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Health

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Urges ‘Make America Healthy Again’

Published

8 minute read

From Heartland Daily News

AnneMarie Schieber

Despite dropping out of the race for president in August, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is turning up the volume on reforming national health care and drug policy and attracting attention to what role he might play in an administration depending on the outcome of the November election.

Kennedy has endorsed former president Donald Trump, and Trump has hinted that there could be a role in his second Trump administration.

Kennedy, who founded the safety advocacy group Children’s Health Defense, recently revealed the scope of his health care recommendations through his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Trump named Kennedy to his transition team and pledged to establish a panel of experts to work with Kennedy to investigate the increase of chronic health problems and childhood diseases in the United States (see related articles, pages 8,9).

In a September 5 op-ed in The Wall Street JournalKennedy laid out his 12-point Make America Healthy Again plan. Some of the ideas include reducing conflicts of interest at federal health agencies, implementing drug price caps, setting chemical and pesticide standards, requiring nutrition classes in medical school, redirecting money toward preventative care, rereleasing a presidential fitness standard, and expanding health savings accounts.

Boundary Crossing

Over the years, Kennedy has not hesitated to express his opinions, many of which have challenged long-held positions of the public health establishment on issues from vaccines and childhood obesity to the role of big pharmaceutical companies.

Kennedy’s stances cross ideological boundaries. His support of a single-payer national health care system conflicts with free-market opinions on the right, and his criticism of big-government bullying alienates the left. The nation’s painful experience with the measures taken to stem the spread of COVID-19 has attracted attention to Kennedy’s health care opinions in the wake of his forceful criticisms of those policies.

In a wide-ranging interview with Preferred Health magazine in June, Kennedy lambasted the lockdowns and the people he says profited from them.

“The people who came into the pandemic with a billion dollars, the Bill Gates, the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Bloombergs, the Jeffery Bezos, increased their wealth on average by 30 percent,” Kennedy told the publication.

“The lockdowns were a gift to them, the super-rich,” said Kennedy. “Jeffery Bezos, the richest or second-richest man in the world, was able to close down all of his competitors, 3.3 million businesses, and then give us a two-year training course about how to never use a retail outlet again in our lives. Forty-one percent of the black-owned businesses will never reopen. And he was instrumental because he was censoring the books that were critical of the lockdowns, including one that I wrote.”

Insider Advantage

Kennedy’s criticisms appeal to Craig Rucker, president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

“Kennedy, by virtue of his family name, is an insider, but his unorthodox views make him a provocative outsider,” said Rucker. “The public-health establishment, against which he has railed for years, failed miserably during the coronavirus pandemic. The ties between HHS and Big Pharma are far too cozy, and we have good reason to believe public health suffers as a consequence. A free spirit like his could be just what the doctor ordered.”

NIH Reform Call

Echoing his criticisms of the pandemic response, Kennedy says he wants to overhaul federal health care agencies, beginning with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The NIH suppressed the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine during the early stages of the pandemic, in favor of, first, remdesivir and later the COVID vaccines through emergency use authorization, Kennedy argues. Saying the NIH “has been transformed into an incubator for the pharmaceutical industry,” Kennedy recommends removing much of the NIH’s funding for virology.

“It has stepped away from rigorous, evidence-based science, evidence-based medicine, into kind of a magical world,” Kennedy told Preferred Health. “It needs to have scientific discipline reimposed on the entire field of virology. We ought to be funding the study of the etiology of chronic diseases in our universities.”

Focus Shift

Kennedy has also spoken widely on chronic childhood diseases, some of which he has attributed to vaccines. Kennedy has called for public health authorities to shift their focus from infectious diseases such as COVID and influenza to devote more attention to diabetes, obesity, environmental toxins, and other longer-term concerns.

Kennedy has also cited large-scale factory farming and processed food as contributing to the nation’s health problems.

Peter Pitts, president and co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, says Kennedy brings a fresh perspective to public health debates.

“RFK Jr.’s penchant for not taking things at face value could go a long way toward forcing government public-health agencies to argue on behalf of their beliefs rather than simply relying on a ‘because I said so’ defense,” said Pitts.

