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    Hear me out: RFK could be a transformational health secretary | Neil Barsky

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    Among the cast of characters poised to join the Trump administration, no one is as exasperating, polarizing or potentially dangerous as Robert F Kennedy Jr. But in a twist that is emblematic of our times, no single nominee has the potential to do as much good for the American people.Bear with me. RFK Jr has been rightly pilloried for promoting a litany of theories linking vaccines with autism, chemicals in the water supply to gender identity, how people contract Aids and saying the Covid-19 vaccine, which in fact stemmed the deadliest pandemic of our lifetimes, was itself “the deadliest vaccine ever made”. He claimed Covid-19 was meant to target certain ethnic groups, Black people and Caucasians, while sparing Asians and Jewish people.In normal times, these notions would be disqualifying. Spouting unfounded scientific claims is corrosive to a functioning democracy. It weakens the bonds of trust in our public institutions, and feeds the rightwing narrative that all government is illegitimate. This is why, writing in the Guardian this September, I dismissed the prospect of RFK Jr, saying his “anti-vaccine work is more likely to make America have measles again”.But these are not normal times. RFK Jr is Donald Trump’s pick to run our country’s health and human services department. He will have a massive impact on our broken, expensive and largely ineffectual delivery of healthcare services. How shall we deal with this?On one hand, RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine views are beyond the pale. To obtain Senate approval, I think he will have to repudiate the unproven assertion that the Covid-19 vaccine was harmful, and embrace the scientific reality that vaccines for measles, smallpox, coronavirus and other contagious diseases are in fact modern medical miracles that spared the lives hundreds of millions of people. And here is where I will part company with many of my Trump-fighting friends: should RFK Jr be able to abandon his numerous conspiracy theories about vaccines, he can be the most transformative health secretary in our country’s history.This is because RFK Jr has articulated what our Democratic and Republican leaders have largely ignored: our healthcare system is a national disgrace hiding in plain sight. He recognizes the inordinate control the pharmaceutical and food industries over healthcare policy, and the revolving door that exists among congressional staffers, pharmaceutical lobbyists and corporate executives. In testimony during hearings chaired by the Republican senator Ron Johnson this past September, Kennedy offered a lucid analysis of what is making America metabolically sick; he railed against big pharma and big food, and drew links between the damage done by ultraprocessed foods such as seed oils and sugars to our health, as well as the efforts of the food industry to come up with chemicals that make these foods addictive.He advocates banning pharmaceutical advertising on television, and wants to clamp down on the corporate ties to federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and National Institute of Health. (To my knowledge, he has not spoken out against the egregious cost of life-saving drugs or unequal access to medical treatment, but hopefully he will get around to that as well.)We spend $4tn on healthcare annually, and lead the world in spending more than $12,000 per person, 50% more than Switzerland, which is the second biggest spender per capita. American doctors dominate the Nobel prizes for medicine, and our medical schools are considered the best in the world. Yet we appear incapable of stemming the epidemic of chronic diseases. A staggering 73% of us are obese or overweight and more than 38 million people suffer from diabetes.This issue hits home for me, as I was diagnosed with severe type 2 diabetes in 2021, and – after receiving terrible medical advice to rely on insulin and metformin – reversed my condition by adopting a diet low in carbohydrates. This year, I published a “follow the money” series for the Guardian, Death By Diabetes, in which I highlighted the heavy influence of big pharma and big food on the American Diabetes Association (ADA). The ADA is a so-called patient advocacy group that sets the standard of care for diabetes treatment in this country, and yet it accepts money from food companies such as the makers of Splenda and Idaho potatoes – two products which have been found to increase people’s risk of getting diabetes.I subsequently wrote about amputations, and the reality that African Americans with diabetes are four times more likely to endure that grim procedure than white people. I view nutrition and metabolic health as a matter of racial and economic equity. I am clear-eyed, I think, of the serious risks to public health that RFK Jr’s unfounded anti-vaccine views pose. But so long as we still have a voice and can find a drop of hope in these terrible times, I think we should try to tilt policy toward the public good where we can. To that end, here is the game plan I believe RFK Jr should pursue.

