RFK Jr.'s Lies, Lunacies & Conspiracies, Worm Their Way Into Trump's Twisted Mind.

RFK, Jr's Lies, lunatic fringe healthcare ideas, and widely disproven theories about vaccines causing Autism and the HIV Virus NOT causing AIDS, have wormed their way into Trump's mind.

(Cartoon by Bob Englehart, courtesy of Cagle Cartoons, Inc)

On the day Donald Trump made an overt death threat against Vice-President Kamala Harris’ supporter and long-time public official Liz Cheney (“have guns trained on her face”), he also promised to let RFK, Jr, “go wild on health” and be in charge of “women’s health and children’s health.” Both ideas are bonkers.

The utterly insane suggestion that Trump would appoint someone who “supported Junk Science and crazy conspiracy theories,” as Harris described RFK, Jr., drew a scathing response across the nation, including from The New Republic magazine which warned: “Trump Unleashing RFK Jr. on Public Health Would be a Disaster,” calling Kennedy an “anti-vaxxer with a chilling past.”

The New Republic story (November 1, 2024) written by Melody Schreiber, quotes Dr. Peter Hodes, Dean of Baylor College of Medicine, and the author of The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science saying:

“This unbridled assault on science and scientists, it’s highly destabilizing for the country. This is what authoritarianism is all about, and the collateral damage that’s its going to do to our democracy.”

Dr. Hodes went on to point out that Russia’s dictator Josef Stalin—another one of Trump’s strongmen heroes who killed millions of his own countrymen— portrayed scientists as public enemies during his Great Purge. Kennedy would lead such a purge in a Fascist rerun of a Trump presidency.

Last year, when RFK, Jr., declared his own candidacy for President, multiple media outlets reported on his long-debunked claim that the HIV virus didn’t cause AIDS—despite medical and scientific research repeatedly proving that HIV was the cause of AIDS.

NPR reported on the cacophony of crazy conspiracy theories advanced by RFK, Jr, including, “Wi-Fi causes cancer and "leaky brain;” Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings; chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender; and that AIDS may not be caused by HIV—which he he has suggested over decades, despite years of medical research finding exactly the opposite.

In last month’s issue of AIDS & Behavior, an article entitled “HIV Denial in the COVID Era”, the journal dug into Kennedy's lunatic litany of lies about Dr. Anthony Fauci and AIDS:

‘The merger of vaccine and pandemic denial was bolstered with the 2021 publication of Kennedy’s “The Real Anthony Fauci” [4], which is rife with tactics and tropes common in science denial [3, 41,42,43] (see Table 1). Kennedy begins Chap. 5, “The HIV Heresies,” saying he hesitated to include the chapter “because any questioning of the orthodoxy that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS remains an unforgivable—even dangerous—heresy among our reigning medical cartel and its media allies.” Though he claims to “take no position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS,” the book quotes HIV deniers approvingly over hundreds of pages, including Duesberg and Christine Maggiore, whom he never notes died of AIDS along with her daughter.”

The AIDS & Behavior Journal article continued: “Like the HIV denial groups mentioned above, Kennedy can’t make up his mind about the existence of HIV itself, criticizing HIV scientist Robert Gallo’s delayed release of a blood test Kennedy claims resulted in “thousands of hospital patients and hemophiliacs received tainted blood from blood banks and became infected with HIV,” yet states just a few pages later that “…it is unclear whether Gallo or any other researcher was ever able to isolate HIV”.

Kennedy’s utterly insane and defamatory statements about the HIV virus were out-and-out lies, disproven over-and-over again some three decades before he published his book full of falsehoods—which sold one million copies—on two of the leading HIV/AIDS doctors and scientists of our time, Drs. Fauci and Gallo.

But RFK, Jr. was no stranger to spreading blatant falsehoods about health care conditions effecting millions of people. Prior to his attacks upon Anthony Fauci, Bob Gallo, and AIDS research, Kennedy had already devoted decades of his life to spreading the wild, and highly irresponsible and damaging conspiracy theory that standard MMR childhood vaccines, or other “post-birth events” caused Autism.