Surprising Endorsements

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a Republican, praised Kennedy’s efforts in a September 26 op-ed for Fox News.

“The role of Big Food, much like Big Pharma, is to prioritize their profits over our health,” wrote Miller. “I enthusiastically support RFK Jr.’s campaign to hold these industries accountable by reforming our food and medicine approval and patenting systems. In this he is uniquely qualified: the $1.7 trillion pharmaceutical industry has unfairly maligned him for decades, and he’s still standing strong.”

In a move that raised eyebrows, Robert Redfield, who headed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under Trump from 2018 to 2021, endorsed Kennedy’s reform efforts in a Newsweek op-ed in September.

“If the next president prioritizes the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify which exposures are contributing to the spike in chronic disease in children, we will finally find out and end what is slowly destroying our children,” wrote Redfield.

Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D., ([email protected]) is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

 

Addictions

Addiction experts demand witnessed dosing guidelines after pharmacy scam exposed

Published on

By Alexandra Keeler 

The move follows explosive revelations that more than 60 B.C. pharmacies were allegedly participating in a scheme to overbill the government under its safer supply program. The scheme involved pharmacies incentivizing clients to fill prescriptions they did not require by offering them cash or rewards. Some of those clients then sold the drugs on the black market.

An addiction medicine advocacy group is urging B.C. to promptly issue new guidelines for witnessed dosing of drugs dispensed under the province’s controversial safer supply program.

In a March 24 letter to B.C.’s health minister, Addiction Medicine Canada criticized the BC Centre on Substance Use for dragging its feet on delivering the guidelines and downplaying the harms of prescription opioids.

The centre, a government-funded research hub, was tasked by the B.C. government with developing the guidelines after B.C. pledged in February to return to witnessed dosing. The government’s promise followed revelations that many B.C. pharmacies were exploiting rules permitting patients to take safer supply opioids home with them, leading to abuse of the program.

“I think this is just a delay,” said Dr. Jenny Melamed, a Surrey-based family physician and addiction specialist who signed the Addiction Medicine Canada letter. But she urged the centre to act promptly to release new guidelines.

“We’re doing harm and we cannot just leave people where they are.”

Addiction Medicine Canada’s letter also includes recommendations for moving clients off addictive opioids altogether.

“We should go back to evidence-based medicine, where we have medications that work for people in addiction,” said Melamed.

‘Best for patients’

On Feb. 19, the B.C. government said it would return to a witnessed dosing model. This model — which had been in place prior to the pandemic — will require safer supply participants to take prescribed opioids under the supervision of health-care professionals.

The move follows explosive revelations that more than 60 B.C. pharmacies were allegedly participating in a scheme to overbill the government under its safer supply program. The scheme involved pharmacies incentivizing clients to fill prescriptions they did not require by offering them cash or rewards. Some of those clients then sold the drugs on the black market.

In its Feb. 19 announcement, the province said new participants in the safer supply program would immediately be subject to the witnessed dosing requirement. For existing clients of the program, new guidelines would be forthcoming.

“The Ministry will work with the BC Centre on Substance Use to rapidly develop clinical guidelines to support prescribers that also takes into account what’s best for patients and their safety,” Kendra Wong, a spokesperson for B.C.’s health ministry, told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement on Feb. 27.

More than a month later, addiction specialists are still waiting.

 

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According to Addiction Medicine Canada’s letter, the BC Centre on Substance Use posed “fundamental questions” to the B.C. government, potentially causing the delay.

“We’re stuck in a place where the government publicly has said it’s told BCCSU to make guidance, and BCCSU has said it’s waiting for government to tell them what to do,” Melamed told Canadian Affairs.

This lag has frustrated addiction specialists, who argue the lack of clear guidance is impeding the transition to witnessed dosing and jeopardizing patient care. They warn that permitting take-home drugs leads to more diversion onto the streets, putting individuals at greater risk.