    Lose the conspiracies and stick to the science. RFK Jr is right, and there is more than ample research to focus on the deleterious impact of sugars and seed oils. Following the money has always been a valuable strategy. Let’s start there.

    Lean on the vast ecosystem of committed researchers, clinicians and writers who have devoted their career to promoting metabolic health, even while knowing they would forfeit access to government and pharmaceutical grants. Many of these mavericks come from top medical schools, but they are a decided minority on their faculties. They include clinicians such as Georgia Ede, Mariela Glandt, Tony Hampton, Eric Westman, scientists such as Benjamin Bikman, Ravi Kampala, Cate Shanahan, and writers such as Gary Taubes, Nina Teicholz and Casey Means. These are heroic people who, in getting to know them and reading their work, I have found to be intellectually honest health practitioners.

    Appoint a diabetes czar to come up with proposals to once and for all fix this deadly and utterly reversible disease. I choose this particularly chronic ailment because it is ubiquitous, ruinously expensive, a disease that disproportionately afflicts the poor, is closely connected to our obesity epidemic, and utterly reversible through diet. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could finally reverse type 2 diabetes in our lifetime?

    Increase federal funding of nutrition studies. The FDA and NIH historically have tilted the research scales in favor of studies that might produce the next blockbuster drug. In reality, we still do not understand why we get fat and why we have seen an increase in chronic (non-contagious) diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Crohn’s.

    Severely regulate the ability of cereal companies to market their sugary wares to children, and the ability of pharmaceutical companies to barrage the rest of us with advertisements. Will a Republican-controlled Congress allow for more government regulation – even if it saves lives?
    RFK Jr’s ascent represents a tricky issue for people like myself who strongly supported the election of Kamala Harris. Healthcare is far from the only issue I am committed to, and I am disgusted by the Trump administration’s plans to deport millions of undocumented people, its attack on democratic institutions, and possible abandonment of Ukraine and the Nato alliance. While I disagreed with Liz Cheney about many, if not most, issues, I also embraced her apostasy when it came to the election – I adhere to the approach of not interrupting people you disagree with while they are doing the right thing.After writing something unkind about RFK Jr in the days leading up to the election, I received a private note from Jan Baszucki, a prominent metabolic health advocate I have come to admire over the past year. “With all due respect,” she wrote. “I am a big fan of your reporting on type 2 diabetes. But your comments about RFK Jr … are not helpful to the cause of metabolic health, which is only on the national agenda because he put it there.”Leading up to the election, I believed RFK Jr was fair game. I was, and remain, particularly concerned that his fringe ideas about vaccines and poisons would get conflated with his excellent perspective on metabolic health, and hurt the cause. Now I think we should be constructive where we can advance the public good.The larger question hanging over RFK Jr’s term as HHS secretary is whether Donald Trump will back him up when he takes on the pharmaceutical and food industries. The US’s health is not an issue the president-elect has evinced an interest in in the past. And his embrace of corporate executives such as Tesla’s Elon Musk suggests crony capitalism could be the dominant theme of the second Trump administration. But if we know anything about what makes Trump tick, we know that he responds to positive reinforcement.After all, it was the criminal justice advocates such as Van Jones and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who coaxed him into supporting the First Step Act, a significant piece of criminal justice reform (and one which Trump now forswears). As founder of the Marshall Project, the non-profit journalism organization that covers the US criminal justice system, I believe criminal justice reform should also be a matter of national urgency, yet at the time, I was ambivalent about efforts to work with the administration. In retrospect, whatever harm Trump might have otherwise inflicted, I would say we are a better country for the First Step Act.We are in a similar dilemma with respect to healthcare today: the system is ruinously expensive and inhumane. If there is someone in the administration who wants to make things better, let’s not interrupt him.

