The MAHA Crowd Is Already Questioning Biden's Cancer Diagnosis
It took just a few hours for devotees of the 'Make America healthy again' movement to question former President Joe Biden's prostate-cancer diagnosis. Tumors of the prostate are the most common serious malignancy identified in men: Even aggressive ones like Biden's are diagnosed roughly 25,000 times a year in the United States. Although Biden's condition is conventional, a certain segment of the public has been beguiled into blaming mainstream medicine for every unexpected death or health-related tragedy it comes across. The anti-vaccine community, including the group formerly led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has spent years promoting the idea that mRNA vaccines for COVID regularly push tumors into overdrive. (Rare anecdotes aside, there is no evidence to support this fear.) Now, predictably, the claim is cropping up again on social media. 'Prostate cancer takes years to metastasize to bone unless super aggressive or turbo cancer, ' the Kennedy-endorsed physician Craig Wax suggested.
That an 82-year-old man who had aged out of prostate-cancer-screening tests has been found to have an advanced malignancy should not be surprising. In my experience as a doctor who diagnoses cancer, many tumors are discovered out of the blue. Prostate cancer in particular may not become apparent until an individual goes to his doctor with a minor complaint—in Biden's case, urinary symptoms, according to the announcement—only to have further testing discover the worst. (Biden's cancer isn't curable; people with Stage 4 disease like his live for about three years on average—although the outlook is worse for men who are more than 80 years old.)
Cancer is an enigmatic disease, one that is simultaneously influenced by genetics, environment, personal habits, the aging process, and—not to be discounted—bad luck. But its muddled nature can be uncomfortable for those who share the view that nearly all sickness is preventable with virtuous behavior and a clean environment. According to Kennedy, the current leader of the U.S. health-care system, tumors are a product of not only the vaccines in our arms, but also the fluoride in our water, the toxins in our school lunches, the signals from our phones, and surely many other ubiquitous aspects of modernity. Indeed, in MAHA land, cancer is not just a misfortune, but a cover-up. Before he became health secretary, Kennedy ominously suggested that doctors might find its cause in the ' places they dare not look.'
It's not just Kennedy. Trump's health-care team routinely draws from the logic of this wellness-paranoia complex. Last year, Marty Makary, who has since become the FDA commissioner, told a group of MAHA wellness influencers convened by Senator Ron Johnson that cancer is a consequence of ' low-grade chronic inflammation ' induced by a poisoned food supply. (Years ago, he also speciously declared that undetected medical errors were a leading cause of death.) Casey Means, Trump's new nominee for surgeon general, has claimed that 'the biggest lie in healthcare' is that high blood sugar, malignant tumors, and clogged arteries 'are totally different diseases requiring separate doctors and pills for life.' The truth is 'simpler than we are told,' she said. (Buy her book to find out what it is.) And Mehmet Oz, the former lifestyle guru and current Medicare administrator, recently informed Americans, 'It's your patriotic duty to be as healthy as you can. It's our job to help you get there, make it easy to do the right things.' Never mind that you can do everything right and still get sick. (For now, none of the administration's major health officials has weighed in on Biden's diagnosis.)
Joe Biden is no stranger to tough luck. His son Beau died of a brain tumor at age 46 in 2015, leading to Biden's participation in a government-funded ' cancer moonshot ' to combat the condition. The moonshot initiative was an old-fashioned approach to medicine, one that sought to ameliorate illness through advances in science and technology. RFK Jr. and his MAHA acolytes are naturally suspicious of this approach. Now their weird discomfort with disease—and their outré views on cancer in particular—is being refracted through a sea of false, indecent speculations. No, Biden's cancer was not ' courtesy of the mRNA shot. ' One can only hope that the government's bevy of vaccine skeptics will be able to resist the siren's call to join in saying otherwise.
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RFK Jr. made some promises on vaccines to get confirmed. Is he breaking them?
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In some districts, that proportion is closer to 1 in 2. The COVID pandemic widened and deepened a longstanding problem, and now, the obstacles that prevent children from coming to school — chronic illness, disengagement in the classroom and unmet social needs — are wide-ranging. While many teachers and principals have worked tirelessly to get students back into the classroom, chronic absence has become a problem too big for educators or schools to solve alone. Related A new public health framework, developed by education and public health experts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Kaiser Permanente and Attendance Works, offers a comprehensive, community-driven approach with three core elements: data, partnerships and prevention. First, school attendance data should be tracked and analyzed on a regular basis by district-level teams of educators, epidemiologists and clinicians who can interpret patterns and target solutions. Key questions include: When during the academic year does attendance dip? At what age does it start to falter? Which neighborhoods are most affected? Public health departments can include chronic absence in their community health needs assessments. Sharing school attendance data securely with health providers can help identify children with particular conditions, like asthma, who are missing school and require extra attention. In the District of Columbia, for example, pediatricians — with the consent of parents — receive regular reports about which children in their practices are on track to become chronically absent. They then can talk to families about what's happening. If children are missing school for health reasons, more intensive medical treatment may be needed. If the problem is disengagement in the classroom, clinicians can help assess whether there are additional educational needs. If there are social factors, such as inadequate child care or housing, clinicians can work with social workers in schools or community services to find resources to assist families. Related Data alone is not enough; partnerships are essential. Beyond health care providers, community organizations, afterschool programs and religious institutions all have a role to play in supporting families in areas with low attendance rates. Such broad coalitions have a track record of success. For example, the Cincinnati All Children Thrive Learning Network is a citywide collaborative anchored by the Cincinnati Children's Hospital and the public school system. The collaboration reviews education and health data and uses it to inform targeted action in the clinic and classroom; for example promoting access to primary care. The results include increased improved third-grade reading scores and reduced pediatric hospitalizations. The third pillar is prevention. It can be easy to see troubling attendance patterns as simply an issue with a truant student, a problem family or a bad school. But punitive approaches are less likely to work than efforts that listen to parents, address their needs and anticipate future challenges. Using data and evidence to guide action, coalitions can take such steps as providing safer transportation routes to school by improving sidewalk safety, creating protected bike lanes, installing flashing lights on crosswalks and offering better public transportation options; adding services to afterschool programs; and expanding school-based mental health support. Communities can also set a widespread expectation that all kids must go to school every day. Encouraging the development of such norms is difficult, but doing so was at the core of other successful public health strategies, like smoking cessation and traffic safety. Related Not every approach will succeed. To sustain progress, it is important to document, evaluate and share what works and why. Research-practice partnerships such as the Catamount Community Schools Collaborative build long-term collaborations among researchers, health practitioners and representatives from districts and state agencies to quickly assess the implementation and results of innovative programs. In San Francisco, youth are trained as researchers to help in such efforts. Most fundamentally, this framework's approach to chronic absence means keeping focus on a measurable outcome and innovating with solutions until every child has the best chance of success, both in and out of the classroom. Like heart rate and blood pressure, school attendance is a vital sign for health. Like weight and height, it is fundamental to child development. Now is the time to prioritize reducing chronic absence to support the long-term health of children.
