The Turkey that Destroyed US Healthcare

"Hey, Hey, RFK. How many kids did you kill today?"
-This take on the VietNam era protest chant is attributed to Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect

Fall is almost in the air. The temp drops below 90° and our thoughts turn to the holidays of Autumn. I'm already anxious over Thanksgiving dinner. I close my eyes and dream of the turkey emerging from the oven with a deep, golden-brown skin that glistens under the kitchen light, its surface crackling slightly as the heat bubbles up. The rough, dimpled skin looks, at first, enticing, but there is something sinister in this bundled, steaming meat. Juices bead like sweat and run along the crisp, lacquered skin, hinting at the fatty, bready stuffing deep inside. The bird rests proudly on the roasting pan, a perfect centerpiece, and it begins to stare back at me. It makes me nervous, and I begin to squirm.

I jolt awake when my wife calls my name, rather loudly... "Did you drift off? C'mon. Come cut up this Costco chicken."

I don't want to face the face in the tawny turkey. A baked bird nightmare that haunts me. A rough, tan chicken that stares back at me and I think: I need my Covid/flu booster shot before this roasted face cancels them all.

The swarthy and sinister RFK Jr, the one who appears every bit as baked - physically and mentally - as that dead brown bird on your Thanksgiving table, is dismantling America's already shaky health care system. Along with canceling access to basic healthcare like vaccines and Medicaid, his continued cuts to rural hospitals and the cuts to medical research across the board are disastrous.

Leadership within the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services has been decimated. Kennedy fired Director Susan Monarez (“I told her she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ and she said ‘No.'" Monarez called BS on that.) The entire CDC expert vaccine panel was dismissed. It seems they believed in the effectiveness of vaccines. mRNA vaccine development has been defunded. HIV research has all but disappeared. Cancer research has been significantly reduced, as well as the study of several other diseases.

This has all been done in the name of... Efficiencies? Budget shortages? Or is it just because Kennedy-the-vaccine skeptic and conspiracy-nut-job wants to surround himself, like Trump, with loyalists and other nutjobs who have all the scientific cred of flat earthers? Belief in the proven science and effectiveness of vaccines appears to be the number one fireable offense in Kennedy's world.

Yes, he said that. "We need to stop trusting the experts." The man who made it through elite private prep schools, Harvard, the University of Virginia School of Law, and Pace University. A 14-year heroin habit and a brain worm tempered this. The resulting mashed potatoes between his ears guide him to assail the privileged education that he himself received. This is standard GOP playbook - and indeed any authoritarian playbook - play dumb and go after the educated "elite" and the institutions of higher learning. Unless they're 100% on your team, willing to prioritize loyalty and power over truth.

Kennedy is the portrait of the wealthy elite. The Kennedy family is the billboard for a political dynasty. He certainly has the raw ambition of the Kennedy political clan, but not the intellect that his gene pool or education would suggest. However, as an attorney, his early law career reflected his family's traditional values - taking on high-profile environmental causes. He declined opportunities to run for several public offices - including the Senate seat that his father had occupied, and NY Attorney General. But in 2023, he decided to run for president. The Democrats didn't have room for him (Harris would be their nominee), and he decided to run as an Independent. He was also considered for the Libertarian candidate, but didn't make the cut. His non-commitment to any specific ideology reminds me of the famous Groucho quote, "These are my principles. If you don't like them... well, I have others." And the worst was yet to come.

He shat the bed so badly early in his campaign that even his family publicly endorsed Biden/Harris. PolitiFact named his presidential campaign its 2023 "lie of the year" based on his anti-vax views, his conspiracy theories about his father's and uncle's assassinations, and his suggestion that Covid-19 was developed to target Caucasians and Blacks. So, what's an unprincipled egomaniac to do?

Trump was willing to give him a big, warm hug. Just sign the loyalty pledge and put that Kennedy name on a public endorsement. Done. Trump's team was worried that as an independent, he could have been a 'spoiler' and taken away votes from their candidate. By all accounts, Trump was ecstatic to get an endorsement from RFK, Jr, a former critic of his, a Democrat, and most importantly, a Kennedy.

He was rewarded with the Department of Health and Human Services, the United States' top health agency. Caroline Kennedy pleaded with senators to block her cousin’s cabinet nomination, calling him a “predator” and “unqualified” to lead HHS. “Bobby is addicted to attention and power,” she said, “Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own kids while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.”After he survived a contentious Senate hearing, another cousin, Joe Kennedy III, called RFK, Jr. “a threat to the health and well-being of every American” in a social media post. He called for him to step down, “None of us will be spared the pain he is inflicting… Those values are not present in the Secretary’s office. He must resign.”

I'm thinking that dear cousin Bobby may not be at Thanksgiving at Hyannisport this year. Unless, they, too, see his face in that pimpled turkey.

But other than blind ambition, what makes a man forsake the values that his family has held for generations? He was raised in an atmosphere of logic, reason, and scientific process, though he holds no degree anywhere near a science or medical discipline. Why did he turn his back on the stellar education he was privileged with? Sure, he fulfilled his desire to assume a powerful political position. But even within that (crooked) GOP sphere, he could have done pretty well by just supporting "Big Pharm," a Republican tradition.

But Kennedy is known for his "non-traditional" medical cures, and that's a nice way to say "quackery." And speaking of quacks, his sidekick, Dr. Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, was an actual surgeon. Like Kennedy, Oz is an ambitious Harvard grad and a media hound. He was even a professor of surgery at Columbia University, though tellingly, Columbia has cut ties with him and erased him from their website. He has a long record of promoting pseudoscientific theories, faith healing, alternative medicine, dietary supplements, and paranormal beliefs. He made millions promoting/endorsing supplements and scammy weight loss products. Oz informally "advised" Trump during the pandemic, and promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine. You will not be surprised to hear that he owned $630,000 worth of stock in two different pharma companies that made or distributed the drug. He would attempt a Senate run in '22 where he promoted his non-FDA-approved cures for Covid and denounced Anthony Fauci and the Covid vaccine. In a tight race, he was beaten by Democrat John Fetterman.