    Neil Barsky, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and investment manager, is the founder of the Marshall Project More

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      Ex-CDC acting director calls RFK Jr’s false vaccine theories ‘cruel’

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      The former acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has criticized Robert F Kennedy Jr’s nomination by Donald Trump as secretary of the country’s health and human services (HHS), calling his false vaccine theories “cruel”.In a new interview on ABC, Richard Besser, who led the CDC during Barack Obama’s administration, called Kennedy’s push to falsely link vaccines to autism a “cruel thing to do”, adding, “There are things we do for our own health, but there are things we do that are good for ourselves, our families and our communities and vaccination falls into that category.”“Having someone who denies that in that role is extremely dangerous,” Besser said about Kennedy.“We need to, as a nation, address chronic diseases in children and one of the dangerous things about RFK Jr is that there are bits of things he says that are true and they’re mixed in … It makes it really hard to sort out what things you should follow because they’re based on fact and which things are not,” he continued.Besser went on to say that experts should address chronic diseases – including autism – but to “keep [on] lifting the idea [that] that has something to do with vaccinations is really a cruel thing to do”.In a separate interview on Sunday, Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus response coordinator under Trump’s administration, said that Kennedy will require a team that has “really come out of the industry” in order to manage the HHS.“I think the most important thing is what team he would bring with him, because you’re talking about really a large … corporation with a highly diverse group, which you have to really bring together and, frankly, eliminate some of the duplication set between these agencies to really become more cost effective,” said Birx.“Having a management person at his side, a chief of staff, perhaps that has really come out of industry that would know how to bring and look and bring those individuals together that are running the other agencies because … HHS is probably one of our most complicated departments,” she added.Birx also agreed that there is no scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism, saying: “I’m actually excited that in a Senate hearing he would bring forward his data and the questions that come from the senators would bring forth their data.”“That hearing would be a way for Americans to really see the data that you’re talking about, that we can’t see that causation right now,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKennedy has previously said that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” However, following Trump’s re-election, Kennedy said that he “won’t take away anybody’s vaccines”.His nomination has been widely criticized by health experts who condemned him as a “clear and present danger” to public health. More

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      The appointment of Robert F Kennedy has horrified public health experts. Here are his three most dangerous ideas | Devi Sridhar

