Gold Standard Science?
RFK Jr. wouldn't recognize it if it was right in front of him. Which it is.
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Note: Everything in this post is my personal opinion. If you don’t agree, set up your own Substack. Or, leave me a comment.
Call your Congresscritters! Keep Calling!
I have an embarrassment of riches for this week’s column:
Our Convict-in-Chief has turned the nation’s capital into a militarized dystopian zone.1
This weekend he’s platforming a corrupt dictator visiting on U.S. soil.
The GOP is rigging midterms with aggressive gerrymandering in red states.
The Trump White House is censoring Smithsonian exhibits via its “Ministry of Truth.”
All this while flooding the zone to distract from scandals like the Epstein files, a slumping economy, and unmet campaign promises (like “free IVF”).
Yet today I’m focusing on a different subject—the wayward son and namesake of a hero from my youth: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
RFK Jr. was sworn in as the 26th Secretary of Health and Human Services on February 13, 2025, in a 52–48 Senate vote with a rare GOP dissenter, Mitch McConnell(!), citing RFK Jr.’s dubious record on vaccines.
He immediately chaired the newly formed “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission, tasked with investigating childhood chronic diseases. More on that later.
As you probably already know, in 2010 our new HHS Secretary said he had health problems, “…caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”.2
In a 2012 deposition he’s reported to have said, “I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”
He claims he has recovered, but he’s refused to release his pertinent medical records.
In the meantime he has been advocating for the fully debunked hypothesis that childhood vaccines cause autism.
Members of his family have criticized RFK Jr. and his organization, saying he spreads "dangerous misinformation" and that his work has "heartbreaking" consequences.”
RFK Jr. is not a medical doctor. His background is in environmental law and activism, notably as founder of Children’s Health Defense—an anti-vaccine organization.
As far as I know there is no requirement that the HHS Secretary be an MD, but one would hope that someone in this position would listen to folks who are MDs or medical researchers and are qualified to have opinions on health issues.
And yet he is our Health and Human Services Secretary, in charge of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), and lots more.
Because of what I consider to be his wacky beliefs about vaccines he has cut funding on multiple lines of research, including research into vaccines in general and more recently research on mRNA vaccines.
It was due to the rapid development of mRNA vaccines that the COVID19 pandemic was controlled.
mRNA vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective. According to this article from the National Library of Medicine:
In recent years, mRNA therapeutics have emerged as a promising platform in treating a wide range of diseases, including cancers, infections, genetic disorders, and autoimmune diseases.3
mRNA vaccines have the potential to be much more effective against disease than older vaccine technologies. They are also much faster to develop and manufacture compared to the Whole Virus vaccines RFK Jr. is funding research for.
Whole Virus vaccines are 1940s technology.
But our (literally) brain damaged HHS Secretary has stopped pretty much all mRNA vaccine funding.
He has said he wants the HHS’ organizations to follow “Gold Standard Science”, but his MAHA (Make America Healty Again) report, issued on May 22,2025, was riddled with errors including citations of studies that don’t exist.
He needs to be replaced with someone much more qualified.
Call your US House Representative and your two US Senators today and demand that he be removed.
Then call tomorrow, and the day after that. Keep calling until he’s out of a job and can go back to picking up roadkill to eat and sawing the heads off of dead whales.
For another take on this issue read this excellent column by Steven Beschloss:
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Call your Congresscritters! Keep Calling!
¡Chinga la Migra!
Trump lie of the week:
Lies our President has told recently. Not necessarily this week. I’m only posting statements rated “Pants On Fire!” by Politifact. I’m too lazy to keep track of these so I may repeat some of my favorites on occasion.
Musical Coda:
For no particular reason. I just like Leo Kottke. This is an early classic.
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Substacks I highly recommend:
Instead of spending millions on enforcement, why not address the root causes of crime by spending money to provide housing, healthcare (including mental health and reproductive health) and education to the poorest of the poor. No four-year-old says “I want to be a criminal” if you ask them what they want to do when they grow up.
My unworthy thought is that the worm died of malutrition.
I am a survivor of prostate cancer. My wife is diabetic, possibly due to a genetic disorder. Our daughter is disabled because of an autoimmune condition. If mRNA vaccines can help with any of these I’m all for them.