“Recall that Kennedy infamously asserted back in December 2021 that the COVID-19 vaccine “is the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Reams of subsequent research have found that COVID-19 vaccines are in fact generally safe and effective.
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In June, Kennedy falsely stated that the Centers for Disease Control had suppressed a hepatitis B vaccine study in newborns in 1999 that found “an 1,135 percent elevated risk of autism among the vaccinated children.” In fact, the researchers cited by Kennedy reported in 2003 that they found “no consistent significant associations” between the vaccine and autism. Infants infected with hepatitis B via mother-to-child at birth or during their first year of life have a 90 percent chance of developing a chronic infection—of which 15 to 25 percent will eventually die of cirrhosis or liver cancer. Since vaccination for all newborns was approved in 1991, infections with the hepatitis B virus in children and teens have decreased by 99 percent.
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Kennedy has commended Coca-Cola and Tyson Foods for replacing high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar. One problem: There is essentially no nutritional difference between them. That said, health-conscious Americans would do well to heed Kennedy’s call to consume less sugar.
As for food dyes, as recently as 2023 the FDA concluded that the totality of the evidence showed no adverse effects when children consume foods containing color additives. That was then, but this is now. In April, Kennedy denounced synthetic food dyes as “poisonous compounds.” At the time, he laid out a timeline for the food industry to transition to natural alternatives by 2027.
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a recent meta-analysis found that drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams per liter of fluoride slightly lowers children’s I.Q. scores. Keep in mind, though, that the recommended level of fluoridation in the U.S. is 0.7 milligrams per liter. A 2023 meta-analysis found that the level of fluoride in community water systems “is not associated with lower IQ scores.
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As the scope of Kennedy’s initiatives show, his agency’s vast powers allow him to inflict his peculiar obsessions on the health and lives of Americans—for good and for ill.”
“a detailed examination by POLITICO’s E&E News found that the report obscures key facts about climate change. It relies on outdated studies and cites analyses that were not peer reviewed. It cherry-picks mainstream research and omits context. It revives debunked arguments in an attempt to cast doubt on long-term warming trends.
The result is a report that promotes ideas starkly at odds with the vast majority of scientific evidence. That prompted a remarkable response from the National Academies last week that stated, “Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases and resulting climate change harm the health of people in the United States.””
RFK and Trump are spewing bullshit about autism and misinforming the public.
RFK and Trump are spewing bullshit about vaccines and misinforming the public.
RFK and Trump are spewing bullshit about medicine and disease, misinforming the public.
RFK chose two less rigorous studies to justify his advice on Tylenol while ignoring larger, more rigorous studies that find no association between Tylenol and ADHD or autism.
Fever can harm the unborn child and even cause miscarriage. Tylenol can prevent that by lowering the fever. Because Trump told women to not take Tylenol, some women won’t take it when they should, with bad consequences.
The president of the United States rambled falsities about important health science. Not good. Bad.
I’m all for a serious evidence-based discussion on the risks and benefits of different medications, but the nation’s leader ad libbing bullshit is not helpful.
Deaths from people dying directly from a natural disaster are down, but long-term indirect deaths are not. Many people die from the variety of long-term effects of natural disasters.
Man-caused climate change is real, but it isn’t an existential crisis. It’s not going to destroy human civilization like a nuclear war would. Climate change will greatly damage economies and kill a lot of people, so it’s a serious issue that needs to be dealt with, but it isn’t existential.
Technologies like solar and windmills are good, but have trade offs. Many rightwing arguments like how inefficient these technologies are or how many birds they kill are based on original versions of these technologies that have been greatly improved upon; so these critiques are no longer valid and people making them either are ignorant on how outdated their information is, haven’t done their due diligence, or are being dishonest.
Cost benefit analyses on the benefits of reducing carbon emissions have already been done, and they overwhelmingly show that reducing emissions is worth it. However, it is only worth it if we cut emissions slowly. Cutting too fast likely makes the costs of cutting greater than the benefits.
“The study included 2,653 drug seizures and 1,833 opioid-related deaths from 2020 to 2023. “Within the surrounding 100, 250, and 500 meters,” RTI International researcher Alex H. Kral and his two co-authors reported in JAMA Network Open on Wednesday, “drug seizures were associated with a statistically significant increase in the relative risk for fatal opioid overdoses.””
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“Prohibition makes drug use more dangerous by creating a black market in which quality and potency are highly variable and unpredictable. Ramped-up enforcement of prohibition magnifies that problem, as dramatically demonstrated by the deadly impact of restricting access to pain medication at the same time that illicit fentanyl was proliferating as a heroin booster and substitute.”