Chemtrails: why is RFK Jr battling a debunked conspiracy theory?
The Trump administration appears sceptical about the climate crisis but is deeply concerned about another weather phenomenon: chemtrails.
To conspiracists, chemtrails are visible trails left by commercial airliners, lasting longer than the usual condensation trails from jets and containing unknown, sinister chemicals.
To weather scientists, chemtrails are a myth based on misidentification and a lack of understanding about how different humidity levels cause contrails to disappear quickly or linger and grow.
The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is determined to take action on chemtrails. During a recent TV discussion, when an audience member said chemtrails were her biggest health worry, Kennedy affirmed that material was being added to jet fuel. 'I'm going to do everything in my power to stop it,' he said. 'Find out who's doing it and holding them accountable.'
Kennedy said he was trying to discover which government department was responsible. He suggested the culprits might be Darpa, the Pentagon's advanced research arm. While there really has been military research into contrails, this was aimed at reducing them to make planes harder to spot.
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Despite many claims, there is no evidence of nefarious substances being covertly added to commercial jet fuel. But to conspiracists, this only proves there must be a cover-up.
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Reuters
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Daily Mail
44 minutes ago
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I was diagnosed with Alzheimer's after ‘overused' medical procedure caused my dementia
Sean Fischer's mother had been getting sicker for decades. She would ask the same question multiple times, be bedbound from migraines and unstable on her feet. The mystery behind her decades-long ailments was seemingly solved when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in June 2022. Sean said: 'We had spent countless hours fretting over what could be wrong, but not once did I think it could be early-onset Alzheimer's. That diagnosis belongs to other families, I thought. Not ours.' The Fischers met with renowned neurologists and prepared the then-61-year-old to participate in an Alzheimer's clinical trial for the drug varoglutamstat. Then came devastating news that meant Mrs Fischer wouldn't be eligible for the trial - she was suffering from a persistent leak of spinal fluid somewhere in her spinal system, but doctors couldn't pinpoint the source - and couldn't fix it. They believed it was likely a result of epidurals she'd received during childbirth - an injection in the back that numbs a person from their belly button to their thighs. It's a common pain relief option during childbirth and an estimated 61 percent of women who give birth receive an epidural. After suffering for more than a decade, doctors said a new procedure would allos them to inject dye into Mrs Fischer's spinal fluid to search for the leak - a small spot in the middle of her back. A few weeks after they sealed it, all of her symptoms went away and doctors said she didn't actually have Alzheimer's - the tiny spot in her back was actually the source of all her symptoms. Mrs Fischer's health battle began long before her Alzheimer's diagnosis. It started in spring 2001, when Sean said he received a call from his dad: Mom had pulled over on the highway, vomiting from a sudden, crushing headache. 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She'd stare at her calendar for long stretches of time; making sense of it seemed to require more effort than usual. She started to repeat herself. 'By the time I left for college in Rhode Island, the phrase 'You already asked me that' had become a common refrain in the house I grew up in, but at first, we blamed her, telling her she needed to pay more attention.' She was seeing doctors for headaches, hearing, and anxiety, none of whom believed there could be a common origin. Her memory problems were worsening as well, which led to Mr and Mrs Fischer to to turn to NYU Langone Health's Center for Cognitive Neurology. 'My mom was tested extensively — and two months later came the diagnosis, with the finality of a punctuation mark. Alzheimer's. When it hit her that there was no cure, my mom was bedridden for three days,' Sean said. Hope came with the study. But then doctors called the Fischers and informed them that the CSF leak would not allow her to participate. Despair took over. But a few weeks later, Mrs Fischer's doctor called to tell them about recent medical innovations that would allow surgeons to find and fix the leak, allowing her to participate in the drug trial. Six months later, doctors inserted a probe through the femoral artery in Mrs Fischer's leg, fed it upward toward her spinal system, and sealed the leak. Sean said: 'Two weeks later, I visited home, and found Mom more alert than she had been in years. There was no absent look in her eyes. As the day went on, I waited for her to start fading—but she was still wide awake at 10 p.m. 'After three weeks, her vertigo was gone, and her physical therapist told her she didn't need treatment anymore, because she no longer had any balance problems. After four weeks, she told us she felt 20 years younger.' After six weeks, her problems with memory were gone entirely. 'And eventually, Mom's neurologist confirmed: She did not have Alzheimer's. The surgeons who fixed the leak were shocked. They had never seen a recovery like it,' Sean said. The family later learned that, a year before the procedure, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center had published a newsletter with the subtitle: 'Physicians Treating Dementia Should Look for Cerebrospinal Fluid Leak—A Treatable Cause of an Otherwise Incurable Condition.' The study followed 21 patients with headaches, severe fatigue, and diagnoses of Chiari malformation and dementia; nine were found to have a cerebrospinal fluid leak, and repairing it completely resolved their symptoms. In Sean's mother's case, countless specialists across multiple hospitals treated her symptoms in isolation, overlooking the root cause. But they chose not to place blame on any doctor or institution. It was the system that misdiagnosed her, and ultimately, the system that saved her. 'More than anything, we feel grateful that a scientific breakthrough came at just the right time; that the real cause of her suffering was found,' he said.
