We do need to ‘Make America Healthy Again,’ just not this quackery in disguise | Opinion
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purported mission to “Make American Healthy Again” could have been a worthy goal.
As President Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, he has found a friendly audience in particular with “MAHA Moms” balking at America’s medical establishment and nutritional guidelines. He wants to get dyes out of our food and improve baby formula. He’s talked about the importance of healthy eating and exercising and the dangers of America’s ultra-processed diet.
That should be music to the ears of anyone who believes Pop-Tarts are not proper breakfast food, and that obesity is a greater threat to American children than wokeness. The medical establishment’s over-reliance on medicating symptoms rather than treating their cause and the food industry’s influence over government regulators need a shake up.
But I’m not into MAHA. In fact, I’m all out.
And that’s a shame because the U.S. needs to be healthier. Compared to nine other high-income nations, “Americans are sicker, die younger and struggle to afford essential health care,” according to a 2024 report by the independent research group The Commonwealth Fund.
Like the influencers and “almond moms” who push debunked information online and approach natural eating with religious zeal, Kennedy is not the right stand-bearer for a movement to make America healthier — because he’s doing just the opposite.
His 58-second social media announcement on Tuesday that he would end COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for healthy kids and pregnant women bypassed the traditional system of vaccine recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has said that pregnant women are more likely to develop complications from the coronavirus, including preterm birth and stillbirth.
Kennedy’s HHS has also hired a prominent anti-vaxxer who, a decade ago, was disciplined for practicing medicine without a license in Maryland, to look for a link between immunization and autism, which has been long debunked.
In fighting the orthodoxy and group thinking they say dominate the medical and scientific community, MAHA followers have created their own orthodoxy — a dangerous one based on fringe theories and cherry-picked data that seems intent on convincing Americans that practically every substance that goes into our bodies, from food dyes to vaccines, must be, by default, bad. Or at least, suspect.
The first major challenge Kennedy faced as HHS secretary was the measles outbreak. He promoted Vitamin A as a treatment, downplaying the role of the highly-effective MMR vaccine until he ultimately encouraged people get the shots after children had died.
Kennedy repeatedly cast doubt on the safety of MMR vaccines, even though they have been shown to be safe, and even stated that immunity acquired through a measles infection protects from cancer, a claim that isn’t backed by research, the New York Times reported.
Kennedy’s vaccine rhetoric along with Trump’s attacks on higher education and the cutting of federal scientific research funding amount to an attack on knowledge that’s independent from ideology.
Kennedy has promoted MAHA by sprinkling it with bits of half-truths.
In a March interview with Fox News, Kennedy said that “we see a correlation between people who get hurt by measles and people who don’t have good nutrition or who don’t have a good exercise regimen.” Although severely malnourished children in poor countries often get serious measles outcomes, there’s no evidence that a poor diet and lack of exercise have the same effect, according to the New York Times.
Here lies the kernel of truth that the MAHA movement has so cleverly exploited in that scenario. Research does show exercising and good nutrition lead to better health, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they should be a substitute for immunization.
Americans have been given reasons to distrust the medical establishment — i.e. the prescription drug epidemic. But the so-called establishment also gave us treatments for diseases that were once untreatable; the COVID vaccine saved countless lives.
That’s the nuance missing from MAHA — and that appears to be on purpose.
I’ll be thrilled if Kennedy lowers the country’s rates of chronic illness and increases Americans’ intake of whole foods. But so far, Make American Healthy Again is nothing but a clever slogan to set the country’s public health accomplishments back.
Isadora Rangel is a member of the Miami Herald Editorial Board.
