The Department of Health and Human Services of the United States, equivalent to the Ministry of Health, finalizes these days after a ruling from the Supreme Court clear last week the mass liquidation of officials that the Government of Donald Trump has undertaken. That in terms of structure, because in relation to the foundation of the agency, in theory public health management, its responsible, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is enough to dynamite it alone. Purgas in their management team, controversial statements that doctors profit from vaccines and an apparent abandonment of responsibilities, without moving card against the largest measles epidemic in the country in 33 years – a disease that was declared eradicated in 2000 – during the first six months of its mandate.
Medical associations that represent thousands of doctors and scientists have sued Kennedy, as well as the directors of several agencies of their department, to limit who can receive the vaccines of COVID-19-they are not recommended for children and pregnant women-and for undermining the general confidence in immunization: that suspicion that is in the DNA of many republican voters. In his campaign against the ultra -processed, one of the alleged objectives of his program, has expressly recommended a company that makes menus for patients and elderly … with a high preservative content. When he took possession, after a controversial confirmation in the Senate, Kennedy proposed to combat chronic diseases, which linked to an unhealthy diet.
By pilgrims that seem, their theories and recommendations encourage an increasingly identifiable movement, which covers the base of Trumpism-and especially, among the middle and middle-middle class mothers of the residential suburbs-and that takes its name from the magician (acronym in English of English of Make America Great Again) of the president. With Kennedy, the Maha wave (acronym in English of the motto Do healthy eu again) threatens to overflow, despite criticism of experts and scientists. Such autonomy has gained the Maha that this last Monday made its official presentation in Washington, at a round table, the first, convened by Kennedy himself. A whole achievement for someone outside the republicanism ().
His career as a health responsible coincides with the mass cuts that, known as Big and beautiful lawit implies for health programs for the lowest income. It is estimated that, in a country where health is a merchandise and health, one of the most lucrative businesses. And it is precisely the profitable mood that is, according to Kennedy, after the custom of the galenos to prescribe vaccines, he explained in a recent interview with the agitator Ultra Tucker Carlson. For the Health Manager, the benefits of vaccines create “perverse incentives” so that pediatricians promote, in excess, immunization.
In the interview, Kennedy said, without evidence, that “50% of the revenues of most pediatricians come from vaccines”, which has put these specialists on a war footing. “If our motivation were the benefit, we would earn more money treating the complications of easily avoidable diseases than preventing them,” said David Higins, pediatrician from the University of Colorado. “This idea that we vaccinate children to earn money honestly is misleading and dangerous,” for the decrease of trust in the immunization it causes in citizens.
Outstanding Democrats, his co -religionists until recently, have required him to declare the measles epidemic, without apparent control with almost 1,300 cases so far this year, according to the centers for the control and prevention of diseases (CDC, in its English acronym; one of the agencies that depends on its department). The last time the country registered that incidence was in 1992, eight years before the disease declared eliminated.
The vast majority of those infected this year were not vaccinated. According to CDC, a 95% immunization threshold prevents contagios in a community, the so -called flock immunity. But in the US the percentage does not currently reach 93%, due to the increase in doubts about vaccination proposed by misinformation or theories Conspiranoic that Kennedy hugs. In addition to recommending, Kennedy dismissed in June from the CDC. Two days later, he named eight new ones, several of whom have questioned – like himself – the security of immunizations. Two of them have even declared in judicial proceedings against the pharmaceuticals that manufacture them.
The agencies that form the health department do not win for shocks. Last week it was distrust by surprise, without explanations, a meeting of the US preventive services work group, established in 1984 and recommends cancer detection tests, sexually transmitted diseases and other preventive care, services that insurers must cover theoretically without any cost. No one dares to imagine what the future of the group can be, although Kennedy had made prevention flag.
In his declared effort to “make the US healthy again”, he reiterated that his goal is to convince Americans to follow a healthier diet. That is why the attention that the menus to seven dollars the tray of a company that produces them for patients and higher of low income, beneficiaries of medical or Medicare insurance will be appropriate. According to a nutritional analysis in charge of the AP agency, meals have, however, a high salt content, sugar, saturated fats and additives.
In a recent post on social networks in which he criticized the large number of ultra -processed that constitute the standard diet of Americans, Kennedy urged the population to take health seriously from the dish: “This country has lost the most basic of all freedoms: the freedom that comes from being healthy,” he wrote.
His growing power and that of the Maha Movement, which seems to come to life in his own nebula, also disorient scientists who study human exposure to chemicals and environmental pollutants. The Health Manager has called attention to the health effects of the plastic industry, fossil fuels and chemicals. This was done in April, at a conference in which he denounced the presence of microplastics in 99% of seafood analyzed by researchers in Oregon. An hour after the talk, the scientist who runs the project received an email that notified the end of a federal subsidy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, in its English acronym), the only way of financing of research.
