Article Can RFK Jr. fix the dysfunctional CDC, FDA, and NIH?

[C C]

So according to this, RFK Jr. may push or boost these agencies further along the path of wrongness they are already on. Rather than either reform or radically alter their trajectory.
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Can RFK Jr. Fix the Dysfunctional CDC, FDA, and NIH?
https://reason.com/2024/11/15/can-rfk-jr...-agencies/

EXCERPTS: . . . In fact, the CDC, the FDA, and the NIH have long needed drastic reform. But is putting RFK Jr. in charge of HHS the right way to fix these dysfunctional public health agencies? [His priorities may not be the drastic reforms that are actually needed...]

First, let's take a quick look at what's wrong with each agency. The timid bureaucrats at the FDA stifle medical innovation to the detriment of patient health. These regulatory shortcomings have prompted calls for abolishing the agency and adopting competitive systems for assuring the safety and efficacy of medical treatments and diagnostics.

The NIH is the world's largest public funder of biomedical and public health research, with a budget of $47 billion, most of which is used to support research at universities and academic medical centers. The agency has long been criticized for being way too risk-averse when it comes to choosing which research projects to fund...

[...] The CDC, as the federal agency whose main charge is to detect and manage public health responses to infectious diseases, utterly failed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Distracted by fighting "epidemics" of obesity, smoking, and violence, it massively botched its response to an actual epidemic when it struck.

[...] Again, the CDC needs fixing, but RFK Jr.'s skepticism about the safety and efficacy of modern vaccines would further undermine what should be the CDC's main focus: the prevention of the spread of dangerous infectious diseases.

[...] The main reform the FDA needs is getting out of the way by speeding up its drug and treatment approvals processes. Given his deep skepticism of the modern pharmaceutical research and development enterprise, RFK Jr.'s demands for more safety testing and his opposition to FDA user fees risk even further delays in getting new treatments to patients.

[...] Parsing Trump's announcement of RFK Jr.'s HHS nomination, Cato Institute Director of Health Policy Studies Michael Cannon posted on X that it amounts to "a call for more regulation. To have government make even more of our health decisions."

The FDA needs streamlining to speed biomedical innovation, the NIH needs greater risk-taking in research, and the CDC needs to be laser-focused on preventing infectious diseases. None of these appear to be high on the agenda of possible incoming secretary of health and human services.... (MORE - missing details)

[Syne]

So the FDA needs to rubber-stamp drugs/treatments faster and easier, the CDC needs to mandate more vaccines without any legal recourse for (often known) side effects, and the NIH needs to fund things more risky than gain of function (weaponizing) research in adversarial countries?

That sounds completely ridiculous, even just on the face of it, much less drilling down into the details.

[stryder]

RFK Jr. is mentioned as being heavily into conspiracy in regards to vaccine and vaccination in general. Such as suggesting that vaccines are responsible for birth conditions like Autism etc.

There is actually more likelihood that food sources like Meat, Milk and even Fish (as well as fruit/veg subjected to pesticides) are more likely to be responsible for birth defects. (Hormones contained within produce at low levels could effect the growth of the young considering they are more sensitive and it has a greater effect than if applied to older people that have already gone through growth.)

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RFK Jr will disrupt the US medical establishment
https://unherd.com/newsroom/rfk-jr-will-...blishment/

INTRO: Last night, Donald Trump signalled a seismic shift in American science and public health. Fulfilling his campaign promise, he endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the largest federal department with a $1.7 trillion annual budget and over 80,000 employees. Kennedy’s statement in response vows to “bring together the greatest minds in science, medicine, industry, and government to put an end to the chronic disease epidemic”, as well as to “clean up corruption” and return the health agencies to “gold-standard, evidence-based science”.

Left-leaning outlets, such as the Atlantic, Washington Post, PolitiFact, and Forbes — as well as the predominantly Left-leaning medical establishment — were quick to lambast the choice, using selective quotations and a narrow focus to smear Kennedy. But establishment mandarins who focus on his sometimes eccentric scientific claims, from vaccines to AIDS, overlook the single most important factor in his success: the anti-science, authoritarian policies of the Covid years. As a result, they miss what matters most in the Kennedy phenomenon: his broadly appealing, and thoroughly centrist, reform agenda.

This knee-jerk reaction hides the dilemma that members of the medical establishment face: do they position themselves as defenders of an increasingly untenable status quo, or do they embrace the opportunities of RFK Jr.’s reform agenda, much of which aligns with values and concerns that they have been raising for years?

Medical officials failed badly in the Covid era by supporting lockdowns, school closures, toddler masking, and mandates. Their championing of anti-science policies has caused massive health and social harm, which reverberates today. The 2024 US election was a vote against the establishment and in favour of fundamental reforms; it is unsurprising that the same establishment which endorsed lockdowns and mandates now fights kicking and screaming against oncoming change.

The rot, having accumulated over decades, was plain for all to see. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose annual budget is $45 billion, orchestrated under the leadership of Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci a massive suppression of scientific debate and research. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exaggerated risk and issued policy guidance with little evidence in support of unprecedented vaccine mandates. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry meant vaccines and therapeutics were approved with little to no evidence, sometimes based on faulty modelling. And the Biden administration pushed all of this with orchestrated PR campaigns, spreading falsehoods and misinformation.

Clearly, the status quo is no longer tenable. Trust in American physicians and hospitals dropped from 71% to 40% between 2020 and 2024, according to a July study in JAMA...... MORE - details)

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RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary will be a catastrophe for public health and medical research
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2024...-research/

EXCERPT: I will admit, however, that it’s become increasingly difficult to remain totally nonpartisan, given the events of the last decade, but, even more, events since the pandemic hit nearly five years ago. While there are still crunchy lefties promoting various woo, including alternative medicine, antivaccinationism, unwarranted fear mongering about pesticides and “chemicals” in food, and false beliefs that, for instance, cell phone radiation causes cancer, by and large it’s difficult not to accept in the face of overwhelming evidence that the ideological center of gravity in terms of hostility to science-based medicine and science-based health policy has shifted far to the right.

I’ve described how it’s a process that I first started noticing 10-15 years ago, as more and more antivaxxers started promoting conservative and right-leaning candidates; accelerated beginning in 2015, when opposition to California law SB 277, which eliminated nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates galvanized the antivaccine movement to successfully use the rhetoric of “freedom” and opposition to government overreach to attract conservatives; infested the Republican Party during the 2016 Presidential primaries and the 2018 midterms; and became (if you’ll excuse the term) turbocharged after the pandemic, when opposition to non pharmaceutical public health interventions like masking or school and business closures, vaccine mandates, and basically any non-voluntary public health interventions resulted in the fusion of the antivaccine movement with right wing resistance to what it saw as “tyranny.”

As I’ve written about and the Conspirituality Podcast has documented over the last five years or so, basically a lot of the New Age “spirituality” and quackery, including the antivaccine movement, has shifted far to the right, to the point that we see lots of pseudoscience and conspiracy theorists who used to be perceived as being on the left now fully MAGA and aligned with Donald Trump. Whether this is because the grift is better there or because of a genuine ideological shift or both, it’s happened, and I still haven’t decided what the biggest factor was fueling this shift... (MORE - missing details)