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      The announcement that Donald Trump has appointed Robert F Kennedy as the US secretary of health and human services has sent shock waves through the health and scientific community. Kennedy ran as an independent presidential candidate before bowing out and supporting Trump’s run in exchange for an influential position, so we have a pretty good idea of his positions on public health.The main goal Kennedy has trumpeted recently is to “Make America healthy again”. At face value, it’s a noble aim. That’s the essence of public health: how to reduce risk factors for disease and mortality at a population level and improve the quality of health and wellbeing. But behind this slogan comes a darker, conspiracy-laden agenda. As someone who has spent a lot of time researching global public health, these are the positions I believe could be the most dangerous.Anti-vaxxer viewsKennedy is well known as a prominent anti-vaxxer. He has claimed that vaccines can cause autism, and also said that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective”. He called the Covid-19 vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made”. None of these claims are true: repeat studies have shown that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism, we have numerous safe and effective vaccines against childhood killers such as whooping cough and measles, and the Covid-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives globally.Much of what he is saying is what people want to hear: being anti-vax is increasingly a way to build a fanbase. I have seen this as a scientist: if you talk about childhood vaccinations, you get daily abuse. If you talk about the dangers of vaccines, you can end up with a cult following, as Russell Brand and Andrew Wakefield have. It’s not even clear that Kennedy personally believes what he’s saying: guests invited to a holiday party at his home in December 2021 were told to be vaccinated or tested for Covid-19 (he blamed his wife).The big question is about how much harm he can do in the next few years as the man who oversees health agencies in the US. Will he roll back budgetary allocations for vaccination campaigns? Eliminate research into new vaccines? With avian flu continuing to spread in mammals and birds, will he support the stockpiling and rollout of H5N1 vaccines if necessary in a future outbreak or pandemic? If his appointment is approved, experts say that vaccines will be “the first issue on the table”.The “benefits” of raw milkSimilarly, he has tweeted about the benefits of raw milk, which has become a bizarre Maga talking point generally. Raw milk consumption is a risk factor for a number of dangerous illnesses from E coli to salmonella, but is even more worrying with the widespread infection of dairy herds in the US. While pasteurisation has been shown to kill the H5N1 virus in milk and prevent its ability to infect, raw milk retains its pathogens. This year, 24 cats who drank raw milk on a farm become infected by avian flu; 12 died and 12 suffered from blindness, difficulty breathing and other serious health problems. This is when we need federal agencies to regulate what is being sold to the public and ensure clear communication of the health risks. Instead, raw milk demand has gone up, with some vendors claiming that “customers [are] asking for H5N1 milk because they want immunity from it”. (There’s a certain irony in the logic behind vaccination – training our immune system in how to respond to a pathogen – being used in this situation.)Anti-pharmaceutical conspiracy theoriesPart of the problem of the “Make America healthy again” campaign is that it contains nuggets of truth within a larger false narrative. We know that the prices charged by “big pharma” in the US are a problem – but instead of thinking this is a conspiracy to medicate the public when that’s not in their best interests, it’s worth reflecting on how the UK has managed to negotiate more reasonable prices. This is where government can have real power: ensuring fair prices for healthcare providers and individuals, and going after the extraordinary profit margins of pharmaceutical companies. But instead of taking this on – for instance, Trump could have negotiated Covid-19 vaccine prices in his first presidency – it is easier to demonise all pharma companies. Many of them of course play a valuable role in trialling and bringing drugs and vaccines to market. They just need to be regulated.Taking on these ideas will be a challenge when their proponent is leading US health policy. How do you try to engage with those who believe things that are simply not true? It’s hard: a recent Nature study found that the more time you spend on the internet trying to validate what is true and not true, you more you go down the rabbit hole of false information. Those who believe outlandish theories are generally people who think of themselves as more intelligent than the average person, have a lot of time to do their own research on the internet, and are convinced that everyone else is being duped.The US has a big health problem. Life expectancy is going dramatically backwards, Covid-19 killed a huge number of working-age Americans and trust in the federal government is at 23%. But the solution, if we look to healthier countries such as Denmark and South Korea, involves basic public health interventions, access to affordable medical care and trust in government. And not drinking raw milk.

      Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

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      Trump’s queasy prescription to ‘make America healthy again’ takes shape