Dr. Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, and an attending physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of the 2008 book “Autism’s False Prophets,” told the Washington Post in a telephone interview that “there is no evidence that post-birth events, like the environment, result in a diagnosis of ASD, whereas there is increasing evidence of pre-birth factors.”

Steve Silberman’s book, “NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity,” the brilliant 500+ page examination of Neurodiversity—considered the modern day “bible” in the field— smashes to smithereens the extraordinarily damaging lies sold by RFK, Jr., and swallowed and regurgitated by Donald Trump, before a massive national audience.

Silberman’s incredibly important and remarkable book has been available since 2015, well before RFK, Jr.’s hateful, hatchet job on Dr. Fauci and HIV research, and well before RFK, launched his own ill-fated Presidential campaign.

Silberman—a first -rate writer for Wired Magazine who died earlier this year at age 66—described in meticulous detail how complete areas of medical and scientific research, diagnosis and treatment advances for Autism, were decimated for decades by vile anti-Vaxxer vitriol, lies, and coo-koo conspiracy theories—all of which were pushed by Kennedy.

With Donald Trump promising to appoint RFK, Jr, to “go wild on health—women’s and childrens’s heath,”—which Kennedy had already been doing without government power for years—it’s instructive to look at how long these lies about vaccines and their “causes” have been going on, and the kind of sinister snake-oil salesmen who would spread such slime.

For nearly two decades, before RFK, Jr.’s, massive disinformation bombardment against the COVID-19 vaccine — applauded by every extreme Right Wing anti-vaccine, anti-science group of fanatics, including Q-Anon, Christian Nationalists and the John Birch Society — the son of Robert F. Kennedy did enormous damage to millions of Neurodiverse individuals, by slathering the long-discredited lie that vaccines were the cause of Autism on every form of media.

Those bold-face lies — disproved by dozens upon dozens of medical studies — resulted in the loss of the medical license by Andrew Wakefield, the British researcher who originated and propagated the destructive anti-vaxxer propaganda. Wakefield may have been booted out of the medical profession for fraud, but RFK, Jr. picked up where that disgraced charlatan left off.

Kennedy, Jr., knowingly disseminated and profited from peddling such widely disproven, and damaging, lies about a non-existent link between standard, childhood MMR vaccines and autism, blocking legitimate research, diagnostic advances and treatment for autism for many years, and directly causing flare-ups of measles outbreaks—and childhood deaths— around the world. His intentional spreading of ignorance caused direct harm to many of the same marginalized communities — communities of color, the poor, and the disabled —that his father championed during his own public career.

Now, RFK’s, Jr., disease-ridden delusions about public heath are cause for even graver concern, since he has flattered and wormed his way into the Trump’s inner circle, being elevated as the single person Donald Trump wants to put in charge of all health care in this country. Based upon Kennedy’s infamous and well-documented track record of spreading dangerous health-related conspiracy theories which have resulted in multiple deaths, putting him in charge of the public health of all Americans is both an abrogation of all modern science and a completely insane “concept”, and carries potentially dire consequences for all of us.

The depth of RFK’ Jr.’s Vaccine Derangement Syndrome ( over HIV and AIDS, as well as Autism and COVID) can be found in the cringe-worthy book entitled, “The Real Anthony Fauci.” The book was widely promoted all over social media by the John Birch Society, Q-Anon, and other anti-government wackos. In it’s literature boosting the book, The Birch Society shrieks that “Fauci and Bill Gates are using the COVID Pandemic to put humanity under totalitarian rule,” and it quotes Kennedy as saying they “must be stopped.”

