capacity as a top adviser on Mr. Trump’s transition team. It also raises the specter of an all-out assault on public-health expertise should Mr. Trump win next week’s election, a prospect that has already caused significant alarm among experts across the medical and environmental fields.As president, Mr. Trump would not have the power to order states and municipalities to remove fluoride from their water supplies; fluoridation is a matter of local control.But a presidential pronouncement would inject the White House into a debate that stretches back to the 1950s, when conspiracy theories swirled around fluoridation, with critics claiming it was a Communist plot to poison Americans’ brains — a view that was memorably parodied in Stanley Kubrick’s film “Dr. Strangelove.”More recently, however, there has been scientific debate around the practice, with some studies suggesting that excess exposure to fluoride — at levels twice the amount recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency — could harm infants’ developing brains. But scientists, including those at the federal government’s National Toxicology Program, say more research is needed to understand whether lower exposure to fluoride has an effect.The process of adding small amounts fluoride to drinking water, or fluoridation, began about 80 years ago to prevent tooth decay. That effort, public health officials say, has been extraordinarily successful. A majority of Americans today live in water systems that are fluoridated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which lists fluoridation as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More