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      From assertions that America’s highest-profile vaccine critic would lead health agencies to new promises for “massive reform” of Obamacare, the chaotic last week of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign will probably serve as a preview of what “Make America healthy again” could mean should the former president regain power.The jumble of proposals echoed conservative policy documents, channeled the residual anger of the post-pandemic anti-vaccine movement and alarmed experts who help set the nation’s health policies.“My first reaction is that a Trump administration would be the most anti-public health, anti-science administration in history,” said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown Law School.“In my mind, health is very much on the ballot,” he said.Over the last week of the campaign, Trump said he would let the nation’s foremost vaccine skeptic “go wild” at the nation’s food and drug agencies and refused to rule out banning certain vaccines. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, also promised “massive reform” of Obamacare should Trump win.Vaccines are among society’s most effective public health interventions, saving an estimated 154 million lives worldwide over 50 years, according to a study in the Lancet. Obamacare has grown in popularity even among Republicans.“It reminds me of the chaos of the first administration, right in the midst of the pandemic,” said Gostin, referring to a time when Trump floated bogus treatments for Covid from injecting disinfectant to ivermectin to hydroxychloroquine – all debunked and often actively harmful.“But it’s far worse,” continued Gostin, “because while Trump at least was surrounded by credible scientists like Tony Fauci, I don’t think there will be any similar restraint in the next Trump administration.”The official Republican party platform is short on details, but blames immigrants for high healthcare prices, and says the party will “commit” to lowering healthcare prices through “choice” and “transparency”. It also pledges to “protect” Medicare from Democrats, who it claims plan to allow “tens of millions of new illegal immigrants” to enroll in the program.Voters in both parties cite healthcare costs as their top health-related issue. However, transparency measures would probably only result in a 1% reduction in healthcare prices over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. “Choice” is often a euphemism for reducing health insurance regulations, which would allow Americans to buy plans that cover fewer services.Undocumented migrants are not eligible to enroll in Medicare, and the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, backed away from a policy that would have provided government-backed healthcare to all residents of the US, regardless of immigration status.A detailed look at how Trump’s supporters might attempt to change US health policy is found in the conservative playbook Project 2025. There, health policy proposals are dominated by calls to restrict abortion and diminish the role of scientific research.In it, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should be known as the “Department of Life”, approval for medication abortion should be withdrawn, and health policy should promote “fatherhood” and the “nuclear family” and stop research that amounts to “woke transgender activism”.HHS should stop focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity” and end policies that are “subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage”. Its sub-agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should be split in two with the power to make policy recommendations severely curtailed. The “incestuous relationship” between government researchers and vaccine manufacturers should end, the plan says.As voters head to the polls, the people who might institute these policies have also come into focus. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the former independent candidate and staunch vaccine critic, said he had been “promised” a role helming the nation’s health agencies by Trump.“The key, which President Trump has promised me, is control of the public health agencies,” said Kennedy on a Zoom call with supporters, according to ABC News. Those agencies include “HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, Food and Drug Administration, [National Institutes of Health] and a few others. And also the [United States Department of Agriculture], which is, you know, key to making America healthy”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKennedy ended his presidential run and endorsed Trump in August after a conspiracy theory-fueled campaign that revealed he had health issues related to a brain worm, once sawed the head off a whale and dumped a dead bear in Central Park.Dr Joseph Ladapo has been floated as a potential pick for the head of HHS. The Harvard University-educated Florida surgeon general warned state residents against using Covid-19 vaccines and allowed unvaccinated children to go to school during a measles outbreak.Although ideas floated by Trump’s supporters may be easily disproved, health researchers and policy experts said they take the threat of their influence deadly serious, with the last week highlighting how legitimate concerns about the power of pharmaceutical and chemical companies can be exploited.“I think we leaned into a libertarian left hook,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of an advisory committee on vaccines for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).Offit said he worried vaccine mandates primed some Americans to believe vaccine misinformation, and even though he supported them, worried they may “have done more harm than good”.Another research advocate who spoke anonymously to Science magazine said: “We’re all in a state of panic … I don’t know anybody who isn’t worried about this.”Soon, the nation will know the extent to which such messages resonated with voters.“I’m surprised that anti-vaccine rhetoric is considered to be convincing enough to get you elected,” said Offit. “I’m surprised that such a significant portion of the population would be compelled by that.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      RFK Jr says Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that the former president would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected.Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear-and-tear, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on Twitter/X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S​. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again”, he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”The Republican nominee declined to say whether he would seek a cabinet role for Kennedy, a job that would require Senate confirmation, but added: “He’s going to have a big role in the administration.”Asked whether banning certain vaccines would be on the table, Trump said he would talk to Kennedy and others about that. Trump described Kennedy as “a very talented guy and has strong views”.The sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over US public health.

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      In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in US kids.In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. US district judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including the Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about Covid-19 and Covid-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump’s top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former attorney general Robert Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy.Kennedy traveled with Trump on Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want” except oil policy.“He wants health, he wants women’s health, he wants men’s health, he wants kids, he wants everything,” Trump added. More

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      The Guardian view on the US and vaccine disinformation: a stupid, shocking and deadly game | Editorial

