Public Health Threatened As RFK Quacks Over Polio Vaccines, Fluoride in Water and More
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade against polio vaccines is the latest volley in a historical battle against medical treatments that were challenged but later saved millions of lives.
Kennedy’s opinions were previously dismissed as quackery but they are taking on a much graver importance as trump has tagged Kennedy as the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees public health services.
Medical doubters through the ages have questioned accepted research, basing their skepticism and opposition on bigotry, ignorance and sometimes, politics. Misinformed misbelievers have cost millions of people their lives, from deadly venereal diseases to COVID-19.
Kennedy has been accused of using confirmation bias, the idea that people seek out information that supports their own beliefs, rather than be open to accepting new information that might challenge their ideas.
Kennedy wants further study on the vaccine used to fight polio, rejecting the reality that the cancer vaccine has virtually rid the nation and much of the world of the debilitating and often deadly disease.
Beyond reason, Kennedy has repeatedly pushed the false belief that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is not the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The discovery of the connection between HIV and AIDS garnered a Nobel Prize in 2008 and is established science.
He refutes established medical studies which have shown no connections between vaccines and autism.
Kennedy also has furthered the debunked claim that 5G high-speed wireless network service is being used to “harvest our data and control our behavior.” Experts have dismissed fears of detrimental health effects, pointing out the technology is no different than existing networks.
Kennedy has attacked the science that shows that fluoride in water has protected millions of children from cavities, particularly those living in vulnerable communities where children might not regularly brush their teeth. Kennedy wants the fluoride removed from public water supplies
Kennedy has found an ally in his discredited call to halt adding fluoride in water. The like-minded, misinformation spreader, Florida’s surgeon general Joseph A. Ladapo, has cited questionable studies that suggest fluoride poses a risk to developing brains.
Ladapo issued a recommendation citing “the neuropsychiatric risk associated with fluoride exposure, particularly in pregnant women and children,” and noting the availability of alternative sources of fluoride including toothpaste and mouthwash.
The CDC has long hailed the removal of fluoride in drinking water as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century. CDC data shows that the practice reduces cavities by about 25 percent in children and adults. The water systems of more than 200 million Americans are fluoridated, according to CDC data.
Ladapo also rejected accepted science when he did not urge parents to vaccinate their children or keep unvaccinated students home from school during a recent outbreak of measles, a preventable, highly contagious and dangerous disease.
In 2020, Ladapo publicly denounced COVID-19 public health measures, including masking and lockdowns. Like Kennedy, Ladapo also endorsed the false claim that hydroxychloroquine could cure COVID.
Kennedy has magnified concerns that have been cited in studies over a possible drop in children’s IQ. The federal National Toxicology Program concluded with “moderate confidence” that higher levels of fluoride are associated with lower IQ in children based on research. The report warned that there was insufficient data to determine if the association occurs in levels used in the United States. Fluoride proponents also said the studies should not be used to justify ending fluoridation because many children were in communities outside the United States with fluoride levels considered excessive by public health authorities.
U.S. health officials in 2015 lowered the recommended amount of fluoride in drinking water, because there are other available sources of fluoride.
Kennedy has questioned years of scientific studies under guise of the naïve idea that “when people live in harmony with nature they uphold higher values, enjoy naturally good health and a life free from problems,” as stated by the Natural Law Party which has close ties with Kennedy. The Natural Law Party was founded in 1992 on “the principles of Transcendental Meditation”, the laws of nature and their application to all levels of government.
Kennedy Jr. says the science on vaccine safety has “huge deficits” and that people should be able to make informed choices about their vaccinations and their children’s vaccinations. He does not address the real concern that fewer vaccinations would boost the rate of infections and cost lives.
Polio was once a disease that paralyzed and killed thousands of Americans. The advent of a vaccine in the 1950s greatly reduced the incidence around the world. In the 1950s, before a vaccine was available, polio killed or paralyzed more than half a million people globally each year, according to the World Health Organization.
Kennedy’s lawyer, Aaron Siri, has petitioned the FDA to withdraw or suspend approval for the inactivated poliomyelitis vaccine until “a properly controlled and properly powered double-blind trial of sufficient duration is conducted to assess the safety of this product.”
Siri filed the petition after a young unvaccinated adult was paralyzed by the infection and the virus turned up in wastewater in New York City. It was the first polio case in the U.S. in almost a decade.
