Alexander Tin's notes

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March 28, 2025

HHS official on resignation of Peter Marks

If Peter Marks does not want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency, then he has no place at FDA under the strong leadership of Secretary Kennedy.

USDA spokesperson on Minnesota possible Minnesota reinfection

The case in Minnesota has not been confirmed to be a reinfection. USDA APHIS is aware, and is working with researchers to further understand, that some cattle can shed the HPAI virus for extended periods of time. This could be well beyond the 30 days within which most cattle appear to clear the virus.

The important thing here is that these herds are continuing to test and practice movement controls and biosecurity to eliminate the virus. It would be inappropriate for us to speculate on how many herds this happens in or how long it can last because we don’t have enough information to further elaborate at this time. We will continue to work with states, industry and researchers to understand these extended infections so that we can provide additional information and guidance on how to address these.

Robert F Kennedy Jr remarks in West Virginia

Robert F Kennedy Jr [00:34:19]

Food is medicine. It treats us in different ways and it treats our health. It treats our mental health.

There was a recent study that showed that at– when they switched the diet in prisons, that violence went down, to a whole food diet, that violence went down by about to 70%.

When they treated– when they switched the diet in juvenile detention centers, the whole food diet, violence went down a hundred percent.

There’s a scientist at Harvard now who is curing schizophrenia with a carnivore diet.

So the loneliness, the dispossession, the crisis that we have in mental health, in suicide, in ADD, ADHD, all of these are linked in particularly to the dies. It’s very clear.

The dyes that Governor Morrisey is banning, all of them are linked in very, very strong studies to ADHD and to cancers. So we’re seeing explosion of cancers in this country.

We’re seeing an explosion in infertility. Teenagers today have 50% of their sperm count. And 50% of the testosterone of 68 year old men. Girls are now reaching puberty six years earlier than they’re supposed to between 10 and 13 years old.

Other countries are not experiencing this. We’ve seen autism rates go from one in 10,000, when I was a kid, one in 10,000 to one in every 36 kids today, 1 in 22 boys in California, and the obesity rates have gone up to, as I said, 50% in adults or 70% in overall obesity or overweight from 3%.

…

Robert F Kennedy Jr [00:37:19]

When you ask CDC, why are Americans dying from COVID at higher rates than any place on earth? When we have all the money, they said, well, it’s not our fault. It is because Americans are so sick. That is their fault. And we’re going to change that.

But they said that according to– according to CDC, the average American who died from COVID had 3.8 chronic diseases. So they had diabetes, they had obesity, and, maybe asthma and one other thing. And it was the chronic disease really that was killing them.

Healthy kids were not dying. Healthy Americans were not dying of COVID. It was a disease that attacked us sick. And that’s true with all infectious diseases.

If we can make ourselves– the biggest thing that we can do for pandemic preparedness is to make ourselves healthy.

…

Robert F Kennedy Jr [00:41:27]

These companies are now just like the tobacco companies were, are flooding into the offices of your state leaders and legislatures and the governor, and they’re telling him he is making a big mistake. They’re telling them that they’re gonna stop writing checks, that they’re going to run people against them, that they’re going to destroy their political careers.

And Governor Morrissey was telling me that he met with the soda companies this week and they said to him, you need to be educated about this.

And they said, you know, food stamps is not a nutrition program. He came in with his diet Coke and he said, is there anything nutritious in here?

And they were like, no, of course not. But food stamps is not a nutrition program. And he said, it’s called SNAP. Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program. It is supposed to be nutrition. It’s not supposed to be food like substances that are actually poisoning us.

And so– but it takes a lot of courage to stand up to these companies the same way that it did to stand up to big tobacco. But these men and women, your leaders, Governor Morrisey, is standing up for you. And we all need to stand up for ourselves and take care of ourselves. It’s an act of patriotism.

Brad Smith interview on Fox News about DOGE

Question [00:13:14]

Brad Smith, working at HHS. And obviously another element is Medicare and Medicaid, NIH. What are you finding?

Brad Smith [00:13:26]

Yeah, well, I’d say there’s a couple things we’re really committed to in our work at HHS.