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      In July 2021, Joe Biden rightly inveighed against social media companies failing to tackle vaccine disinformation: “They’re killing people,” the US president said. Despite their pledges to take action, lies and sensationalised accounts were still spreading on platforms. Most of those dying in the US were unvaccinated. An additional source of frustration for the US was the fact that Russia and China were encouraging mistrust of western vaccines, questioning their efficacy, exaggerating side-effects and sensationalising the deaths of people who had been inoculated.How, then, would the US describe the effects of its own disinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? A shocking new report has revealed that its military ran a secret campaign to discredit China’s Sinovac vaccine with Filipinos – when nothing else was available to the Philippines. The Reuters investigation found that this spread to audiences in central Asia and the Middle East, with fake social media accounts not only questioning Sinovac’s efficacy and safety but also claiming it used pork gelatine, to discourage Muslims from receiving it. In the case of the Philippines, the poor take-up of vaccines contributed to one of the highest death rates in the region. Undermining confidence in a specific vaccine can also contribute to broader vaccine hesitancy.The campaign, conducted via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X) and other platforms, was launched under the Trump administration despite the objections of multiple state department officials. The Biden administration ended it after the national security council was alerted to the issue in spring 2021. The drive seems to have been retaliation for Chinese claims – without any evidence – that Covid had been brought to Wuhan by a US soldier. It was also driven by military concerns that the Philippines was growing closer to Beijing.It is all the more disturbing because the US has seen what happens when it plays strategic games with vaccination. In 2011, in preparation for the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the CIA tried to confirm that it had located him by gathering the DNA of relatives through a staged hepatitis B vaccination campaign. The backlash was entirely predictable, especially in an area that had already seen claims that the west was using polio vaccines to sterilise Pakistani Muslim girls. NGOs were vilified and polio vaccinators were murdered. Polio resurged in Pakistan; Islamist militants in Nigeria killed vaccinators subsequently.The report said that the Pentagon has now rescinded parts of the 2019 order that allowed the military to sidestep the state department when running psychological operations. But while the prospect of a second Trump administration resuming such tactics is alarming, the attitude that bred them goes deeper. Reuters pointed to a strategy document from last year in which generals noted that the US could weaponise information, adding: “Disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”The US is right to challenge the Kremlin’s troll farms, Beijing’s propaganda and the irresponsibility of social media companies. But it’s hard to take the moral high ground when you’ve been pumping out lies. The repercussions in this case were particularly predictable, clear and horrifying. It was indefensible to pursue a project with such obvious potential to cause unnecessary deaths. It must not be repeated. More

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      Florida governor seeks grand jury investigation into Covid vaccines

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      Florida governor seeks grand jury investigation into Covid vaccinesRon DeSantis asks state supreme court to investigate undefined ‘wrongdoing’ related to vaccinations The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Tuesday he will petition the state supreme court to convene a grand jury to investigate “any and all wrongdoing” with respect to Covid-19 vaccines.The Republican governor, often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, did not say what wrongdoing the panel would investigate, but he suggested it would be in part aimed at jogging loose more information from pharmaceutical companies about the vaccines and potential side effects.A mutated virus, anti-vaxxers and a vulnerable population: how polio returned to the USRead moreHe made the announcement following a roundtable with the Florida surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, and a panel of scientists and physicians.“We’ll be able to get the data whether they want to give it or not,” DeSantis said. “In Florida, it is illegal to mislead and misrepresent, especially when you are talking about the efficacy of a drug.”Vaccine studies funded by pharmaceutical companies that developed Covid vaccines have been published in peer-reviewed journals like the New England Journal of Medicine, and government panels reviewed data on the safety and effectiveness of the shots before approving them for use.Statewide grand juries, usually comprising 18 people, can investigate criminal activity and issue indictments but also examine systemic problems in Florida and make recommendations. Recent such panels have tackled immigration issues and school safety.DeSantis noted that Florida recently “got $3.2bn through legal action against those responsible for the opioid crisis. So, it’s not like this is something that’s unprecedented.”That money came largely through lawsuits and settlements with drug makers, retailers and distributors.DeSantis said he expected to get approval from the supreme court for the statewide grand jury to be empaneled, probably in the Tampa Bay area.“That will come with legal processes that will be able to get more information and to bring legal accountability to those who committed misconduct,” DeSantis said.DeSantis also announced that he was creating an entity called the public health integrity committee, which will include many of the physicians and scientists who participated in the roundtable on Tuesday. The group includes prominent opponents of lockdowns, federal vaccine mandates and child vaccinations.He said that over the course of the pandemic some people had lost faith in public health institutions, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The governor has frequently spoken out against CDC directives, including mask and vaccine mandates, and filed lawsuits to stop many from taking effect in Florida.Additionally, the governor announced that Ladapo would conduct research through the University of Florida to “assess sudden deaths of individuals in good health who received a Covid-19 vaccine”.DeSantis also said the Florida department of health would utilize disease surveillance and vital statistics to assess such deaths.TopicsRon DeSantisFloridaVaccines and immunisationCoronavirusHealthUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      After the long wait, US parents seeking under-5s’ vaccine face yet more hurdles

