Low Intellect in High Places. Health, Food and Medicines. The Charge to Our Nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS)
First published Jan. 10, 2025
Donald J. Trump, speaking at the Madison Square Garden in October 2024 said of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, his proposed Secretary of HHS, “I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”
In 1864, Louis Pasteur introduced what became known as “pasteurization” by heating milk to a specific temperature for a fixed time period. It is one of the most impactful contributions to public health, on a level with water purification and vaccination. These three public health measures have had incalculable beneficial effects on human beings. Pasteurization kills harmful organisms responsible for typhoid fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and brucellosis. The nutritional benefits are available from pasteurized milk without the risk of illness. Milk from cows, sheep or goats that is not pasteurized can result in serious illness, hospitalization, or death. Unlike pasteurized milk, raw milk can carry pathogens such as Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, Coxiella, Listeria, Brucella, Salmonella, E. coli, the causes of serious foodborne illnesses. Federal law prohibits the sale of unpasteurized milk across state lines. Canada only uses pasteurized milk. However, a subset of U.S. States allow the sale of unpasteurized milk. The suggestion that there are significant health benefits to drinking raw milk that outweigh the benefits of pasteurization is unfounded. The FDA has found no scientific studies that support the purported health benefits of raw-milk consumption. The CDC, FDA and the American Medical Associations recommend that Americans drink pasteurized milk.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (bird flu) has killed millions of wild birds and caused sporadic outbreaks among poultry and dairy cows in the U.S. About 50% of the human cases of bird flu in the U.S. were from exposure to dairy cattle. Pasteurization destroys the avian influenza virus in dairy milk but it is present in unpasteurized milk obtained from ill and, even, asymptomatic affected dairy cattle. The CDC Health Alert Network Health Advisory recommended consumption of milk and dairy products made from pasteurized milk. Kennedy only drinks raw milk and feels the FDA should permit the use of raw milk.
The tragic, unnecessary, loss of life during the Samoan measles epidemic in an under-vaccinated population was in part the result of Kennedy’s false claim that measles vaccination is a cause of autism. Kennedy tried to block the sars-cov-2 (covid-19) vaccine, arguing that it did more harm than good with no data and in contradistinction to the results of vaccine clinical trials and infectious disease experts around the world. It limited severity and saved millions of lives, notably in those over 60 years. His reasoning on the safety and value of vaccines and other health issues is a mental derangement: lunacy. Having a leader of the United States health agencies who is prone to unfounded ideas about beneficial public health initiatives and who, in addition, has no medical, scientific or policy background in health-related disciplines is a threat to the health, indeed, lives of Americans. There is a generalization about organizations: the intellect and insight of the leader sets the tone for those who he or she hires or appoints. The U.S. presidential cabinet nominees are a vivid and in some cases a frightening example of that rule of thumb.