Pseudo-science As Public Health Policy for RFKjr's CDC
The perfect example of the kind of “science” we can expect concerns speculation that mass shootings and psych drugs are related.
Another vestige of post-gilded era progressivism has been swept away with the forced resignation of Centers for Disease Control director Susan Monarez. Other senior officials have left in her wake, and it’s anybody’s guess how many of the thousands of CDC employees that walked off the job on August 28 will decide not to return.
Thursday’s upheaval at CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta is a win for HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr in his battle to impose his point of view at the agency.
From the Washington Post:
As the founder of an anti-vaccine group, Kennedy has a history of falsely linking vaccines to autism and other unscientific claims. Kennedy has criticized the CDC often, calling it a “cesspool of corruption” and arguing it’s in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry.
Since taking the nation’s top health job, Kennedy has continued to disparage those who work in public health, saying in an interview after a gunman who opposed coronavirus vaccines fired hundreds of rounds at the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters this month that public health agencies “have not been honest.” CDC employees grew angry at Kennedy’s response to the shooting, arguing that he is responsible for misinformation that has turned citizens against public health workers. Hundreds of current and former HHS and CDC workers called for Kennedy to resign following the shooting.
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The White House has named RFKjr deputy Jim O’Neill as acting CDC director, a move described in the media as paving the way for an anti-vaccine agenda to reshape federal health policy. Of course he swore up and down in congressional hearings that he wasn’t anti-vaccine, and we should by now know just how Trump administration nominees haven’t kept their word. What most people won’t hear about is the rest of the junk agenda O’Neil brings with him.
During the Bush years, O’Neil –who has no medical or science training– started out as a speech writer at CDC. On-the-job promotions leading to general administrative responsibilities and a libertarian profile led to a decades long association with billionaire Peter Thiel. The co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, and early investor in the political careers of Donald Trump and JD Vance, is one of the tech bros whose wealth has afforded him a life of undermining democracy in the name of rule by people like himself.
Our new acting CDC administrator is more than just a Thiel minion, he's been a true acolyte, pushing government-free floating cities, achieving eternal life, urging young people to drop out of college, and being associated with others who say drug safety testing is for wimps.
Via MIT’s Technology Review:
…O’Neill advocated lowering the bar for drug approvals in the US. “We should reform [the] FDA so that it is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety and let people start using them at their own risk,” he said. “Let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized.”
O’Neill has voiced support for this broad concept, too. He’s posted on X about his support for limiting the role of government, writing “Get government out of the way” and, in reference to bills to shrink what some politicians see as government overreach, “No reason to wait.” And more to the point, he wrote on X last November, “Build freedom cities,” reposting another message that said: “I love the idea and think we should put the first one on the former Alameda Naval Air Station on the San Francisco Bay.”
With its workforce decimated by DOGE and its research largely suspended, the arm of the government charged with overseeing data collection, preventative measures, and drug efficacy is undoubtedly headed in a new direction.
Pediatrician Richard Besser, President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, spoke to the press on Thursday as the CDC drifted, leaderless. Via STAT:
“You have a secretary of health who through his remarks has done so much to undercut the nation’s trust in our public health system,” he said. “He has been part of the effort to demonize public health leaders, and we saw the outcome of that when a gunman went to Atlanta and shot up the buildings in which I worked for more than a decade.”
Besser also predicted a further loss of talent from the CDC, and a political appointee “in line with the secretary’s radical beliefs” rather than a public health leader to fill the director’s role after Monarez’s firing by President Trump. And he’s not looking to Congress with any hope, “dumbfounded” by the lack of action by elected officials.
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There is precedent for authoritarian leaders adopting pseudo-science as an antidote for institutional lack of enthusiasm for policies and/or as an excuse for policy failures. I’d say this current round of mumbo-jumbo is yet another example of forgetting the lessons of history.
The parallels with the story of Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko and his relationship with Joseph Stalin aren’t hard to figure out.
A couple of paragraphs from Wikipedia should suffice as a prompt:
Lysenko's political success was mostly due to his appeal to the Communist Party and Soviet ideology. His attack on the "bourgeois pseudoscience" of modern genetics and the proposal that plants can rapidly adjust to a changed environment suited the ideological battle in both agriculture and Soviet society.[21][17] Following the disastrous collectivization efforts of the late 1920s, Lysenko's new methods were seen by Soviet officials as paving the way to an "agricultural revolution." Lysenko himself was from a peasant family and was an enthusiastic advocate of Leninism.[22][17]
The Party-controlled newspapers applauded Lysenko's practical "success" and questioned the motives of his critics, ridiculing the timidity of academics who urged the patient, impartial observation required for science.[22][23] Lysenko was admitted into the hierarchy of the Communist Party, and was put in charge of agricultural affairs.
