Health
How the Trump-RFK Jr. coalition could realign US politics against Big Pharma and Big Food
From LifeSiteNews
By Jay Richards
If the unlikely coalition of Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlives the 2024 presidential election, it could reorder our political categories and leave to our children and grandchildren a quite different future.
When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. endorsed Donald Trump on Aug. 23, the corporate press and conventional Washington, D.C., analysts mostly missed the real story: It was the moment that a disparate, diverse, and potentially disruptive throng of average Americans became a coalition.
Although RFK, Jr. is famous – or infamous, depending on your view – for his criticisms of vaccines, that wasn’t the theme of his lengthy speech. He spoke instead about an unholy alliance – a cartel – of industries, corporate media, government regulatory agencies, and even nonprofit “charities” that is making us fat and sick. This problem doesn’t fit the simple taxonomy of “public” and “private” or “left” and “right” that served us well during the Cold War.
Kennedy has been a voice in the wilderness warning about this cartel for years. Most Americans first became aware of it during the 2020 pandemic. Here’s the basic story: COVID-19 itself was likely the product of dangerous gain-of-function research conducted by the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. That’s bad enough. But Communist China didn’t act alone. This work was funded, at least in part, by the U.S. government’s National Institutes of Health and laundered through the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.
Once the virus was out, the absurd and counterproductive lockdowns and hygiene theater were pushed by global entities such as the World Health Organization. Domestically, Francis Collins, then-head of the NIH, and Anthony Fauci, then-head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, worked to undermine independent experts who criticized the federal bureaucrats’ favored policies.
Collins and Fauci even orchestrated the publication of a deceptive article in Nature that claimed the virus had a natural origin. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal entities, including the Biden White House, pressured social media platforms to censor even the best-credentialed dissenters.
Attentive Americans soon learned that public health, as a field, focuses on nudging whole populations, rather than seeking the health of individual patients.
Certain pharmaceutical companies – which pay royalties to many NIH staff, including Collins and Fauci – enjoyed a suspiciously fast and less than rigorous approval process for their mRNA “vaccines.” Vaccine mandates then created a massive artificial market for the drugs. And drug companies’ immunity from legal liability allowed them to enjoy the financial benefits of these policies without facing the downside risks from any long-term harm to those who took the vaccines.
Then, during the lockdowns, the growing awareness of the “gender-industrial complex” – media, medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies, politicians, and others who push ghoulish “gender-affirming” interventions on people distressed about their sexed bodies – further reinforced the lack of credibility of private and public health authorities.
An American epidemic of chronic diseases
For some, much of this may now seem obvious. What may be less obvious is that blame for the massive spike in many chronic “diseases of civilization” should go to the same cartel. It involves Big Government, Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Media that rely on pharmaceutical industry ad dollars, and medical lobbying outfits such as the American Academy of Pediatrics pretending to be sound science crusaders.
In his speech, Kennedy devoted many paragraphs to the “chronic disease epidemic” – including ever higher rates, even among children, of Type II diabetes and obesity, and of Alzheimer’s, which some now refer to as “Type III diabetes.” He spoke of “the insidious corruption at the FDA and the NIH, the HHS and the USDA that has caused the epidemic,” referring to the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, along with the NIH.
But he didn’t stop there. He spoke of “an explosion of neurological illnesses that I never saw as a kid,” including:
ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, Tourette’s Syndrome, narcolepsy, ASD, Asperger’s, autism. In the year 2000, the Autism rate was one in 1500. Now, autism rates in kids are one in 36, according to CDC; nationally, nobody’s talking about this.
He also spoke of the massive spikes in the use of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. Of course, first ladies and surgeons general have launched “healthy lifestyle” campaigns, but these always parrot the conventional wisdom of the cartel. In contrast, Kennedy blamed the cartel itself, not a gluttonous public, for the chronic disease crisis. It was this cartel that gave us the war on healthy dietary fats and the ridiculous food pyramid – heavy on unhealthy ultrarefined carbohydrates and light on fat – which helped make Americans far fatter and sicker than we were before.
His speech hit a nerve, especially among parents who recognize this problem but lack a credible and effective way to fight it. They may engage in private acts of defiance – refusing the COVID-19 or Hepatitis B vaccines for their young children, or disregarding USDA warnings about the consumption of animal fat. So far, however, neither political party has taken up this topic. The Left has tended to give the administrative state the benefit of the doubt. The Right has tended to do the same for corporations.
Trump has promised that Kennedy will have a leading role in fighting America’s health crisis. That will mean taking on the cartel. But the devil is in the details. A sustained effort to “make America healthy again,” or MAHA – to complement MAGA – must be free of government interests on the one hand and industry funding and lobbyists on the other.