Oz's chumminess with Trump, his solid showing in the Senate race, and large media following made him a shoo-in for his position in the administration.

The supplement, vitamin, and weight loss industries are enormous - billions of dollars. Throw in alternative medical services, off-label use of established medicines, and the opportunities to endorse and promote all of these products, the potential sales are unlimited. And there is nothing but growth ahead.

In defending his firing of scientists, researchers, and trained doctors, RFK Jr. claims that he is committed to "gold-standard" science in his MAHA efforts... implying that the thousands of trials and tests and studies on vaccines, drugs, and medical protocols up to date are universally faulty. Or maybe he knows that Trump likes anything with the concept of "gold" attached to it. Or maybe it's gold that he, himself, is after.

from the Washinton Post:

The HPV vaccine is extraordinarily cost-effective: Among American women in their early 20s who were vaccinated when they were young, precancerous lesions have declined about 80 percent. Australia’s vaccination program, which began in 2007 for girls and was expanded in 2013 to include boys, might eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem by 2035, scientists have predicted.
Yet Kennedy, the secretary of health and human services, and Children’s Health Defense, an organization he founded, have repeatedly attacked the HPV vaccine, falsely claiming that in some girls it raises the risks of cancer and autoimmunity. Kennedy has the deepest possible conflict of interest here: He has been paid nearly $900,000 in referral fees by lawyers suing Merck over its HPV vaccine.

Dr. Peter Hotez, Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also Director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Endowed Chair in Tropical Pediatrics (and other titles, degrees, and accolades too numerous to mention,) recently spoke with economist Paul Krugman. Hotez recounted that in 2023, Joe Rogan, RFK Jr., and Elon Musk were pressuring him to debate Kennedy over vaccines. They were offering $100K for the meetup. Hotez quickly realized that it was an effort to elevate Kennedy's stature and give him a bit of credibility for appearing with a real scientist. He declined. It was at that point that Hotez figured out the game. From Krugman's Substack:

Hotez: In their zeal to push back against vaccine mandates, which you could sort of understand, they unfortunately went the next step and falsely discredited the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Then members of Congress, the House Freedom Caucus and Senator Ron Johnson and Senator Rand Paul weighed in. And then it picked up a converging thread from the wellness and influencer industry that is built on buying up whatever they can find in bulk that is available as low cost generics, and they'll jack up the price and pair it with a telehealth visit. Have you ever noticed why they're all anti-parasitic drugs? Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, or Fenbendazoles? Because they're cheap and they can buy them in bulk, they’re generic. They repackage them and sell it with a telehealth visit. So they joined forces with that kind of health wellness movement, and now Kennedy has shifted his language accordingly to adjust to that.
So if you notice now he says, “well, you can either get your measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, the MMR vaccine, or you can get this useless cocktail of supplements like vitamin A, budesonide, clarithromycin, and cod liver oil.” That call comes from the health and wellness influencer. So, politics and money basically.

Yeah. As Deepthroat taught us: Always "follow the money."

Kennedy visited Texas a couple of weeks ago to celebrate Gov. Abbott's signing of some "MAHA" legislation. ("Make America Healthy Again." You know, like MAGA, except with an H! Clever, no?) The HHS secretary shared a little bit of his expertise. He commented on some kids that he had observed in our great state.

“I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like... I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation,” Kennedy said. “You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection. And I know that that’s not how our children are supposed to look.”

No exam, no lab work, no stethoscope or x-rays or stick-out-your-tongue-and-say-AHHHH. Just a big word. Just sheer genius, the expertise of a lawyer who believes that Jews and the Chinese have natural immunity to Covid-19. The actual medical community was apoplectic, to say the least.

“This is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff people,” Dr. Sshish K. Jha, Biden's COVID-19 response coordinator, said. “This is not normal.”

Dr. Angela Rasmussen (virologist) had... thoughts:

Hearing the brain-addled, dullard Kennedy bandy about the term "mitochondrial" is absurdist theater. Of all the ig'nunce in the cabinet meetings, he seems more mitochondrial than the rest. He wouldn't know an organelle from an orgasm.

This recalls the funniest Saturday Night Live bit of the season. Cast members Marcello Hernández and Jane Wickline play "The Couple that You Can't Believe Are Together." He is an extroverted goofball, and she is a quiet, mousy nerd who loves her man. He brags that she leads him in "Word Wednesday," where she teaches him a new vocabulary word every week... which he enjoys immensely. He's proud of his newfound knowledge, but it's clear that he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. (If you haven't seen it, take a minute.) It's quite "undoubtedly."

In a moving tribute to the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk, Sec. of HHS Robert F. Kennedy said,

“I met Charlie for the first time in July of 2001. I went on his podcast, and I think we approached each other with a lot of trepidation at that time, but by the end of the podcast, we were soulmates. We were spiritual brothers,” RFK Jr. told the Kennedy Center vigil attendees on Sunday. “We were friends. And over the next couple of years, our friendship blossomed. He ended up being the primary architect of my unification with President Trump.”

In 2001, Charlie Kirk was 7 years old.

I dunno. Maybe we'll have a vegetarian Thanksgiving. I'm feeling pretty mitochondrial about the whole thing.

Author's Note: The email version of this piece that went out via email mistakenly substituted "JFK" for "RFK" in a sub-heading. We regret the error.