What a nutjob.
This "exploration" could be promising if it leads to tangible outcomes. It's sad that even a glance toward making a reasonable change can simultaneously be the inch taken before the mile and a gotcha asserting [in]competence. These guys are so good at being mind viruses. And it's ironic that potentially positive US food policy changes might come from someone with an anti-vaccine agenda. The frustrating part is that by operating outside of norms he might actually achieve meaningful changes where his predecessors have not. The anti-vaccine position is just baffling, though. Even if we grant their most extreme claims for argument's sake - some autism, autoimmune conditions, or 5G chips in our bloodstream - that society still functions better than one riddled with preventable diseases and populated by people who aggressively resist basic public health measures like masks during outbreaks. This seems like an incredibly disqualifying position for anyone overseeing public health policy.
You cannot say "hopefully his influence there will be limited" while we are actively discussing unannounced cancellations of vaccine studies. His influence there is already overarching, malevolent and clandestine. You'll note that nowhere in his GRAS announcement did he list any examples of GRAS ingredients that have been found to be unsafe, or are suspected to be unsafe. Consumer reports will give you two: - Quorn, which has credibly caused one asthma attack in 20 years - Trans fats, which the FDA ruled weren't GRAS in 2015 The Environmental Working Group came up with three more: - Propylparaben, which has shown to disrupt endocrine systems - BHA, which people have been complaining about for longer than they've been complaining about aspartame - BHT, which has been heavily studied with inconclusive results Meanwhile: That 2014 spike? Here he is: My wife was teaching vaccine safety classes in LA at the time. Big ol' enclaves of unvaccinated kids in Malibu and Ventura. Buncha women surrounded by their friends who all shopped Whole Foods and knew vaccines were unsafe because Robert Kennedy told them so. I used to have to talk to Larry Cook weekly. Why were there 130 cases of measles in California in 2014? RFK. Full stop. Ask them and they'll tell you. But sure. Hooray for reviewing GRAS rules. Except the FDA was already doing that. That table is linked in an August 8 2024 article from NYU Law. GRAS guidelines have been under review since March 2024. So why talk about it now? So that people who hope RFK won't be a public health disaster have something to shout down people who know RFK already is a public health disaster. There's nothing complicated about this. It's how RFK has operated his entire career.
Does my healthy 12yo kid need a flu vaccine? I’m not saying I agree with RFK on vaccines, but it is a boondoggle. Kinda skeptical of anti-depressants that don’t perform better than placebo but the FDA approves them. FDA has largely failed under the administration of reasonable people. This one move regarding shit in our food supply looks like a good one.
It sounds like you are skeptical of vaccine uptake. You have hesitancy. Did you have this hesitancy and skepticism ten years ago? Twenty? Are you alone in this hesitancy? Usually when something bad comes to light the people who want to fix it say "fix it" and the people who don't say "more study is needed." RFK published a (retracted) study in Salon saying "we should study whether vaccines cause autism" and we did. Hundreds of studies. All of which said "nope, vaccines don't cause autism." Measles came back, an entire movement erupted but we now know for sure that vaccines don't cause autism. And yet. Despite every bit of study we've had saying "vaccines good" we've got people who just don't wanna hear it. Which, frankly, should maybe be studied. Unless you don't want the answers on record. This one move regarding shit in our food supply is cover for Dickey Amendment bullshit related to vaccines. And you know it.
I was a healthy 32 year old last year. Forgot to get my seasonal flu vaccine. Got the flu. Didn’t fight it off. Developed pneumonia. I was a couple days off hospitalization. I eat healthy, I run ultras, I lift weights. The odds are in my favor for that to not happen. But it did. Sure wish I had remembered to get vaccinated. I don’t expect me or cgod to change your mind. I hope it gives you some pause, though.
What does a successful FDA look like to you?
the thing is, I don’t disagree with you? i would love US food/bev regulations to be on par with western europe. but i don’t find that and vaccine policy to be mutually exclusive, so.
Chaos monkey opinion - we got fat because we quit smoking
yeah but I gave it back because I couldn't hang it's not the book's fault I'm just in need of some escapism
Please, the cause of global warming is a continued decrease in the already endangered pirate population. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/PiratesVsTemp%28en%29.svg (god I hate every aspect of that graph, tho)
My wife got the flu one year and it really fucked her up bad. She spent 23 hours a day in bed for two weeks, over her 40th birthday and Christmas. Do what you want but the flu can be pretty serious even for healthy people. Does you kid getting the vaccine and not spreading it to someone who is immune compromised matter? That why my kid got the chicken pox vaccine.
My daughter usually gets the flu vax. She doesn't get the covid ones. I'm far from anti-vax or even "vax skeptical". The HPV one is an awesome new addition. I've heard antidotes of people getting slammed by the flu with or without vaccination, but the plural of antidote isn't data. I don't group all vaccines together and say "all vaccines are good/bad", because I have enough experience with biology to know that they aren't all the same thing. I've done some deep dives into the flu vax and it's almost certainly good for a given elderly individual but population-wide, it can look kinda meh if you look at rates and incidence across countries: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0163508 For a long while it seemed to help in some countries, but not help at all or have the opposite effect in others. Maybe the trivalent vaccines are improving things across the board. I'm not anti-flu vax, I am just not sure it's all that important for my daughter. Most people don't seem to know that the J&J covid vax used a viral envelope that much of the population has some immunogenicity against. Nor do they know that the J&J vax was limited to one dose, not because of its superior effectiveness, but because the first dose would raise their immunogenicity such that the second dose would be ineffective and a greater risk of adverse reaction. Also, they can no longer benefit from vaccines or gene therapies that use such an envelope. I think that was a mistake. I also think it's a mistake that new covid vaccines are encouraged for age groups without clinical data showing a benefit for that group, particularly for mRNA-based vaccines. There's a lot of money to be made on an annual vaccination, and IMO the US doesn't have the best record when it comes to putting our collective health first when there's lots of money to be made. But that doesn't mean I agree with RFK or think Jenny McCarthy isn't an idiot.
I did not know any of that. Thank you for sharing.Most people don't seem to know that the J&J covid vax used a viral envelope that much of the population has some immunogenicity against. Nor do they know that the J&J vax was limited to one dose, not because of its superior effectiveness, but because the first dose would raise their immunogenicity such that the second dose would be ineffective and a greater risk of adverse reaction. Also, they can no longer benefit from vaccines or gene therapies that use such an envelope.