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Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
RFK Jr. Doesn't Actually Believe Germs Are Real, Which Seems Like Terrible News For Everyone Going On A Cruise This Year
Gastrointestinal illnesses on cruise ships hit a 12-year high in 2024, and 2025 has been even worse, with cruise lines seeing an entire year's worth of outbreaks in only the first quarter of the year. So it was hard to understand why Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. decided it was the perfect time to get rid of the people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who investigate outbreaks and ensure cruise ships are properly sanitized, especially with a new Norovirus strain running rampant. Now it all makes sense, though — RFK doesn't believe germs are real. That's a serious claim, and we have so much evidence that germs cause disease, you probably don't have a category in your brain for a real person in real life who actually believes germ theory is wrong, much less the person in charge of our nation's health. And yet, as Ars Technica recently pointed out, that claim is based on RFK's own words that he published in his book The Real Anthony Fauci. You just have to look at the Miasma vs. Germ Theory section of the chapter he titled "The White Man's Burden." Yikes. On so many levels. Read more: These Should Be The Next Mail Trucks When The Post Office Gets Privatized In that chapter, Kennedy wrote, "'Miasma theory' emphasizes preventing disease by fortifying the immune system through nutrition and by reducing exposures to environmental toxins and stresses," which, as Ars Technica also pointed out, also demonstrates a misunderstanding of the long-debunked miasma theory that disease is caused by "noxious mists and vapors." Apparently, according to Kennedy, germ theory wasn't based on actual evidence but instead got popular because it "[mimicked] the traditional explanation for disease—demon possession—giving it a leg up over miasma." By embracing germ theory, Kennedy argued doctors wrongly began to focus on "the pharmaceutical paradigm that emphasized targeting particular germs with specific drugs rather than fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition." Kennedy has also bemoaned the "$1 trillion pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, pricks, potions, and poisons, and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology led by 'Little Napoleon' himself, Anthony Fauci, fortify the century-old predominance of germ theory." Independent journalist Talia Lavin also posted a screenshot (embedded above) from the chapter, where Kennedy claimed Louis Pasteur, aka the "father of microbiology," made a deathbed confession that he'd been wrong about germ theory. The source of that claim? A book titled Virus Mania that also claimed Ebola, bird flu and hepatitis don't actually exist, either. Again, the top health official in the U.S. wrote this stuff in his own book, and you can probably check it out at your local library if you're brave enough. If Kennedy doesn't actually believe that germs make you sick, then his decision to fire the health officials in charge of the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program and gut the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice finally makes sense. He isn't worried about Norovirus outbreaks because he doesn't believe the Norovirus is real. "I thought 'it now all makes sense'... I mean, it all adds up," Children's Hospital of Philadelphia pediatrician and infectious disease expert Paul Offit told Ars Technica after reading the chapter in question. "It's so unbelievable, because you can't imagine that someone who's the head of Health and Human Services doesn't believe that specific viruses or bacteria cause specific diseases, and that the prevention or treatment of them is lifesaving." Unfortunately for everyone involved, while you can and probably should avoid cruises for the foreseeable future, our Health Secretary's unscientific belief that germs don't actually cause disease will likely have far worse consequences than a bunch of cruise-goers losing it from both ends up and down the ship. What's been described as a near-religious-level belief that everyone who disagrees with him is in the pocket of Big Pharma--pushing the theory that germs make you sick so they can get rich--is a threat to modern medicine and health in this country, as well as across the world. Are clean air, regular exercise, and a healthy diet that includes a variety of vegetables important? Absolutely. But germs are still real, people still actually suffer and die from the diseases germs cause, and it's almost beyond comprehension that someone who doesn't believe in something as foundational as germ theory is our country's top health official. And yet, somehow, it's true. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
The Guardian
22-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Donald Trump's imperial presidency is a throwback to a greedier, pernicious age