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      After the long wait, US parents seeking under-5s’ vaccine face yet more hurdlesSome local officials are unsure of how to order Covid vaccines or when they will arrive, while others are aiming to ignore federal guidelines completely Ashley Comegys, a parent of two young children in Florida, was ecstatic when the Covid vaccines were authorized for children above the age of six months in the US. “We’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she said. “We can finally start to spread our wings again.”But then she learned that Florida had missed two deadlines to preorder vaccines and would not make them available through state and local health departments, delaying the rollout by several weeks and significantly limiting access.“Rage does not adequately describe how I felt that they were basically inhibiting me from being able to make a choice to protect my children,” Comegys said.Families with young kids encountered months of delays after the pediatric trials were expanded and regulators pushed back meetings in order to evaluate the data closely. Vaccines for adults were rolled out a year and a half ago.Now new challenges to vaccinating some of America’s youngest are cropping up.“I called probably 20 pharmacies and pediatricians in our area” – including across the state line, said Sheryl Peters, a parent of an 18-month-old and a four-year-old in Tennessee.Even after the vaccines were authorized for this age group, her local health officials didn’t know when they would arrive, and they directed her to the state health department, who told her it would be a few weeks, she said. She was crying on the phone, begging for help, but “nobody knew anything,” she said. “It was so, so disorganized.”-While Tennessee did pre-order vaccines, the rollout has been slow and complicated. And the confusion could deepen.Four Republican lawmakers in Tennessee are petitioning the governor, Bill Lee, to ignore the federal recommendations on vaccinating children under five and to ban state health departments from “distributing, promoting or recommending” the vaccines, creating uncertainty in the state’s approach to vaccinating some of its youngest residents.Tennessee stopped all vaccination outreach to teens – not just around the Covid vaccines – in 2021.The actions by leaders in states like Florida and Tennessee may contribute to existing hesitancy some families feel toward the vaccines, as well as hampering efforts to vaccinate children across the states – particularly those who have been marginalized in the health system, who are also at higher risk of getting sick.“Departments of health, by and large, assist people who don’t have insurance or are on Medicaid or don’t have access to healthcare or live in rural areas where there are no providers,” said Michelle Fiscus, a pediatrician and Tennessee’s former top vaccines official who was fired in July 2021 after promoting vaccines. She was “absolutely furious” to read the lawmakers’ request for a ban.“For an elected body and a governor in a state who has continued to beat the drum of everybody can make their own choice, whether it’s about wearing a mask or gathering in a church or getting a vaccine, to decide for these parents that they are no longer going to have access to these vaccines is really antithetical to everything that they have been preaching,” Fiscus said.“Everything has always been, ‘It’s your choice. You don’t have to quarantine or isolate – it’s your choice. You don’t have to wear a mask – it’s your choice. You don’t have to stay away – it’s your choice.’ But when it comes to getting a vaccine that can actually save lives and prevent hospitalization, then they’re going to make the decision to take that choice away from you.”That’s been one of the hardest parts about this process for Comegys.“If you don’t want to get vaccinated, if you don’t want to mask, OK,” she said. “You can choose that. But why do you then get to make that choice for my family and the way that we want to protect our kids? It doesn’t feel fair.”Some officials continue to spread the narrative that kids aren’t affected by Covid, Fiscus said, even after more than 440 deaths and thousands of hospitalizations among children under five.In March, Florida’s department of health recommended against Covid vaccines for all healthy children. Florida is “affirmatively against the Covid vaccine for young kids”, DeSantis said at a press conference on 16 June, despite ample evidence of the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.The Biden administration soon announced that Florida “reversed course” and would allow doctors to order vaccines directly. State officials disputed the idea of a pivot, saying doctors were already allowed to order the vaccines on their own, but doctors pointed out that the portal to do so was not in place until after the initial shipments had already gone out to every other state.“The state of Florida intentionally missed multiple deadlines to order vaccines to protect its youngest kids,” said Dr Ashish K Jha, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator.With the delays and the confusion, many doctors and health systems haven’t received doses yet.Only federally qualified health centers and pharmacies participating in the national pharmacy program could order vaccines directly in Florida. But most pharmacies can only vaccinate kids three and older, leaving significant access gaps for younger children. (CVS can administer the vaccine to kids as young as 18 months through its Minute Clinic.) And some opted out entirely, with the grocery chain Publix announcing it will not offer the vaccine to children under five through its pharmacies.In Tennessee, Lee has not yet signaled whether he is considering limiting the vaccines. And even if vaccinations and information isn’t limited in Tennessee, the lawmakers’ request could add to hesitancy around the vaccines.“That seems to be their goal, to continue to spread vaccine misinformation and disinformation and to continue to erode confidence around these vaccines,” Fiscus said.In Florida, vaccinations will probably stall amid the message that Covid vaccines for kids aren’t recommended and the confusion around how to find them, especially because Florida isn’t offering the pediatric vaccines at state and local health departments and because pharmacies usually only vaccinate kids above the age of three.“I genuinely don’t know, if you have a child under three, where you will go for that here if your pediatrician’s not getting it,” Comegys said. “Unless you’re on top of it, it’s going to be really hard to find.”Many pediatricians in her area are short-staffed and aren’t able to reach out to families to let them know the vaccines have been authorized and how to get them.Her pediatrician was able to place an order for the under-five vaccines a week ago, but it’s going to take several weeks before they arrive. Her two children were placed on the waitlist.It’s been difficult to know the vaccines are rolling out in other states while her family still can’t access them, Comegys said. “The fact that it is available, and I can’t access it – that’s where I get really angry and really upset.”Families that want to vaccinate their kids are eager to get the shots as soon as possible, as the US faces another potential wave from the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, and with the return to school rapidly approaching.But many families feel like they put their lives on hold while much of the rest of the world moved on. Peters had a family cruise planned for May that they canceled because the shots weren’t available yet, while Comegys is canceling a vacation planned for July.“The finish line has been so close,” Comegys said. “And then to hear, ‘Oh no, it’s going to be another couple of weeks or a couple of months.’ I’m so angry. We’re so close, and now you’re not going to let me get there.”TopicsCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationFloridaParents and parentingUS politicsHealthFamilynewsReuse this content More