Siri’s petition claims vaccine safety is undermined because it was approved without placebo-controlled clinical trials. Experts say a placebo trial could delay polio vaccinations and imperil public health. In placebo-controlled trials, a portion of the people who participate in them wouldn’t get the shot, leaving them unprotected. But there is no cure for polio, and someone who’s unprotected could be left paralyzed for the rest of their life.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also reports no serious adverse events related to the use of inactivated polio vaccine. In rare occurrences, people can react to the vaccine if they are allergic to certain types of antibiotics, such as streptomycin, polymyxin B or neomycin.
Kenedy also has called for Americans to drink raw milk, despite longstanding, accepted scientific studies which have shown that unpasteurized milk can cause a series of serious medical ailments.
The Food and Drug Administration and the CDC have strongly advised against drinking raw milk because it can contain dangerous bacteria, such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria. It can also contain viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu virus that is causing an outbreak in dairy cattle and has sickened at least 46 people in the United States. Unpasteurized milk from infected cows can contain high levels of infectious H5N1 virus.
Another roundly debunked claim of Kennedy’s is that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are effective covid treatments. Multiple studies have concluded that the antiparasitic and antimalarial drugs are ineffective against COVID-19, despite the promotion of the drug by right-wing media.
The FDA has approved ivermectin for treating some parasitic infections, head lice and skin conditions such as rosacea — but not for the coronavirus.
Kennedy has consistently and repeatedly and falsely linked vaccines to autism. Using a claim that has been completely debunked by scientists, Kenney has blamed autism on thimerosal, a compound safely used as a preservative in vaccines and said children should receive much fewer shots.
Some parents may mistakenly link autism and vaccinations because signs of autism may appear around the same time children receive the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. Vaccine safety experts agree that the MMR vaccine is not responsible for recent increases in the number of children with autism.
A 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine concluded there is no link between autism and vaccination. Dozens of studies published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals have also disproved the notion that the MMR vaccine causes autism.
And while the MMR vaccine does not cause autism, the health of many children would be imperiled if they do not get the childhood MMR vaccine. Already, vaccine reluctance has resulted in increases in pertussis, or whooping cough, measles and polio.
The world’s first anti-vaccine movement came around the early 19th century when smallpox had ravaged much of the world, claiming 400,000 victims in Europe while those lucky enough to survive were often permanently disfigured.
In 1796, the British scientist Edward Jenner discovered that dairymaids were often protected from smallpox because of their exposure to the less dangerous cowpox. Jenner tested his hypothesis that exposure to the similar disease might protect others from smallpox. He extracted pus from a woman infected with cowpox, injected it into a healthy boy and exposed him to smallpox. The child did not become ill and further experiments had the same outcomes.
Opponents of the early smallpox vaccine mushroomed, making unfounded warnings of bizarre mental effects, including blindness, deafness, ulcers, a gruesome skin condition called “cowpox mange” even sprouting hoofs and horns.
Instead of recommending the vaccine, many doctors steered people toward an older and far less effective form of protection against smallpox known as variolation. The process involved using the scrapings from smallpox to infect a healthy person with the disease. Many patients died from variolation, including one of King George III’s sons.
Britain’s anti-vaccine movement became ever stronger after England and Wales made the smallpox vaccine mandatory for children in 1853. Because of mandatory vaccinations, smallpox deaths dropped by more than a quarter in the years after the passage of the mandate. Among children, the death rate dropped by 50 percent and by 1934 smallpox was considered eradicated in Britain.
In 1908, the German scientist, Paul Ehrlich discovered the cure for syphilis. His epic confrontations with politicians who fought his discovery were featured in the 1940 film, “Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet” which starred Edward G. Robinson.
In 1908, Ehrlich won the Nobel prize for medicine for his work in immunology. He was a pioneer in hematology and founded modern chemotherapy. But his most controversial discovery was the 1910 creation of salvarsan, the first specific and effective cure for syphilis.
Ehrlich announced in April 1910 that salvarsan, known as “606,” had proved effective in treating syphilis in animals as well as in clinical trials on humans. The discovery was quickly accepted by most of the medical community and triggered a huge demand for the drug. But a small group of dissenters claimed that salvarsan was a dangerous drug and they accused Ehrlich of charlatanism, profiteering, ruthless experimentation and even stealing the credit for his discovery from one of his researchers.
Ehrlich contracted with the Hochst Chemical Works to produce salvarsan. Hochst began marketing the drug in December 1910, with assurances from Ehrlich that salvarsan had been tested in 20,000 to 30,000 cases and that he was “certain that it is one of the most powerful specific remedies for syphilis.”