Donald Trump's imperial presidency is a tawdry, threadbare affair. The emperor has no clothes to cloak his counterfeit rule. Lacking crown and robes, he resorts to vulgar ties and baseball caps. His throne is but a bully pulpit, his palace a pokey, whitewashed house, his courtiers mere common hacks. His royal edicts – executive orders – are judicially contested. And while he rages like Lear, his critics are publicly crucified or thrown to the lions at Fox News. Yet for all his crudely plebeian ordinariness, a parvenu imperialism is Trump's global offer, his trademark deal and most heinous crime. He peddles it against the tide of history and all human experience, as if invasion, genocide, racial inequality, economic exploitation and cultural conquest had never been tried before. If it wasn't clear already, it is now. He wants to rule the world. Trump's menacing claims to Canada, Panama and Greenland revive the elitist fantasies of Elon Musk's grandfather and Technocracy Inc, a 1930s rightwing populist movement that sought to unite North and Central America under US suzerainty – the 'Technate'. The mindset feeding such pretensions is rooted deep in the national psyche. It's a mix of Monroe doctrine, 'manifest destiny' and the white man's burden. It's evil, it's pernicious, and it's back. In 1823, president James Monroe, fending off predatory European powers, defined what Russia's Vladimir Putin, among others, would today term an American 'sphere of influence'. His doctrine was later used to justify US intervention in Latin America. Manifest destiny was the belief, popularised after 1845, that the young republic was divinely charged with spreading its dominion and 'civilising influence' across the continent and into the Pacific region. Native Americans, exterminated and dispossessed, were principal victims. Manifest destiny helped spread slavery as new states joined the Union. Subsequent colonisations of the Philippines, Cuba and Hawaii were a natural extension. In 1899, Rudyard Kipling's infamously racist poem, The White Man's Burden, urged Americans to emulate the British empire and assume global responsibility for governing 'new-caught sullen peoples'. That latter phrase aptly describes Trump's view today of 2 million Palestinians ensnared in Gaza, whom he wants to deport to Somaliland or some other promised land. Migrants corralled at the Mexico border face the white man's burdensome prejudices, too. Would Trump attempt ethnic cleansing of the lighter-skinned, mostly Christian, citizens of war-torn Ukraine? Everyone knows the answer to that one. While lacking the older varieties' surface pomp and majesty, Trump's born-again imperialism bears the ugly hallmarks of earlier iterations. As before, it comes down to power and money, military might and economic pressure (such as tariffs), control of land, racial and cultural supremacy and an utterly hypocritical morality. It's causing uproar at home. It infects every aspect of foreign policy. Trump may not be actively conniving in the killing and expulsion of Ukraine's Indigenous population, but he's doing his best to rob them of their birthright. In a travesty of negotiation, he cedes territory to Putin, bullies Kyiv's leaders into seething submission, then makes a grab for Ukraine's mineral wealth. Now he wants its nuclear power plants, too. This is not about making peace. It's about making money. In Gaza, Trump picks over the bones before the victim has even died. Basic legalities, let alone humanity, are jettisoned. No matter that Israel's genocidaires have killed about 50,000 Palestinians. He wants the seafront property free of charge, its surviving owners evicted, so he can build a luxury resort. 'Welcome to the Rafah Riviera, the Trump Organisation's Nakba-on-the-Med. Enjoy your stay!' Trump and his advisers envisage three neo-imperial superpower blocs, the US, Russia and China, united in disregard for the UN charter, international law and human rights and acting as they please in self-allotted spheres of influence. In this upended age, Russia is a lucrative business partner while European and Asian allies must fend for themselves. As ever, developing countries are exploited for their resources. To mangle George Canning, the Old World falls prey to the New. In the wider Middle East, Trump is infinitely more interested in forging a US-Saudi-Israel security, energy and investment alliance than in ending the Palestinian tragedy. A significant obstacle is Iran, another historical victim of colonialists. In his latest Putin schmooze, Trump asked for Russia's help in containing its ally. Mullahs beware: there's a whiff of betrayal in the air. Like big-power bullies throughout history, Trump picks on easy targets. Danish-owned Greenland and Panama exemplify the type of weak, defenceless country that 19th-century European empires scrambled for in Africa. In contrast, note how abnormally quiet is loudmouthed Trump about China, America's most powerful 21st-century rival. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion Tariff wars aside, his caution points towards a future strategic accommodation with Beijing. Like Putin, president Xi Jinping is playing it cool with Trump so far. These tuppenny tsars share much in common: authoritarianism, national aggrandisement, ruthless greed. So why fight? All three can be winners, and to winners go the spoils. Look out, Taiwan, meat in an unsavoury US-China sandwich. Imperialism has evolved since the time of gunboats, missionaries and unequal treaties. Absent now is a sense of higher calling and noble purpose. Pioneering frontiersmen pursuing America's manifest destiny genuinely believed theirs was a righteous cause. British colonial administrators thought they did God's (and Queen Victoria's) work. Today's conquerors betray few such illusions. Even so, Trump casts himself as compassionate, noble-minded peacemaker. So will he pursue peace in desperate Sudan, Myanmar or Congo? Will he stop those 'horrible wars' too? No, he will not. Such places do not feature on his redrawn maps. There's no money or kudos in it for him. And this particular white man's burden sharing does not extend to losers. In a new, disorderly imperial age, megalomania waives the rules. Simon Tisdall is the Observer's Foreign Affairs Commentator