Number one, making sure we continue to have the best biomedical research in the world.

And number two, making sure, which President Trump has said over and over again, that we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid, but there’s a lot of opportunity.

So if I take NIH as an example today, if you’re NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollars grant at your university, today, you get to spend 60 of that and your university spends 40 of that.

The policy that we’re proposing is to make is that you get to spend 85 of that and your university spends 15. So that’s more money going directly to the scientists who are discovering new cures.

Another example at NIH is today they have 27 different centers. They got created over time by Congress. And they’re typically by disease, state or body system. There’s 700 different IT systems today at NIH.

Question [00:14:12]

700 different IT systems?

Elon Musk [00:14:13]

And they don’t communicate.

Brad Smith [00:14:16]

They can’t speak to each other.

Question [00:14:17]

So they don’t talk to one another?

Brad Smith [00:14:18]

They have 27 different CIOs. And so when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data.

Kennedy interview on “The Michael Knowles Show”

Robert F Kennedy Jr [00:05:57]

I’ve been meeting with all the food companies. I met with all the baby formula companies.

We launched Operation Stork Speed, to make sure American mothers can get really healthy formula for their babies.

And you know, our formula, we have a crisis in our formula providers, one because there it’s a very narrow market and there’s not enough of it, but also it’s not high quality.

And you know, it’s not well tested for heavy metals and other contaminants, which we’re finding in it.

And then there’s ingredients in there like corn solids, which are not good, particularly for preemies and can make them very, very sick and even kill them.

So, we need to do a better– we’re going to do a good job at FDA at streamlining the regulations, at fast tracking them at, doing everything we can to make sure that the formula companies can improve and maximize the improvement of their formulas as soon as possible.

…

Robert F Kennedy Jr [00:10:06]

Everything’s going to change because because we’re going to have good information and none of the vaccines that are given have been– people said to me during the hearing, oh, well this link between autism and vaccines has been disproven.

But none of the vaccines that are given during the first six months of life have ever been tested for autism. The only one was the DTP vaccine. And that one study that was done, according to the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Science, had found that there was a link.

They threw out that study cause it was based upon CDC’s surveillance system, VAERS. And they said, that system is no good.

That begs the question is why doesn’t CDC have a functional surveillance system? We’re going to make sure they do have a functional surveillance system.

Right now, the surveillance system is the system that because they don’t do pre-licensing safety testing for vaccines, they’re the only product that’s exempt.

So what they say is, if there are injuries we will capture them afterward, but they have a system that doesn’t capture them.

In fact, CDC’s own study of its own system that it captures fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries. It is worthless. And everybody agrees it’s worthless.

But why have we gone for 39 years and nobody’s fixed it?

Question [00:11:27]

Without a functional system?

Robert F Kennedy Jr [00:11:28]

We’re going to fix it.

And we have– we have DOGE, knows how to manage data.

And so we’re going to be able to get into these databases and give answers to the American public.

And, we’re going to fix the problems. If there aren’t problems, we’re going to fix them very quickly, but we’re going to follow this science.

That’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to have gold standard science, and we’re going to follow this science.

We’re going to publish all of our data sets, which CDC has never done. We’re going to do replication of all of our studies, which CDC has never done. We’re going to publish our peer review, which CDC has never done.

So people are gonna have real answers for the first time.

Kennedy interview on NewsNation about cuts to HHS

Robert F Kennedy Jr [00:03:08]

We’re not going to cut services. We’re not going to cut Medicaid. We’re not gonna cut Medicare.

We’re going to continue– we’re going to provide services, but more efficiently, we have thanks to Elon– and by the way, what Elon did with our agency is going to help our agencies.

So I’m very grateful to him.

For me, he came in for the first time with a real org chart for the agency. The agency org chart, when I arrived was incomprehensible. There was no chain of command, where people operating in all these different silos and fiefdoms, and they were so territorial. And so self-serving, that they were selling patient information to each other.

So I tried to get to the CMS patient information, which belongs to the American people and belongs to HHS. And the subagencies said we have to buy it from them and it doesn’t make any sense. There are subagencies that refuse to give us patient data.

