MAHA report's errors are just start of its problems
Lisa Jarvis and Michael Hiltzik,
Tribune News Service
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new Make America Healthy Again report offers a road to wellness for the nation's children paved not with the gold-standard science he promised, but with pyrite. The report, created by a MAHA commission that includes all of President Donald Trump's cabinet members, mixes nuggets of truth — like the idea that it's important to focus on kids' health — with gross misrepresentations of scientific research. Some of the studies are even made up. The nonprofit news organisation Notus first reported that some of the commission's findings relied on research that doesn't exist. The document, released last week, includes seven fabricated studies related to kids' mental health and the overprescribing of medications for ADHD, depression and asthma. The New York Times later identified several other fake citations.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attributed the inclusion of phony publications to 'formatting issues' that would be corrected. An updated report that omits those studies and cleans up bizarre errors in several others has since been uploaded to the White House website. That version contained fresh errors, Notus reported. Many suspect that the fake citations are the product of AI. That alone should be disqualifying. Rather than the thoughtful, evidence-based assessment our kids deserve, the first major report on Kennedy's cornerstone initiative was a slapped-together treatise. But there's a bigger problem. If the MAHA team did rely on AI to generate supporting data — and it seems likely it did — it wasn't just cutting corners. It confirms this project was never a good faith effort to begin with. The team was assembling evidence to reinforce conclusions that supported Kennedy's well-known narrative.
That pattern is bolstered by the report's interpretation of the real studies it cites. Data is conveniently twisted to fit Kennedy's personal beliefs. A recurring tendency is to exaggerate the size of the current problem by minimising the significance of those in the past. For example, the report points to a fivefold rise in the rates of celiac disease since the 1980s but fails to acknowledge a dramatic increase in diagnosis and awareness of the autoimmune disorder. The same is true for the report's discussions of inflammatory bowel disease, childhood cancer and autism. None of this should be surprising. In nearly every interview he gives, Kennedy repeats the same inflated statistics to drive home the terrible state of our kids' health. His goal seems to be to scare the public into acquiescence. If the problem is this bad, if our kids are this sick, if health agencies have failed them this profoundly, why not blindly follow his ideas for fixing it?
Something more insidious is at play with all of the half-baked or made-up statistics. He is using them to undermine the real experts, making it increasingly hard for Americans to understand whose advice to trust. And ultimately, his willfully misleading analysis provides cover while he dismantles longstanding norms for scientific research and health policy. In just a few short months, the secretary has wielded his authority in unprecedented and dangerous ways. For example, amid the largest measles outbreak in 30 years, instead of emphasising vaccines — which can prevent the disease — he asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop guidelines for treatments. There are no proven treatments for measles. At least three people have died, and nearly 1,100 cases of the disease have been reported.
In another disturbing move, Kennedy said he would unilaterally change the CDC's COVID vaccine guidelines to preclude pregnant women and children from receiving shots. That upended the longstanding process that relies on outside experts' careful analysis and open debate before making such decisions. Days later, the CDC amended its regulations to incorporate some, but not all of Kennedy's proposed changes, leaving many confused not only about the actual policy but who sets it. We should worry that his approach to measles and COVID is a preview of how he will treat the value of other routine shots. One of the most alarming sections of the report questions the evidence behind and safety of the childhood vaccine schedule and — without evidence — suggests it could be linked to chronic disease.
Kennedy has also used his platform to push policy changes on the use of fluoride in drinking water, which he has repeatedly linked to lower IQs (a tenuous claim that experts say is based on fluoride levels not used in the US). Fluoridation is regulated by state and local municipalities, but Kennedy said he would direct the CDC to stop recommending the practice and the Food and Drug Administration — also under his purview — later banned fluoride supplements based on unsubstantiated claims that they harm gut health. His rhetoric on the topic appears to have emboldened the first two state bans on fluoride in public water. The MAHA report's agenda suggests more changes are to come. Meanwhile, new research in JAMA found that removing fluoride from drinking water would result in 25 million more cavities in children at a cost of $9.8 billion to the US healthcare system over five years.
Kennedy's next move appears to be wresting control of health and science research altogether. 'We're probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they're all corrupt,' he said on a recent podcast with wellness influencer Gary Brecka. Unless those top-tier journals 'change dramatically,' health agencies will 'create our own journals in-house,' he added. In other words, he'll have a ready-made platform to showcase data that justifies whatever policy he wants to roll out next. In another troubling sign of how data could be warped to fit a political agenda, President Donald Trump signed an executive order after the report was released directing a restoration of 'gold standard science.'
The goal sounds reasonable enough: to ensure research is reproducible and reverse a decline in public trust in science and health agencies. But the language of the directive is concerning. It not only challenges the credibility of several agencies — including the CDC — but suggests someone like Kennedy could exploit the language of research integrity to crack down on findings that don't fit his personal agenda. Kennedy has called the MAHA report 'the diagnosis' and says he will 'deliver the prescription' in the next 60 days. Given what we've seen over the last few months, we should worry what form that takes — and the far reaching consequences it could have on both American kids and the health infrastructure designed to protect them.
Earlier, serious followers of healthcare policy in the US didn't expect much good to emerge from its takeover by President Donald Trump and his secretary of Health and Human Services, the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But the agency and its leadership managed to live down to the worst expectations May 27, when HHS released a 73-page 'assessment' of the health of America's children titled 'The MAHA Report' (for 'Make America Healthy Again'). A sloppier, more disingenuous government report would be hard to imagine. Whatever credibility the report might have had as a product of a federal agency was shattered by its obvious errors, misrepresentations and outright fabrications of source materials, some of it plainly the product of the authors' reliance on AI bots. At least seven sources cited in the report do not exist, as Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto of the journalism organisation NOTUS uncovered. HHS hastily reissued the report with some of those citations removed, but without disclosing the changes — an extremely unkosher action in the research community.
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