He used his position to denounce biologists as "fly-lovers and people haters",[24] and to decry traditional biologists as "wreckers" working to sabotage the Soviet economy. He denied the distinction between theoretical and applied biology, and rejected general methods such as control groups and statistics:[25]
The point here is that the rejection of then-accepted science suited the needs of a particular Dear Leader and replaced it with grift-driven methodologies. Lysenko’s promises of radical increases in crop yields didn’t pan out, but because he stood against bourgeois science his theories were taught all the way into the 1960s.
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I should pause here to say that yes, what the Soviets would have called bourgeois science in today’s world is indeed corrupt in what/how discoveries get used. Big pharma, along with other industries like those dependent on fossil fuels, have put their needs before that of the public in ways that are often criminal. That’s because they believe (and the courts have largely supported this) a corporation’s first obligation is to its shareholders.
Our market driven economy plays a huge role in fostering corrupt/pseudo science. As was true with discussions of sexuality in many American families, a reckoning over the public good versus individual enterprise is a subject that’s proven to be too difficult for most people to pull off.
If we continue in our present social and political direction, we can expect health care and other science-reliant fields to adopt whatever standards suit the whims of authoritarians empowered by tech bros. These processes will be all-too-often based on assumptions or guestimates suitable for manipulation. I mean, you have heard about all the whales being killed by windmills, right?
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The perfect example of the kind of “science” we can expect concerns the narrative that mass shootings and psych drugs are related. Psych drugs are problematic in large part because so little is known about the human brain.
Guns are problematic because we have behavior driven by self-serving politicians and unscrupulous companies telling us we’re in danger of some sort. Attempts to observe, research, and/or regulate firearms are blocked. The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world: 120 guns per 100 people.
Iceland is the world’s biggest consumer of SSRIs. They’ve had fewer than 10 gun homicides since 2020; in the US, there have been over 95,000 in that time.
To be continued…
A fired-up Gavin Newsom shares his pitch for a Democratic turnaround by Samuel Larreal at NOTUS via Times of San Diego
Newsom’s fiery characterization of Trump’s attempts to expand executive power stand in stark contrast with the governor’s attempts earlier this year to position himself as a moderate. In February, Newsom met with Trump during a spate of devastating wildfires in his state, signaling that he was open to collaborating with the president. He later invited right-wing figures like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon onto his podcast, sparking criticism from parts of the Democratic Party.
However, after Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles following a series of protests against the administration’s immigration policies, Newsom has radically changed from his tone and adopted a more aggressive approach than many other leaders in his party.
“There’s no working with Donald Trump, there’s only working for him,” Newsom said, before suggesting that institutions like the University of California should not settle with Trump after the administration threatened to issue fines over alleged antisemitism.
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ChatGPT Will Watch You Die: When 'Deeply Saddened' Becomes Corporate Boilerplate for an AI Body Count by Parker Molloy at The Present Age
This is what happens when you combine a technology designed for engagement with vulnerable people seeking connection. A depressed teenager looking for someone who understands. A man with untreated mental illness searching for validation. ChatGPT gave them exactly what would keep them talking, right up until they died.
OpenAI wants us to believe these are technical problems with technical solutions. Better safeguards. More psychiatrists on staff. Updated safety frameworks. But the core issue isn't technical. It's that they've decided dead users are an acceptable cost of doing business.
When your AI “friend” coaches you through suicide or validates your delusion that your mother is trying to kill you, the company will be “deeply saddened.” They'll promise improvements. They'll hire consultants. They'll publish blog posts. But they won't do the one thing that might actually prevent these deaths: shut down the product until it's genuinely safe.
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So many babies die in Mississippi it has declared a "Public Health Emergency on Infant Mortality" by TheCriticalMind at Daily Kos
If you want to improve your odds of reaching your first birthday in America, don't be born in Mississippi. Infant mortality in the state, already the highest in the nation in 2023, increased in 2024. The situation is so dire that the state's Department of Health has declared a "Public Health Emergency on Infant Mortality". The declaration starts with sobering facts:
The Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) today [August 21] declared a public health emergency in response to rising infant mortality rates across the state. Mississippi's 2024 data shows the overall infant mortality rate has increased to 9.7 deaths per 1,000 live births, which is the highest in more than a decade. In Mississippi, 3,527 babies have died before the age of 1 since 2014.
This tragic statistic means that more babies die in Mississippi each year than people are murdered in Washington, DC. Not that the sanctimonious "pro-life" crowd gives a goddamn. They'll cheer as Trump spends money and sends troops to 'address' a declining problem in the nation's capital. But saving young lives in the Bible Belt? Heaven forfend.