This is depersonalized data. And we need to make America healthy again.

What we’re trying– what Elon is doing is he’s using AI to improve health, to improve efficiency, to improve delivery. And he had a bunch of geniuses come over to the department, create an org chart that worked, and consolidate.

We have many divisions that are doing the exact same thing. We need to consolidate them and give them a sense of mission to invite them to participate in making our country healthier again.

And I think that’s why we’re getting a very, very strong, enthusiastic reaction from people within the agency. And of course, it’s hard to lose workers. We went down from we’re going from 82,000 workers to 62,000. That’s tough on everybody.

But I think in the long run, we’re gonna have much greater morale in a demoralized agency.

…

Robert F Kennedy Jr [00:05:31]

Our priority focus is we already have a division at NIH that is devoted to studying long COVID and to figuring out cures and to study.

And we’re incorporating an agency within CDC that is going to specialize in vaccine injuries.

Those are things that are priorities for me and also Lyme disease.

These are priorities for the American people. More and more people are suffering from these injuries. And we are committed to having gold standard science, make sure that we can figure out what the treatments are, and that we can deliver the best treatments possible to the American people.

March 27, 2025

FDA acting commissioner Sara Brenner on reduction-in-force

Dear Colleagues,

In this time of rapid transition and great promise, I ask that you join me in reflection on the adage - the only constant is change. Change brings both challenges and opportunities, at both the individual and organizational levels.

It was John F. Kennedy who said, “Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” I firmly believe the changes for the FDA, as outlined by Secretary Kennedy, will position the agency for the future and empower us to maximally deliver on our regulatory mission.

Together we will chart a path forward to enhance the health and lives of patients. We will work across HHS and marshal our collective resources to tackle the most critical health issues including chronic diseases impacting Americans. We will restore trust in public health institutions like ours with integrity and radical transparency. We will work to uphold our public health mission and endeavor to Make America Healthy Again.

I recognize the changes for HHS and the FDA may be challenging for some employees, who we value as both colleagues and friends. As we chart our course into the future, I ask for your patience, grace, and sanguinity with both the process and with each other. Every day, I continue to be grateful for your commitment and dedication to our public health mission, as well as your agility, professionalism, and intrepidness.

I look forward to continuing to work with you to carry forward our mission in my role as Principal Deputy Commissioner.

Sincerely,

Sara

Sara Brenner, M.D., M.P.H.

Acting Commissioner of Food and Drugs and Principal Deputy Commissioner

Secy Kennedy’s remarks on reduction-in-force

Hey, everybody. I’d like to share with you a paradox that I’ve encountered here in Washington, D.C., as the new secretary of HHS.

Our department is filled for the most part with competent, conscientious public servants. And yet the agency has been inefficient as a whole.

Over the past four years during the Biden administration, HHS’s budget increased by 38% and its staffing increased by 17%, but all that money has failed to improve the health of Americans.

In fact, the rate of chronic disease and cancer increased dramatically as our department has grown.

Our lifespan has dropped. So Americans now live six years shorter than Europeans.

We have the sickest nation in the world and we have the highest rate of chronic disease.

The U.S. ranks last among 40 developed nations in terms of health. But we spend two to three times more per capita than those nations.

As secretary, I now understand why all this money is not improving our health.

HHS is a sprawling bureaucracy that encompasses literally hundreds of departments, committees, and other offices.

You know how bureaucracies work. Every time a new issue arises, they tack on another committee. This leads to tremendous waste and duplication and worse of all, a loss of any unified sense of mission.

Resulting pandemonium has injured American health and damaged department morale.

When I arrived, I found that over half of our employees don’t even come to work.

HHS has more than a hundred communications offices and more than 40 IT departments and dozens of procurement offices and nine HR departments.

In many cases, they don’t even talk to each other. They’re mainly operating in silos. Sometimes these sub-agencies work at cross purposes with each other.

Some of these little fiefdoms, for example, are so insulated and territorial that they actually hoard our patient medical data and sell it for profit to each other.

Instead of remedying the chronic disease crisis, perverse incentives have administrators checking boxes and grading their own homework while public health declines.