Maybe that’s impossible, but Kennedy as MAHA czar could mean a serious exploration of the role the cartel has played in the following:
- Restricting medical freedom
- The origin of the COVID-19 virus
- The effects of the pandemic lockdowns
- The lack of safety and effectiveness of mRNA vaccines
- The rise in childhood and adult obesity
- The rise in childhood and adult Type II diabetes
- The rise in Alzheimer’s
- The rise in allergies, food sensitivities, and asthma
- Rising rates of depression and anxiety disorders
- Rising rates of neurological disorders such as autism
- The explosion of cases of childhood gender dysphoria
- The collusion between the World Professional Association of Transgender Health and HHS officials such as transgender activist and Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine
- The political agenda of transnational public health bureaucracies such as the World Health Organization
- The medicalization of the treatment for gender dysphoria with “gender-affirming care” (rather than taking a mental health approach)
- The capitulation of NIH, CDC, FDA, and HHS to gender ideology over sound science
- The lack of value and safety of the ever-growing childhood vaccine schedule
- The medical focus on symptoms rather than underlying causes and cures of diseases
- The artificial restriction of medical and therapeutic credentialing of professionals to control supply and competition
- The decline in average testosterone in males
- The rise in infertility
- The rise in opioid addiction and overdose deaths
- Unethical research sponsored by the NIH
- The incompetence of the USDA in dispensing nutrition advice
- The effect of agricultural subsidies on our health
- Environmentalist dogmas masquerading as health and nutrition advice
If Trump appoints Kennedy as the MAHA czar, it would be akin to his COVID-19 Operation Warp Speed during his first administration but without the industry taint.
Of course, that appointment could come to nothing – except that there is already a coalition forming of millions of parents across, and even orthogonal to, the political spectrum, who – as Kennedy has put it – love their children more than they hate each other. It would take both the political will in Washington and a popular constituency of average Americans to fight the biomedical security state and the cartel that fuels it.
We’re getting a glimpse of this motley resistance in the unlikely unity ticket of Trump and Kennedy and the many strange bedfellows supporting them. If this coalition outlives the 2024 presidential election, it could reorder our political categories and leave to our children and grandchildren a quite different future.
Health
Dr. Peter Hotez predicts rampant spread of diseases once Trump takes office
From LifeSiteNews
Dr. Peter Hotez says it will be ‘dangerous’ if the Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Prominent “vaccine scientist” Dr. Peter Hotez issued an eerie warning during an interview this week, listing a litany of diseases that may begin to spread starting on January 21, President-elect Donald Trump’s first full day in office.
Speaking with Nicole Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline White House about how supposedly “dangerous” it would be for the country if the Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Hotez began warning of diseases that will start to spread on January 21 while slamming vaccine skeptics. Hotez has a long history of attacking “anti-vaxxers” who have raised legitimate concerns about COVID and other vaccines.
“We have some big picture stuff coming down the pike starting on January 21. Mr. (Mike) Bloomberg mentioned H5N1 that I’m really worried about,” Hotez said. “It’s all over wild birds on the western part of the United States and going up in the north. It’s getting into the poultry, we’re seeing sporadic human cases, no human-to-human transmission yet, but that could happen. It’s in the cattle, it’s in the milk. And that’s just the beginning.
“We have another major coronavirus likely brewing in Asia; we’ve had Sars in 2002, Sars2, COVID-19 in 2019. And we know these viruses are jumping from bats to people thousands of times a year.”
“But there’s still more; we know that we have a big problem with mosquito-transmitted viruses all along the Gulf Coast. Where I am here in Texas, we’re expecting dengue and possibly Zika virus coming back or Oro Pouche virus, maybe even yellow fever, and there’s more. Then we have this sharp rise in vaccine-preventable diseases going up because, in part, the anti-vaccine activists,” Hotez said.
The scientist then reiterated that we might start to see these outbreaks on January 21 under the new Trump administration.
“All that’s gonna come crashing down on January 21st on the Trump administration. We need a really, really good team to be able to handle this,” Hotez said.
There have been several responses to Hotez’s strange comments, including by cardiologist and leading COVID establishment critic Dr. Peter McCullough, who said during an appearance on Live from Studio 6B on Real America’s Voice that Hotez and “vaccine lobbyists” are pushing an “agenda of fear.”
“To lay it down and say it’s all gonna happen the day Trump takes office, you can tell what the agenda here is. There’s an agenda of fear being pushed by the vaccine lobbyists to constantly keep Americans in fear about the next viral threat so they can hold power and because they know in their minds that the only thing they’ll offer is more vaccines,” McCullough said.
LifeSite reached out to Hotez, asking him to clarify exactly what he meant by his comments, but has yet to receive a response.
However, he did offer a response to the backlash from his statements on X, saying his comments were being misinterpreted by “extremist media.”
“(I) outlined the tough infectious disease challenges the Trump appointees will face and inherit when they begin in January. They twisted it to claim we will launch new viruses at them, as totally ridiculous as that sounds,” Hotez wrote.
Hotez was a major proponent of the COVID vaccines and has slammed vaccine skeptics. In a 2022 World Health Organization (WHO) video about “misinformation” surrounding the COVID vaccine, he called those who had concerns about the vaccine a major killing force.”
Last year, after an appearance by RFK Jr. on Joe Rogan’s podcast in which they discussed his concerns over vaccines, Hotez blasted them for “misinformation” in an X post. His post prompted Rogan to challenge him to debate RFK Jr. on his show. While RFK Jr. agreed to the debate, Hotez never responded.
