Can’t keep up with the gibberish on health coming out of the Trump regime? Here’s a pithy summary. And yes, that is an AI-generated image.
Remember the good old days when it hadn’t occurred to Donald Trump that he might win the US presidency so he didn’t really know what to do with it when he got it?
Ah, happy times.
Now he’s had eight years to figure it out and he’s doing things, for sure. Batshit crazy things.
It’s been a particularly busy week on the US health scene, so rather than force you to go searching for it yourself, we’ve brought it all together in one steaming pile of madness.
You’re welcome.
Fetus debris
This is an RFK Jnr special.
Last Friday the Health Secretary claimed that the MMR vaccine contained “aborted fetus debris”.
The rubella vaccine is produced using decades-old sterile fetal cell lines, particularly WI-38 – derived from lung tissue of a single elective abortion in the 1960s – but we’re guessing that didn’t quite cut it in terms of advancing Junior’s anti-abortion agenda, so why not combine the two?
On the back of that, the US Department of Health and Human Services released statements saying it would alter vaccine testing and build new “surveillance systems”.
“All new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure – a radical departure from past practices,” said a department spokesperson, who did not clarify the definition of a “new vaccine”.
By the way, there are almost 900 cases of the measles currently in the US.
Kennedy also claimed there were “DNA particles” in vaccines. That’s technically true, but the implication that is harmful, is not.
“Multiple health authorities, including Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, have addressed the misinformation regarding perceived harm from residual DNA in vaccines,” said Associate Professor Hassan Vally in The Conversation today.
“Ultimately, the idea that fragmented DNA in a vaccine could cause genetic harm is false.”
Autism eugenics
Another piece of RFK Jnr brainwormery.
The DHHS is creating what it now calls an autism database, meant to track the health of autistic people in a $50 million study of autism.
It started out as an “autism registry” but the department has walked back from that to “database” following a 50,000-strong petition from researchers and advocates.
Is it just a name change, however?
“I worry that we’re on a slippery slope to eugenics,” said petition founder Ryan Smith said, the parent of neurodiverse children.
“My mind immediately goes to history and things that happened in Nazi Germany. That’s extreme, but it feels like a possibility.”
Related
Disabled people were the first to be targeted then, he pointed out.
Kennedy announced at a cabinet meeting last week that the new study had been launched.
“By September, we will have some of the first answers. Within six months of that, we will have definitive answers,” Kennedy said.
The National Institutes of Health is forming partnerships with other federal agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, in order to collect the data.
Hydroxychloroquine advocate lands pandemic role
No, we’re not joking.
Steven J Hatfill – hat filled with what, I hear you ask – promoted hydroxychloroquine has a treatment for covid back in the early days of the pandemic.
Guess what? Trump has named Hatfill to a top pandemic prevention role at the Department of Health and Human Services as a reward for his efforts.
Hatfill is a virologist who has defended his advocacy for HCQ for covid treatment.
“There is no ambiguity there. It is a safe drug,” Hatfill said, noting that “they gave the drug to the president” in 2020.
Sure is safe, which is why it’s used as treatment for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. It won’t kill you, it just won’t treat your covid.
And, by the way, remember the post-9/11 anthrax scare, when anthrax-filled envelopes were sent by mail across the US, killing five and sickening 17 others?
Hatfill, at the time a biodefense researcher for the army, was a “person of interest” in that investigation. He was cleared in 2008, the same year he received $4.6 million from the US government to settle a lawsuit alleging the government violated his right to privacy.
NIH goes bonkers
Apart from cutting research funding to non-US researchers – we’re still trying to figure out how many Australian researchers that will impact – the National Institutes of Health has been given $500 million by the DHHS to develop a vaccine platform for pandemic-triggering pathogens.
Sounds good, right?
Not so much, according to STAT.
Trouble is, the project is all about using whole killed viruses – a technique dating back to Jonas Salk’s development of the polio vaccine in the early 1950s.
Scientists have pointed out that there are better, faster, more nimble vaccine production methods that have been developed since.
“There is incredible work going on. This is not it,” said one researcher who didn’t want to be named for fear of retribution.
And it looks like the money was awarded in shonky manner. There was no peer-reviewed appraisal process for the project, largely because it’s all in-house.
“Some of the scientists who raised concerns about the project worried that support for this vaccine development method might signal a move away from using messenger RNA vaccines for pandemic preparedness,” said STAT.
A little non-health-related madness
And just to top things off, Trump has announced the development of a self-deport app.
That’s right. The president of the world’s most powerful nation is happy to pay illegal immigrants US$1000 if they use the CBP Home app. The government will pay for flights and then send the money once the immigrant has left the country.
Suuuuuuure.