A few isolated divisions are neglecting public health altogether and seem only accountable to the industries that they’re supposed to be regulating.

In one case, defiant bureaucrats impeded the secretary’s office from accessing the closely guarded databases that might reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions.

I have some good news though.

As part of President Trump’s DOGE workforce reduction initiative, we’re going to streamline HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective.

We’re going to imbue the agency with a clear sense of mission to radically improve the health of Americans and to improve agency morale.

We’re going to eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America or AHA.

We have two goals.

The first is obvious to save the taxpayer money by making our department more efficient. And the second is to radically improve our quality of service.

I want to promise you now that we’re going to do more with less. No American is gonna be left behind.

Our key services delivered through Medicare and Medicaid, the FDA and CDC and other agencies, will enter a new era of responsiveness and a new era of effectiveness.

We’re going to consolidate all of these departments and make them accountable to you, the American taxpayer and the American patient.

These goals will honor the aspirations of the vast majority of existing HHS employees who actually yearn to make America healthy.

28 great divisions will become 15.

The entire federal workforce is downsizing now. So this will be a painful period for HHS as we downsize from 82,000 full-time employees to around 62,000.

We’re keenly focused on paring away excess administrators while increasing the number of scientists and frontline health providers, so that we can do a better job for the American people.

We’re going to streamline our agency and eliminate the redundancies and invite everyone to align behind a simple, bold mission.

I want every HHS employee to wake up every morning asking themselves, ‘what can I do to restore American health today?’

I want to empower everyone in the HHS family to have a sense of purpose and pride and a sense of personal agency and responsibility to this larger goal.

We’re going to save taxpayers nearly $2 billion a year, and we’re going to return HHS to its original commitment to public health and gold standard science.

I want this agency to be once again, a revered scientific institution that once made HHS the envy of the world.

I want everyone who works here to be proud of this agency, to be proud of the work, to feel a renewed inspiration in their own sense of responsibility for our success in restoring America to good health.

Streamlining HHS is part of a shift to new priorities, especially ending the chronic disease epidemic with clean water, safe food, effective medicine, good science, radical transparency, and a healthy environment.

I think most Americans would agree with me that throwing more money at healthcare isn’t going to solve the problem or would’ve solved it already.

Obviously what we’ve been doing hasn’t worked. That’s why we’re making this dramatic overhaul, but the real overhaul is even bigger.

The real overhaul is improving the health of the entire nation to make America healthy again.

HHS union notifications about reduction in force

Subject: HHS RIF - Union Notification

Dear Union Leader,

This letter serves as formal notification that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be implementing a Reduction in Force (RIF) of employees across HHS that will likely impact members of your union.

The relevant information for the implementation of the RIF is as follows:

This action is being taken in accordance with President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14210, dated February 11, 2025, and HHS’s broader strategy to improve its efficiency and effectiveness to make America healthier.

Specific notices to employees may be sent as early as Friday, March 28, 2025.

Please advise if or when the union would like to begin negotiations on impact and implementation.

V/r,

Thomas J. Nagy Jr., MLER Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Resources/ Chief Human Capital Officer

March 24, 2025

FDA’s Peter Marks at Duke Margolis event

Peter Marks, FDA [01:27:18]

As we think about trials here, we’re looking to have evidence that helps us get things off to a good start, which means that although we are not responsible for deployment of vaccines, we can help generate the evidence that will get them off to a good start, which means trial designs can potentially incorporate looking at the effect of a vaccine on transmission.

We know that for certain infectious diseases vaccines do a very good job and– or did a good job at preventing transmission, which a good example of that was the older pertussis vaccine. Great example of a vaccine, which both prevented disease and prevented the transmission of the infectious agent.

We know that, for instance, the first generation COVID 19 vaccines did not do a terrible job. They had 40 50% reduction in transmission, but subsequently that fell off practically to zero or close to it.

So we do have this desire to try to have a combination of ideally of direct benefit and indirect benefit, baked into the vaccines. It’s just that it’s so much more expensive often to get the data that one needs when one’s developing a vaccine about the prevention of transmission.