Addictions
London Police Chief warns parliament about “safer supply” diversion
London Police Chief Thai Truong testifies to House of Commons Standing Committee on November 26, 2024.
By Adam Zivo
“Vulnerable individuals are being targeted by criminals who exchange these prescriptions for fentanyl, exacerbating addiction and community harm,” said London Police Chief Thai Truong.
Thai Truong, the police chief of London, Ontario, testified in parliament last week that “safer supply” opioids are “obviously” being widely diverted to the black market, leading to greater profits for organized crime. His insights further illustrate that the safer supply diversion crisis is not disinformation, as many harm reduction advocates have speciously claimed.
Truong’s testimony was given to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, which is in the midst of an extended study into the opioid crisis. While the committee has heard from dozens of witnesses, Truong’s participation was particularly notable, as safer supply was first piloted in London in 2016 and the city has, since then, been a hotbed for opioid diversion.
“While the program is well intentioned, we are seeing concerning outcomes related to the diversion of safe supply medications… these diverted drugs are being resold within our community, trafficked to other jurisdictions, and even used as currency to obtain fentanyl, perpetuating the illegal drug trade,” he said in his opening speech. “Vulnerable individuals are being targeted by criminals who exchange these prescriptions for fentanyl, exacerbating addiction and community harm.”
He later clarified to committee members that these vulnerable individuals include women who are being pressured to obtain safer supply opioids for black market resale.
Safer supply programs are supposed to provide pharmaceutical-grade addictive drugs – mostly 8-mg tablets of hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin – as an alternative to riskier street substances. The programs generally supply these drugs at no cost to recipients, with almost no supervised consumption, and have a strong preference for Dilaudid, a brand of hydromorphone that is manufactured by Purdue Pharma.
Addiction experts and police leaders across Canada have reported that safer supply patients regularly divert their hydromorphone to the black market. A recent study by Dr. Brian Conway, director of Vancouver’s Infectious Disease Centre, for example, showed that a quarter of his safer supply patients diverted all of their hydromorphone, and that another large, but unknown, percentage diverted at least some of their pills.
Truong’s parliamentary testimony, which mostly rehashed information he shared in a press conference last July, further corroborated these concerns.
He noted that in 2019, the city’s police force seized 847 hydromorphone pills, of which only 75 were 8-mg Dilaudids. Seizures increased after access to safer supply expanded in 2020, and, by 2023, exploded to over 30,000 pills (a roughly 3,500 per cent increase), of which roughly half were 8-mg Dilaudids. During this period, the number of annual overdose deaths in the city also increased from 73 to 123 (a 68 per cent increase), he said.
Relatedly, Truong noted that the price of hydromorphone in London – $2-5 a pill – is now much lower than in other parts of the province.
As an increasing number of police departments across Canada have publicly acknowledged that they are seeing skyrocketing hydromorphone seizures, some safer supply advocates have claimed, without evidence, that these pills were mostly stolen from pharmacies, and not diverted by safer supply patients. Truong’s parliamentary testimony dispelled this myth: “These increases cannot be attributed to pharmacy thefts, as London has had only one pharmacy robbery since 2019.”
The police chief declined to answer repeated questions about the efficacy of safer supply, or to opine on whether the experimental program should be replaced with alternative interventions with stronger evidence bases. “I’m not here to criticize the safe supply program, but to address the serious challenges associated with its diversion,” he said, noting his own lack of medical expertise.
The chief emphasized that, while more needs to be done to stop safer supply diversion, the addiction crisis is a “complex issue” that cannot be tackled solely through law enforcement. He advocated for a “holistic” approach that integrates prevention, harm reduction and treatment, and acknowledged the importance of London’s community health and social service partners.
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In response to Truong’s testimony, NDP MP Gord Johns, an avid safer supply advocate, downplayed the importance of the diversion crisis by arguing that “people aren’t dying from a safer supply of drugs; they’re dying from fentanyl.”
While it is true that 81 per cent of overdose deaths in 2024 involved fentanyl, addiction physicians across Canada have repeatedly debunked Johns’ argument as misleading. The dangers of diverted hydromorphone is not that it directly kills users, but rather that it easily hooks individuals into addiction, leading many of them to graduate to deadly fentanyl use.
Johns previously faced criticism when, in a September health committee meeting, he seemingly used parliamentary maneuvers to reduce the speaking time of a grieving father, Greg Sword, whose daughter, Kamilah, died of drug-related causes after she and her friends got hooked on diverted hydromorphone.
There is currently no credible evidence that safer supply works. Most supporting studies simply interview safer supply patients and present their opinions as objective fact, despite significant issues with bias and reliability. Data presented in a 2024 study published in the British Medical Journal, which followed over 5,000 drug users in B.C., showed that safer supply led to no statistically significant mortality reductions once confounding factors were fully filtered out.
An impending update to Canada’s National Opioid Use Disorder Guideline, which was recently presented at a conference organized by the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine, determined that the evidence base for safer supply is “essentially low-level.” Similarly, B.C’s top doctor acknowledged earlier this year that safer supply is “not fully evidence-based.”
This article was syndicated in The Bureau, an online media publication that investigates foreign interference, organized crime, and the drug trade.
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