Following Kennedy’s crazed canards, Bill Gates spoke to CNBC and told the network that such scurrilous rumors and mountains of intentional misinformation are “keeping many Americans from getting vaccinated against COVID, and delaying the end of the pandemic by doing so.” More than 1.2 million Americans died from COVID, and COVID-related diseases. The prospect of another pandemic hitting the United States with an anti-vaxxer like RFK, Jr, in charge of public health—and a belching, bleach-pushing President like Donald Trump—is too terrifying to imagine.

Additionally, RFK, Jr, intentionally deceived Americans for years by founding a fraudulent public health group called the “Children’s Health Defense,” to purposely sow confusion with the highly respected Children’s Health Fund (childrenshealthfund.org) headed for years by Dr. Irwin Redlener — one of President Biden’s COVID-19 advisors, and a strong and consistent proponent of the COVID vaccine.

Such deceptions and outright lies are nothing new for RFK,Jr, who has devoted the last two decades to disseminating the scientifically discredited fabrications that vaccines caused autism — most of it after Wakefield, who first advanced the falsehoods linking autism to vaccines, was stripped of his medical license. Kennedy was clearly on notice that he was perpetuating a fraud.

The medical publication Lancet retracted Wakefield’s article that it had printed, and the British Medical Journal in 2011 denounced Wakefield’s “studies” as an “elaborate fraud.”

None of that mattered to RFK, Jr, but perversely, it may have attracted Donald Trump to Kennedy, who knows a thing or two about fraudulent scams.

The Craig Newmark Center’s Poynter Institute reported that “RFK, Jr. said the COVID-19 vaccine was the deadliest vaccine ever made.” His litany of flat-out falsehoods has earned Kennedy the title of “one of the biggest sources of anti-vaccine rhetoric today,” from the Poynter Institute.

In an article entitled the “Anti-Vaccine Propaganda of RFK,Jr,” McGill University’s Office of Science & Society— one of Canada’s leading Medical university’s — called Kennedy “one of the princes of the anti-vaccine movement, if not its king.” Little wonder Trump was drawn to him.

During the peak of the COVID Pandemic, RFK, Jr., was welcomed like a conquering hero by anti-vaxxers in Louisiana, when he testified before the Louisiana House Oversight Committee, opposing a proposal requiring public school students to be vaccinated. Think about that: the son of Robert F. Kennedy crusading against a proven public-health measure that protected people of color. Astonishing.

Kennedy’s, “scientifically inaccurate, misleading and irresponsible lies,” as the CDC called his dangerous misuse of the agency’s data, not only gave cover to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ anti-science, anti-vaxxer, anti-mask campaign, it reinforced vaccine hesitancy among the poorest populations, which have, historically, had higher rates of death from ALL major diseases, because of poverty, pre-existing conditions, and lack of access to affordable healthcare.

RFK, Jr., and the rabid right-wing extremist groups who have always opposed more funding for health care for the poor, for women, working families and the disabled —and the Affordable Care Act—want to continue to harm the progress made in public health, and endanger more lives. Kennedy, now Trump’s future Health Care Czar, has continued to wage a full-frontal assault on medical science, facts, history, human decency, and upon millions of children who are Neurodiverse, whom Kennedy has not only negatively restigmatized, but has denied vital research, diagnosis & treatment dollars.

Kennedy’s crazed, decades-long crusade linking vaccines to autism — despite clear and convincing evidence to the contrary — and his outright lies about HIV/AIDS, the COVID & MMR vaccines— have poisoned peoples minds, and set back vaccine research and trust in public health initiatives for decades to come, undermining faith in yet another critical American institution.

The election of Donald Trump would not only destroy American democracy, fundamental freedoms, healthcare protection and individual rights, such as a woman’s ability to make decisions about her own reproductive rights, it would, as Dr. Peter Hodes, Dean of the Baylor College School of Medicine said, usher in the destruction of science, scientists and medical research, since “that’s what authoritarianism is all about.”

Josef Stalin—or Vladimir Putin—couldn’t be happier with Trump/RFK,Jr’s handiwork.

.