We were promised if not THE, at least one of the causes of autism. What we got was don’t take Tylenol while pregnant. While I have no problem with that – my wife wouldn’t take anything, and I mean anything, while she was pregnant: Tylenol, Advil, aspirin, coffee, old grapes, ANYTHING – avoiding acetaminophen during early pregnancy doesn’t seem like a heavy lift to lower the possibility of autism.
But the case wasn’t presented very well by the team at Health and Human Services. They used already-existing research from places like Harvard that suggests a possible link, because that’s all there is: a POSSIBLE link. They should have been very clear that there may be a correlation, but that does not establish causation. That would have made the argument “Maybe don’t take it in the first few months of pregnancy, unless you really need to” argument land with less of a thud.
While I support the idea of doing whatever is necessary to lower risks of negatively impacting kids, this press conference was well short of what we were promised. We were promised a cause, we got an older maybe.
I have to blame Robert Kennedy Jr. He’s the boss, he’s responsible. He’s the one who over-promised and under-delivered.
The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement came in with a lot of promise, but it’s turning out to be all sizzle and no steak. They’ve gotten companies to get rid of artificial food dyes, but what else?
I get it, I don’t want my kids to eat poison M and Ms just so there’s a red one, but they weren’t poison in the first place. Like everything, if you ingest an unhealthy amount of it, you will get unhealthy results.
Still, I have no problem with them being gone – I’ve bought cereal online from Canada for my kids because it has ingredients I know what they are and can pronounce. But that doesn’t mean the American version is deadly or causing obesity, over-eating is. Having crap food as a main food group in your diet is.
I’m not one of those people who think the Secretary of Health and Human Services has to be a doctor, it’s an administrative job, not one where you do anything medical. And I’d point out how Joe Biden’s choice, Xavier Beccerra, was a lawyer (not a doctor) and Democrats whining now had no problem with it. My issue is I just haven’t seen any results from all the promise of RFK.
Recommended
A lot of vaccines are good things. We didn’t eradicate polio and other horrible diseases by sheer luck. Vaccines work. You want to make most of the voluntary, go ahead. We survived as a species with just the basics for a very long time, and if you want to argue that we’re shooting too much into the bodies of babies, either over all or all at once, I’m listening.
I know one day olds don’t need a Hepatitis B vaccine unless their mother has it or is a junkie. That’s it. And the idea of it is insane, RFK is right about that.
But his history and his tenure so far has been so muddled with mixed messages and missteps that the good and smart things HHS is doing get drowned out by the stupid. And I know, much of this is the media’s coverage and their desire to pounce on him and President Trump for anything they can. But if you don’t provide your opponent with so much ammunition in the first place, they won’t have so much ammunition to use against you.
That’s the first rule of politics – don’t give your opponents things they can use against you. RFK is a weapons manufacturing plant against the Trump administration because he isn’t careful, in either his words or actions. You don’t have to be when you’re an activist, you have to be when you’re a Cabinet Secretary.
HHS needs someone in there to cut through the red tape of the drug approval process so new treatments get to market faster – an Operation Warp Speed for cancer treatment, etc. It needs someone to come in and demand answers to important questions, not someone with answers in search of questions – combating that anti-science left with anti-science is neither helpful, nor good.
RFK can have a role in Making America Healthy Again, but maybe it should be more limited to diet and exercise. The guy is in great shape, no doubt about that. But the ability to do a bunch of pull-ups, as impressive as it is, only means upper-body strength, not medical knowledge.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, DC, and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Townhall’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Townhall VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member