The attacks on Ehrlich and salvarsan began quickly after Richard Dreus, a Berlin physician, told a Berlin medical group that 606 had not been adequately tested and warned of the dangers of its widespread use.
After Dreus has stirred up opposition to salvarsan, a Frankfurt journalist named Karl Wassmann mounted a campaign on behalf of the local prostitutes. Wassmann charged that the women were being given salvarsan against their will at the Frankfurt hospital, resulting in the death of some and “severe and lasting damage” to many others. Testimony at a subsequent trial showed that around 1,200 Frankfurt prostitutes had been treated with the drug and not all had been volunteers.
The growing opposition to salvarsan cited toxic side effects from injections, some resulting from the drug’s imperfections and others from poor preparation and injection techniques. Some patients died in treatment but the number of causes were always debated.
Bigotry and politics led to tragic and deadly delays in the nation’s research for a drug to fight the HIV virus that leads to AIDS.
AIDS was first medically recognized in 1981, in New York and California, and the term AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) was adopted in 1982. Public concern in the straight world was delayed at first as scientific reports said the disease came from monkeys and that it originated and was focused in Haiti, both suppositions which were later rejected.
Heterosexuals thought they were safe when the deadly illness was initially derided as the “gay plague” or “GRID” (gay-related immune deficiency) or the “4H Disease,” for “Homosexuals, Heroin addicts, Hemophiliacs and Haitians” as the predominantly effected groups. By mid-1982, the disease became known as HIV and AIDS after it had become clear that heterosexuals could be infected.
President Ronald Reagan, who oversaw the U.S. response to the emergence of the HIV/AIDS crisis, did not publicly acknowledge AIDS until 1985 and did not give an address on it until 1987. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued a report in 1986 and a commission led by James D. Watkins in 1988 provided the Reagan administration with information about AIDS and policy suggestions on how to limit its spread. But the mood at the White House didn’t begin to change until the death of one of Reagan’s Hollywood colleagues, Rock Hudson, a closeted homosexual, tin 1985 from AIDS.
The government’s resulting actions were not enough to prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
HIV was first identified as the cause of AIDS by researchers Luc Montagnier in France and Robert Gallo in the United States in 1983 and 1984. Without treatment, HIV is inevitably fatal, with a median survival time of 8–10 years. AZT, the first treatment for HIV/AIDS, was not approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) until 1987. In the United States, AIDS disproportionately affected, and continues to affect, members of the LGBT community, with the highest risk for gay men and transgender women.
Politics, funding and misplaced ethics are a difficult combination for a promising plan to eliminate the resurgent threat of malaria through genetic engineering. The research has been bogged down by various factors, including a lack of funding and ethical and philosophical opposition from people who fear the process may unleash disastrous, unintended consequences and that people can live in harmony with nature, as espoused by the Natural Law Party.
Opponents sound alarms of potentially widespread and deadly unintended consequences of modifying genes. The worries of longstanding effects of genetic modifications pale in context of the 597,00 people who died of malaria last year, most being children under 5 along with an estimated 263 million people who were sickened.
Much of the world’s poorest people rely on 19th century technologies that include bed nets and insecticide. New vaccines have limited effectiveness, reducing the risk of severe malaria by 30 percent and require four separate clinic visits.
The latest and most promising research to eliminate malaria involves a technology known as a “gene drive” that would target mosquitoes that carry the deadly parasite. Objections have been raised because the genetic engineering changes mosquitoes of all future generations and once the process begins it may be out of human control.
The technology could be used to hatch more male mosquitoes which do not bite or to render the females unable to bite at all. Genetically altered mosquitoes would be released to mate with wild mosquitoes, passing along, or “driving,” the new traits and gradually reducing the population of the mosquito species that carry the deadliest form of malaria.
Genetic interventions have faced stiff opposition in the past. In the
Florida Keys, a plan to use genetic engineering to suppress an invasive, disease-carrying mosquito species, was mired for a decade in regulatory hurdles and local opposition.
A network of environmental groups have lobbied for the past five years against genetically modified organisms. The European Parliament has supported a global moratorium on the gene drive technology, citing insufficient scientific data.
Past resistance to genetic engineering research has had serious consequences, often led by people far away from the effected people. Opposition to genetically modified crops may have exacerbated a 2002 famine in Zambia and slowed research on altered rice that might save millions of children from vitamin A deficiency, which can cause blindness and death.