Fraser Sherman's Blog

I recently read Caroline Criado Pérez’ Invisible Women (review next weekend) and it’s a good reminder that destructive as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is to American healthcare, the system has plenty of problems. Particularly concerning women. Doctors who don’t listen to women talking about their pain. The lack of research on women (the assumption is the generic male body can stand for all human beings) and the lack of interest in research. Cutting off the clitoris because it’s useless (supposedly).

The trouble is, Kennedy ain’t interested in fixing any of that, any more than he is in improving access to healthcare. He’s in a tradition of crackpots and frauds going back to the colonial era — and at least back then, they had solid reasons for distrusting medicine (bleeding as a universal cure, anyone?). For all its flaws, medicine is light-years beyond that now and America is much, much healthier than it’s ever been. There are potential cures out there that could make us even healthier (for example. And another example. And another). The way to improve the system isn’t by going back to some non-existent golden age of health. It’s like the John Birch Society ranting that fluoridation is a communist plot: whatever problems fluoridated water may pose (I have heard people argue there are some), that is not one of them (as historian Richard Hofstadter put it many years ago). Similarly, RFK fighting vaccines and Dr. Oz yanking people off Obamacare are not going to fix any problems with American healthcare. They’re making things worse. And some MAHA voters are angry.

Writing on her substack and in Mother Jones, Jill Filipovic argues MAHA voters are far from a mindless anti-vax block, that their priorities aren’t anti-vax but “fewer ultraprocessed foods, food dyes, forever chemicals, microplastics, and pesticides, and more physical movement.” The Toddler administration’s support for deregulating pesticides, plans to repeal limits on forever chemicals in drinking water — these put MAHA women (the movement is predominantly women) votes up for grabs. Dems can seize them!

But can they? It was Biden’s administration that set the limits on forever chemicals Republicans want to repeal; that obviously didn’t help them. Filipovic sees MAHA as women with legit concerns about healthy food who got sucked down right-wing rabbit-holes. Perhaps she’s right and Dems can win them over by taking up Michelle Obama’s recommendation that kids should eat more fruits and vegetables. Or perhaps they’re too far down the rabbit-holes: NPR looks at one activist, Zen Honeycutt, who claims Girl Scout cookies have dangerous amounts of chemicals in them. The counter-argument is that the levels are too low to be a problem, and well within legal limits; Honeycutt replies the limits are too liberal.

While medical science can certainly be wrong, I’m inclined to trust the expert NPR interviewed over someone with no scientific credentials whose own organization sells Vaccine Detox Herbal Extract and who says the solution is to trust people we know who “have either used certain products or eaten certain foods and it’s worked for them. This is why we encourage in-person connections, and we should tune in to ourselves. Our bodies tell us what is not good for us. When you really tune in, when you eat something and it doesn’t work for you, you should trust that.”

Um, no. This is an argument I’ve seen elsewhere in various forms: “Fred Smith lived on junk food then axe-murdered 17 people, clear proof junk food makes you murderous” or “I knew a man lived to 105 eating nothing but pureed carrots!” A single example does not prove anything And people’s reactions to food can be heavily subjective. People’s bodies don’t warn them away from Girl Scout cookies — we love them. Some men obsess over eating a diet that’s as “manly” as possible (meat, glorious meat, it’s the food of warriors!). Lots of MAHA believers are convinced by people they know that raw milk is wonderful but the risks are vicious.

Honeycutt’s Vaccine Detox bilge raises another problem: MAHA voters who aren’t anti-vax per se may be perfectly willing to ally with them and support them — let’s face it, anyone who supports Kennedy supports an anti-vax agenda (Michael Hobbes makes the same point). I think there’s zero chance the health changes pro-vax MAHA wants will make up for the damage from that. He was always anti-vax, even when he lied to get his position (and he’s still lying). He and the Republican Party are also practicing eugenics. Their questioning of established science will not lead to miracle breakthroughs. If MAHA voters are okay with that stuff, I’m not sure they’re gettable, certainly not with policies that run in the opposite direction.

That said, I do think health reform would be good. Kamala Harris’ proposal to let Medicare cover home health care. Medicare for All or Medicare buy-in for all. Reversing Medicaid cuts that are shuttering maternity wards. Better research into women’s health. Criticizing industry-backed pharma or food research. Zohram Mamdani’s plans to open grocery stores in food deserts. These ideas are worth doing but like many good policies they may not convince voters to cross the aisle. Arguments they’re winnable voters are beginning to remind me of “if we just respect anti-abortion voters’ feelings, we can win them back for the Demnocrats!”

In other related news:

Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican nutjob, wonders if Anthony Fauci might be tied to the Russian disease outbreak.

The Toddler’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, lies that 80 percent of pregnant women have a miscarriage after getting the covid vaccine. She’ll fit right in with the current White House staff.

“The Department of Health and Human Services informed congressional appropriators earlier this year that it was moving about $12 million from its Office of Minority Health to help cover the ballooning cost of security for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”

Republicans are cutting the money that provides healthcare for 9/11 survivors. And still claiming Covid is not terribly infectious. And it’s still worse than they admit.

Changes to the National Science Foundation under the Toddler don’t bode well for research.

Cheryl Rofer on crackpot science and media coverage of the same: “The holders are cultish enough that they don’t need no stinkin’ science. And reporters coddle them. I think this is partly because many reporters have only a tenuous hold on science themselves.”

RFK cuts grants for autism research. After all, he already “knows” it’s vaccines.

Casey DeSantis (wife of Ron) is pushing ivermectin for cancer research.