Weaponizing Public Health
Is RFK Jr at War with Health Science and Should that Cost Him His Job?
It is not just central bankers, statisticians and judges who are using their lawyers to stop Donald Trump from firing them. This week the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was fired by the White House. The lawyer representing CDC director, Susan Monarez, claims she was fired because she refused "to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives". She has accused the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr), of "weaponizing public health".
Things are getting interesting in the House that Grift Built.
Scientists are not only leaving the chaos RFK Jr has reigned on the HHS, they are also leaving blunt letters. Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, resigned, warning about the "rise of misinformation" about vaccines. The head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Demetre Daskalakis, is another director who left the CDC "because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health".
There’s that phrase again. What does it mean to “weaponize public health”?
At War with Public Health
“Weapons” are used in conflicts, wars and battles. In such conflicts, public health has been an easy soft target (controlling food, water, access to healthcare...). But weapons can also be used in political conflicts where ideas and philosophies are battling each other.
To “weaponize” means to turn something (including ideas, fears and information) into a weapon or use it as a tool for harm or control. Related to public health, the term has been used frequently in the last five years following the COVID lockdowns (that the coronavirus outbreak was reportedly used to control or destabilize populations).
To weaponize public health, then, means that health is used as a weapon for political, religious or ideological purposes. Evangelical men denying women the right to access reproductive health services is a prime example of the weaponization of public health. Creating false fears (of chemicals, pesticides, plastics, vaping, vaccines...) to control public decisions is another tool used by soldiers in this battle over the control of public health.
In the United States, there is a MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement, an army, using their moment in government to build a base, expand influence and raise funds. This band of naturopaths, tort lawyers, wellness supplement grifters and food puritans have been fighting the establishment for decades from the fringes. Now, imbibed with power, they are taking names and erecting their guillotines (see a Firebreak analysis on the MAHA rush to power).
Public health, then, has been weaponized as the grifters take revenge.
Is RFK Jr an Aggressive Wolf or an Innocent Sheep?
Is RFK Jr, himself, guilty of weaponizing public health or has he just been poorly informed, attracted to nutty ideas and prone to believing his movement’s anti-establishment bias? He surrounds himself with conspiracy theorists like Del Bigtree and Calley Means. He is fêted like a rock star by MAHA sycophants like Vani Hari (The Food Babe) and Zen Honeycutt (Moms Across America). Fanboys from book publishers to tort lawyers lavish him with fees and royalties so maybe RFK Jr is just a simpleton with the wrong opportunists feeding him ideas.
Looking at the financial disclosure declaration of interests RFK Jr submitted to Congress, demonstrating how he is capitalizing on the movement he is leading, it is clear that RFK Jr is more the opportunist than the innocent simpleton; he is more wolf than sheep. That his head scientists responsible for advising him are accusing him of weaponization suggests that it is not simply RFK Jr’s lack of intelligence at issue here. He is actively aligning health issues with his political activism (while disregarding readily available and widely accepted facts and evidence).
RFK Jr is part of an administration that has weaponized everything so even health science, data, statistics are politically manipulated and processed through a double-speak meat grinder. I regularly hear activists claim that all science is political so there is no longer any respect for or trust in research findings or the scientific method.
The CDC’s main charge of RFK Jr’s weaponization focuses on his attacks on vaccines. He has been relentlessly:
expressing doubt on the safety of the MMR triple jab, creating unnecessary fear for parents of young children,
linking vaccines to the rise in autism cases,
claiming that COVID vaccines are ineffective,
promoting the view that vaccines target different races,
firing all members of the HHS vaccine advisory committee, replacing them with many known anti-vaxxers,
playing down the threats to children during a major measles outbreak, where several children died, recommending Vitamin A instead.
See sources. Next month, the HHS will release a report on the causes of autism. Nobody has any doubt where the conclusion will lead as this report will very likely be driven by political rhetoric rather than facts and data.
RFK Jr is creating fear, uncertainty and doubt in the scientific facts in an attempt to control public decisions on public health. This is, indeed, the weaponization of public health. As well as vaccine doubts, he has also been creating fear and doubt in many other fields, in particular about the safety of conventional agriculture, fluoride in water, processed food, pasteurized milk, 5G, chemtrails, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. (See a wider selection of RFK Jr nuttier conspiracy theories.) The main thing RFK Jr has tried to do is undermine trust in the scientific experts and market-driven social goods.
But it is not just RFK Jr’s putting political rhetoric and conspiracy theories over science and reality that has made him an agent of harm. His claims have also put CDC workers’ lives physically at risk.
Last week, CDC employees wrote an open letter accusing RFK Jr of fueling violence towards healthcare workers with his anti-vaccine rhetoric. Earlier this month, a gunman, claiming he was harmed by a COVID vaccine, attacked the CDC head office in Atlanta firing more than 500 rounds at the building and killing a police officer. RFK Jr’s staff put the blame for this event solely at his feet. The letter does not mince words:
It is safe to conclude then that under Robert F Kennedy Jr, public health in America has been weaponized, is acting against the interest of health promotion, creating unnecessary victims and undermining American prosperity. All of the present policies and strategies in the Department of Health and Human Services bow to the political agenda and activist ideologies of a band of naturopaths, tort lawyers, supplement grifters and conspiracy theorists that RFK Jr represents. There is no respect for science, evidence, research or reality.
Should Weaponizing be Grounds for Dismissal?
A person working in service to a government must regulate with integrity, impartiality and honesty. Weaponization is clearly a ground for dismissal (if incompetence were not reason enough).
The “fired” head of the CDC, Susan Monarez, is challenging her dismissal in court. If a judge rules that her claims are valid and finds RFK Jr guilty of weaponizing public health, then he should do the honorable thing and resign (or his boss should fire him). We would have to rely on a judge since the mainstream media, so mollified out of fear of the wagging finger on social media, has resigned to toeing the administration’s line rather than standing up for science and public health.
But firing RFK Jr for weaponizing public health would set a dangerous precedent as every other sitting member of Trump’s cabinet, including the president himself, would be liable to the same weaponization charges. In a political climate where institutions are only valid if they support the political interests of an unbridled few, weaponization has become a banal charge. Americans will have to wait for RFK Jr to be fired for something more petty and contrived and then be forced to watch as his followers would certainly spin their own narrative. RFK 2028?
For the patient health and science advocates, rest assured that history will not be kind to Junior. Hopefully his departure will happen before too many bodies pile up, crop failures cause global food insecurity and epidemics rage unchecked. The day will come though when RFK Jr’s portrait will be hung in the annals of history between those of Trofim Lysenko and Vandana Shiva.