“Diversion of prescribed alternatives expands the number of people using opioids, and dying from hydromorphone and fentanyl use,” reads the letter, which was also co-signed by Dr. Robert Cooper and Dr. Michael Lester. The doctors are founding board members of Addiction Medicine Canada, a nonprofit that advises on addiction medicine and advocates for research-based treatment options.

“We have had people come in [to our clinic] and say they’ve accessed hydromorphone on the street and now they would like us to continue [prescribing] it,” Melamed told Canadian Affairs.

A spokesperson for the BC Centre on Substance Use declined to comment, referring Canadian Affairs to the Ministry of Health. The ministry was unable to provide comment by the publication deadline.

Big challenges

Under the witnessed dosing model, doctors, nurses and pharmacists will oversee consumption of opioids such as hydromorphone, methadone and morphine in clinics or pharmacies.

The shift back to witnessed dosing will place significant demands on pharmacists and patients. In April 2024, an estimated 4,400 people participated in B.C.’s safer supply program.

Chris Chiew, vice president of pharmacy and health-care innovation at the pharmacy chain London Drugs, told Canadian Affairs that the chain’s pharmacists will supervise consumption in semi-private booths.

Nathan Wong, a B.C.-based pharmacist who left the profession in 2024, fears witnessed dosing will overwhelm already overburdened pharmacists, creating new barriers to care.

“One of the biggest challenges of the retail pharmacy model is that there is a tension between making commercial profit, and being able to spend the necessary time with the patient to do a good and thorough job,” he said.

“Pharmacists often feel rushed to check prescriptions, and may not have the time to perform detailed patient counselling.”

Others say the return to witnessed dosing could create serious challenges for individuals who do not live close to health-care providers.

Shelley Singer, a resident of Cowichan Bay, B.C., on Vancouver Island, says it was difficult to make multiple, daily visits to a pharmacy each day when her daughter was placed on witnessed dosing years ago.

“It was ridiculous,” said Singer, whose local pharmacy is a 15-minute drive from her home. As a retiree, she was able to drive her daughter to the pharmacy twice a day for her doses. But she worries about patients who do not have that kind of support.

“I don’t believe witnessed supply is the way to go,” said Singer, who credits safer supply with saving her daughter’s life.

Melamed notes that not all safer supply medications require witnessed dosing.

“Methadone is under witness dosing because you start low and go slow, and then it’s based on a contingency management program,” she said. “When the urine shows evidence of no other drug, when the person is stable, [they can] take it at home.”

She also noted that Suboxone, a daily medication that prevents opioid highs, reduces cravings and alleviates withdrawal, does not require strict supervision.

Kendra Wong, of the B.C. health ministry, told Canadian Affairs that long-acting medications such as methadone and buprenorphine could be reintroduced to help reduce the strain on health-care professionals and patients.

“There are medications available through the [safer supply] program that have to be taken less often than others — some as far apart as every two to three days,” said Wong.

“Clinicians may choose to transition patients to those medications so that they have to come in less regularly.”

Such an approach would align with Addiction Medicine Canada’s recommendations to the ministry.

The group says it supports supervised dosing of hydromorphone as a short-term solution to prevent diversion. But Melamed said the long-term goal of any addiction treatment program should be to reduce users’ reliance on opioids.

The group recommends combining safer supply hydromorphone with opioid agonist therapies. These therapies use controlled medications to reduce withdrawal symptoms, cravings and some of the risks associated with addiction.

They also recommend limiting unsupervised hydromorphone to a maximum of five 8 mg tablets a day — down from the 30 tablets currently permitted with take-home supplies. And they recommend that doses be tapered over time.

“This protocol is being used with success by clinicians in B.C. and elsewhere,” the letter says.

“Please ensure that the administrative delay of the implementation of your new policy is not used to continue to harm the public.”


This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.


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Autism

RFK Jr. Completely Shatters the Media’s Favorite Lie About Autism

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The Vigilant Fox's avatar The Vigilant Fox

They say autism is rising because of “better diagnosis”—but RFK Jr. just blew that narrative wide open. He brought the hard data and dropped one undeniable truth the denialists can’t explain.

HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. appeared on Hannity Thursday evening and unloaded on the predominant autism narrative. It started with a bombshell reveal from Kennedy’s own childhood.

Hannity asked: “What was the number when you were a kid—and what do you think is going on?”

Kennedy replied: “There’s really good data on that.”

He pointed to one of the largest studies ever conducted—900,000 children in Wisconsin, published in a top-tier medical journal.

“It looked at 900,000 kids. It was published in a high-gravitas journal, peer-reviewed study, and they found the rate to be 0.7 out of 10,000.”

That’s less than 1 in 10,000. Today? It’s around 1 in 31.

Let that sink in.

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That’s when Kennedy sounded the alarm on what’s happening now—and why it’s so catastrophic. He said the rise isn’t just in frequency—it’s in severity.

“Two years ago, it was 1 in 36. The CDC data we released this week shows 1 in 31,” Kennedy said.

“The worst state is California,” Kennedy continued, “which actually has the best collection methodologies. So they actually, probably reflect what we’re seeing nationwide.”

“In California, it’s 1 in every 20 kids, and 1 in every 12.5 boys,” he explained.

Even worse, he said the numbers are likely underreported in minority communities. And for many kids, the symptoms are devastating:

“About 25% of the population of those kids with autism, about 25% of them are nonverbal, nontoilet trained,” Kennedy explained.

“They have all of these stereotypical behaviors, the head banging, biting, toe walking, stimming, and that population is growing higher and higher.”

“It’s becoming a larger percentage, so we’re seeing many more cases that are now linked to severe intellectual disability.”

He says it’s a glaring red warning sign—and it’s past time to start acting on it.

And this was the moment that Kennedy took a flamethrower to the media narrative about autism. He shattered the core excuse we’ve all been fed—that this epidemic isn’t real, that it’s just a change in how we count it.

He’s not buying it.

“The media has bought into this industry canard, this mythology, that we’re just seeing more autism because we’re noticing it more. We’re better at recognizing it or there’s been changing diagnostic criteria.”

But the scientific literature, Kennedy said, says otherwise.

“There is study after study in the scientific literature going back, and they decided that the literature going back says decades that says that’s not true.”

He then cited a major investigation by California’s own lawmakers.

“In fact, the California legislature… asked the Mind Institute at UC Davis to look exactly at that topic. They [asked], is it real or are we just noticing it more? The Mind Institute came back and said, ‘Absolutely this is a real epidemic. This is something we’ve never seen before.’

And he made it painfully clear:

“Anybody with common sense, Sean, would notice that, because the autism—this epidemic is only happening in our children. It’s not happening in people who are our age. And if it was better recognition, you’d see it in 70-year-old men.”

But we don’t.

And after laying out the data, dismantling the media narrative, and exposing the severity of the crisis, Kennedy concluded with a clarion call to get to the bottom of this epidemic.

That’s why he says it’s time to dig deeper—leave no stone unturned, and we may have answers sooner than you think.

“President Trump asked me to find out what’s causing it,” he told Hannity.

“And I am approaching that agnostically. We are looking at everything, we are going to do, we’re going to be very transparent in how we design the studies.”

To get real answers, he’s farming the research out to top institutions across the country—with full transparency from day one.

“We’re going to farm the studies out to 15 premier research groups from all over the country. And we’re going to be transparent about our protocols, about the data sets, and then every study will have to be replicated.”

The list of possible factors is long—and nothing is being ruled out, Kennedy explained.

“We’re going to look at mold. We’re going to look at the age of parents. We’re going to look at food and food additives. We’re going to look at pesticides and toxic exposures. We’re going to look at medicines. We’re going to look at vaccines. We’re going to look at everything.”

When asked how long it would take, Kennedy didn’t miss a beat.

“I think we’ll have some preliminary answers in six months. It will take us probably a year from then before we can have definitive answers because a lot of the studies will not go out until the end of the summer.”

For the first time in decades, someone is asking the hard questions—and demanding real answers.

This time, nothing is off-limits.


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