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Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Stop Sanewashing RFK, Jr.

The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is an impending disaster that has not been taken sufficiently seriously. Dr. Steven Novella, a Yale clinical neurologist, explains it succinctly in a post at the always interesting Science Based Medicine site:

It is also frustrating to watch many in the media try to sanewash his opinions, and don’t seem to appreciate the underlying problem. Such reports often takes the form of – well, he may be nutty, but he has a point regarding this issue. But actually he doesn’t have a point – being sort-of right from a certain angle but for an entirely wrong reason is simply not good enough when it comes to the health of our country.

RFK Jr has a flawed process, and all of his conclusions are tainted by these flaws. He does not seem to understand how science works, the nature of risk-vs-benefit in medicine, nor the difference between hazard and risk. He also tends to look at all health issues through the same ideological lens – it’s always about toxins in the environment, toxins in our food, and toxins in our medicines. Because actual experts don’t agree with his nonsense, he then concludes that they are the problem (not him) and therefore they are part of a dark conspiracy.

He said the obesity epidemic is cause by “poisoned food” (because it’s always about toxins and poison, right?). He then goes further to say that GMOs are the problem – GMOs are “nutrient barren” while non-GMO produce used to be nutrient rich.

This is simply not true. If you make the wrong diagnosis it’s very unlikely that you will prescribe the correct treatment. GMO crops are not less nutritious than non-GMO crops.

RFK Jr’s process is fatally flawed, and his conclusions are nonsensical and incoherent. Sure, if you squint you may see bits and pieces that are related to the actual answer, but even then he gets the diagnosis wrong.

Read the entire post here (and I recommend checking out SBM every day).

 

 

Posted by Steve Lubet on December 18, 2024 at 01:01 PM | Permalink

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