Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services has sent Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax shares crashing. The Mail has more.
Moderna stock tumbled 7% following the announcement of RFK Jr. as his most senior health chief, as Pfizer’s fell 3% and Novavax saw its shares drop 5%.
The idea of one of the country’s foremost vaccine sceptics heading up health policy has many health experts in Government nervous, but he has earned praise from the Left and Right for his plans to crack down on harmful food ingredients that aren’t allowed abroad and emphasise exercise and healthy eating over taking pills.
As HHS boss, Kennedy would be in charge of America’s three healthcare agencies — the CDC, FDA and the NIH — and would have the power to bring in many of those changes and more.
Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” tapped into the frustration at the fact that the U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other country yet is among the sickest, with a lower life expectancy than peer nations like the U.K., Canada and Australia.
He claims this contradiction is being driven by corporate interests putting profits over Americans’ health when it comes to vaccines, medications and food and drink.
Kennedy has promised to purge swathes of the workforce at the country’s health agencies and stem the revolving door of staff leaving to lobby for food and drug companies.
This is how he could overhaul America’s health if his appointment is confirmed by the Senate, which is now made up of a majority Republicans:
Focus on prevention and non-pharma interventions
Kennedy wants to move the U.S. from a reactive healthcare system that treats people once they’re sick, to a preventive healthcare system that tries to stop diseases emerging in the first place.
He wants to extend Medicaid and Medicare budgets to cover visits to functional medicine doctors, which aim to treat people through nutrition and exercise rather than pharmaceuticals.
This taps into the idea promoted by Kennedy that drug companies have an interest in keeping someone unwell rather than improving their health. …
Kennedy has also suggested devoting half the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget to researching alternative healthcare, and devoting more federal funding to determining why people are getting sick.
Vaccine shake-up
Kennedy has previously claimed “no vaccine is effective” and suggested childhood vaccines could be driving rising autism rates.
He has also previously floated the idea that schools with vaccine requirements should be defunded.
He appeared to back away from that stance earlier this week, however, but left the door open to making some vaccines non-compulsory.
He told NBC News: “If vaccines are working for somebody, I am not going to take them away. People ought to have a choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information, so I’m going to make sure that safety studies and efficacy studies are out there and people can make individual assumptions whether that product is going to be good for them.” …
Crack down on food
Kennedy repeatedly hammers the food industry, saying it is “mass poisoning” the American public.
He has promised to ban ultraprocessed food from schools and provide families “with safe food and end the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children”.
He also wants to ban harmful ingredients that are illegal in food abroad.
He has only explicitly mentioned Yellow 5, but similar ingredients that could be under the microscope are Red 40, Blue 1, titanium dioxide, propylparaben and potassium bromate, which are often added to sweets and baked goods. …
Eliminate fluoride in drinking water
Kennedy has vowed to remove fluoride from the public water supply if elected within his first day in office.
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