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      CDC announces revamp plans, hires outside official for review

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      CDC announces revamp plans, hires outside official for reviewThe one-month review follows criticism for its pandemic response including initial delays in developing a coronavirus test The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday announced plans to revamp itself, with director Rochelle Walensky hiring an outside senior federal health official to conduct a one-month review.James Macrae, an associate administrator in the Department of Health and Human Services, will join CDC on a one-month assignment from 11 April to listen to and engage with the agency’s Covid-19 response activities, Walensky said in an email to her colleagues.Biden names Ashish Jha as new White House Covid-19 response coordinatorRead moreMacrae will provide Walensky insight into how CDC’s programs can be strengthened.She has also asked three senior officials at CDC to gather feedback on the agency’s current structure and solicit suggestions for strategic change.The review follows criticism for its response during the pandemic, from delays in developing a coronavirus test initially to its guidance over masking, isolation and quarantine being called confusing.“As we’ve challenged our state and local partners, we know that now is the time for CDC to integrate the lessons learned into a strategy for the future,” Walensky said in a separate statement.Walensky said the review will allow CDC to develop new systems and processes, with a keen focus on the agency’s core capabilities like public health workforce, laboratory capacity and rapid response to disease outbreaks. TopicsCoronavirusInfectious diseasesBiden administrationVaccines and immunisationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More