HHS Secretary who suggested vitamin A to treat measles
If It Quacks Like a Quack, Duck!
PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!
“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary [RFK, Jr], but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
Dr Peter Marks, now terminated (resign or be fired) top vaccine official with the Food and Drug Administration
“RFK Jr.’s firing of Peter Marks because he wouldn’t bend a knee to his misinformation campaign now allows the fox to guard the hen house… It’s a sad day for America’s children.”
Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic… This Department will do more—a lot more—at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. announcing a 10,000 HHS personnel cutback, including medical researchers and vaccine developers.
I am not sure how many American parents would prefer to go to a medical science skeptic, with no medical degree or certification, to treat their children, either preventively or for an obvious illness or disability. Perhaps those with religious precepts against using medications or medically advisable treatments… or blind adherents and lovers of conspiracy theories. That perspective may have changed when the President appointed, as the head of the nation’s Department of Health and Human Services, a medically untrained conspiracy theorist, vaccine skeptic. That appointment is a powerful endorsement. People believe in Trump. RFK, Jr is our medical tsar!
Yet, HHS Secretary, Robert F Kennedy, Jr (a disowned member of the powerful Kennedy family), had made recommendations prior to his appointment, followed in Samoa, suggesting skepticism over the safety of measles vaccines, that resulted in a major measles breakout (including fatalities) in that island nation… among unvaccinated individuals. As a result of a MAGA-sanctioned pattern, many school districts across America no longer mandate that list of vaccinations that most of us faced as a condition to entry to public elementary school so many years ago. As a result, diseases, which we believed had been eradicated here for a decade or much longer, are returning. Polio and measles are very recent examples. Among HHS discharged employees are NIH researchers seeking treatments and preventative measures for a whole host of diseases from new viruses to cancer and heart attacks as well as cutting edge doctors.
What’s worse, the few hired to replace some of the thousands of fired workers are the medically inadequate and science skeptics. Anti-vaxx champion Kennedy holds in disdain those who do not have “an open mind” to his skepticism, and if they express support without equal skepticism for even-well-proven vaccines, he fires them and replaces them with fellow skeptics.
Given hundreds of new cases of measles, particularly in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Ohio, etc., with fatalities including children, the lack of individuals getting vaccinated, particularly children, has been the direct and immediate cause of this outbreak and the speed at which it is spreading. RFK, Jr’s off-handed suggestions have including purposely exposing people to measles to develop “herd immunity” (potentially deadly advice) or to use vitamin A (beta carotene) to mitigate or prevent its effects. Exceptionally high levels of beta carotene are toxic, particularly to vulnerable children, as the above photograph reflects.
Indeed, this is the same RFK, Jr who stood with anti-vaxxers as they protested what they wrongfully claimed was a potentially deadly use of vaccines against COVID, which vaccines have absolutely been determined to have saved millions of lives around the world. One of those just dumped is most admired, Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration official who played a key role in the development of COVID-19 vaccines during the first Trump presidency and was the top vaccine expert at HHS; he quit after being told if he did not resign, he would be fired.
Marks’ letter to his immediate boss, acting FDA Commissioner Sara Brenner (who reports to RFK, Jr.), suggested a crisis of confidence in Kennedy – because Kennedy, a long-time vaccine skeptic who spread bogus claims about their safety and advocated unsafe alternative treatments for dangerous conditions – literally contradicting Marks at the top of the department he ran. To Marks, it was RFK, Jr. who was not “open-minded.”
Indeed, Kennedy has never let go of the disproven theory that vaccines are a principal cause of autism, so very soon after his confirmation as HHS secretary, Kennedy directed the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to plan for a study to determine whether vaccines indeed cause autism As explained by James Felton, writing for the March 27th IFLScience, the reaction to Kennedy’s appointment of well-known and highly controversial vaccine skeptic David Geier to lead the new study was strongly negative among medical professionals. Felton noted that Geier was once disciplined by Maryland regulators for practicing medicine without a license.
“‘This is a worst-case scenario for public health,’ Jessica Steier, head of the nonprofit Science Literacy Lab, told the Washington Post , saying that Geier, along with his father Mark Geier, had ‘demonstrated patterns of an anti-vaccine agenda…It’s a slap in the face to the decades of actual credible research we have’… Vaccines are an astonishing achievement of modern science, saving an estimated 154 million lives (including 101 million infants) over the last 50 years, according to a major study led by the World Health Organization last year. Of these, the measles vaccine (often grouped with mumps and rubella in the MMR jab) is the biggest contributor, accounting for around 60 percent of the lives saved by vaccination.
“But unfortunately, over the last few decades, skepticism about vaccines has risen, largely stemming from a now-retracted study that claimed there was a connection between autism and the MMR vaccine…In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a paper based on just 12 children that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. The results have not been replicated, and it later transpired that he had falsified data, for which his medical license was revoked.
"‘The Lancet completely retracted the Wakefield et al. paper in February 2010, admitting that several elements in the paper were incorrect, contrary to the findings of the earlier investigation. Wakefield et al. were held guilty of ethical violations (they had conducted invasive investigations on the children without obtaining the necessary ethical clearances) and scientific misrepresentation (they reported that their sampling was consecutive when, in fact, it was selective),’ a report into the case explains.
"The final episode in the saga is the revelation that Wakefield et al. were guilty of deliberate fraud (they picked and chose data that suited their case; they falsified facts). The British Medical Journal has published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain." This is consistent with Trump’s pattern of appointing less than competent individuals, often with most obvious conflicts of interest, to administration posts seriously impacting the lives and well-being of vast swaths of Americans.
I’m Peter Dekom, and if playing fast and loose with our nations military secrets or tanking our economy at unprecedented speed were not enough, now we can see that Trump’s appointments can foment policies that can actually kill you.
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