That’s because when you’re developing a vaccine, it’s much easier to look at individual surrogates of protection or correlates of protection, , such as antibody levels, in an individual or the prevention of disease in a given individual then in household contexts, et cetera.

When this was suggested, for instance, during COVID 19 that a study be done that would look at the – formally look at the interruption of transmission, the cost became just insurmountable. And so, unless you had a particular population that you could use that was at risk, for instance, college students, or those in the military population, in a given closed location. It’s very hard to imagine that.

But I think as we move forward, we need to think about generating this kind of evidence, because we are going to need compelling evidence to help people feel convinced that vaccination is good for themselves, but also for their communities and having that kind of information may be helpful.

I just want to also just back up and say that by definition, when we’re developing vaccines for broad use, one of their direct benefits has to be that they are very safe medical products. Okay? That just goes without saying, because that goes to getting acceptance of people both for their individual direct benefit, as well as potentially for the indirect benefit, right?

If you have an intervention that you can do– that provides you with a good degree of safety, personally, but then it can help others, you’ll tend to do it. We hope that’s why people wear seat belts, etc, because things like that, where there’s – the cost of this in terms of potential adverse effects is very low.

We by design make sure that’s the case with any vaccines that are approved. And I think that’s also one of the issues that factors into this whole equation of whether you have individual benefit, as well as societal benefit, from the vaccines that we deploy

At the end of the day, and I think the case here is a really interesting one because, when you look at the cost of deploying a vaccine, if you can interrupt transmission, you get even more cost benefit from it, right?

And that’s why the effectiveness of measles vaccine, when you have a high rate of measles vaccination, in other words, measles vaccine with measles vaccination rates over 95% is an incredibly cost effective– It’s usually rated among– this is public health when it gets to its best, right?

Low cost medical product given twice, uh, early in life, at when you have at high coverage rates leads to the abrogation of a potentially deadly disease. That’s a good thing, right? That kills at a rate of about one in a thousand.

So this is, I think how we have to be thinking here: highly safe medical products deployed and how we generate the evidence though going forward is gonna be critical.

Because I heard this earlier on loud and clear, and I have now experienced it. We’re– vaccine mandates are not going to get us there, right. It’s going to be compelling evidence– and it’s going to be compelling evidence, both for vaccine effectiveness, for the individual and potentially for the community, as well as compelling evidence that the vaccines are safe for the individual.

Now, it’s up to people much smarter than me about how we’re going to end up communicating through some layers that would seem to not want to accept that vaccination is the public health triumph that it is. And I won’t say more about that because I’d like to keep coming– I’d like to be able to come back to this desk tomorrow morning. It’s a nice desk.

But we do have to think about this because at the end of the day, I can guarantee you that sometime in the next 10 or 20 years, we’re going to have another infectious threat that’s gonna come across this country. And if we cannot get the kind of confidence, both in the individual and in the societal benefits of vaccination, we are going to unnecessarily lose at least tens of thousands of American lives, whether it’s influenza, another wave of a novel COVID or disease X.

And so this is why we’ve got to get this right. Both for the direct indirect benefit.

…

Peter Marks, FDA [01:35:43]

That goes back directly back to this benefit risk calculation, if the risk– and you said it already, the risk is low enough to the mother, right? Low enough to the neonate. In other words, very low rate of miscarr– that that’s why we were obsessed. There was an obsession about rates of miscarriage or anything that could upset the risk calculus.

But otherwise to have something that is a relatively easy intervention, right, uh, that doesn’t involve having to give a newborn an infusion of something, an injection or infusion, quite a nice thing to be able to have, right. Whether it be for, Tdap or RSV, things that can provide a neonate with protection against something that’s life threatening.

And, you know, some somehow we’ve seemed to have missed that– in the old days, there was like life years that we used to calculate often saved. If you save a six month old from death, you’ve got a lot of life years that you’ve added.

And so I think we need to that this concept of, well, there are only a couple of deaths that occur from COVID or a couple of deaths from influenza. You know, watching children, and having interacted with families that have lost children to infectious diseases, it breaks the whole family.

So I think we need to– we need to be thinking– not that it’s any better for an older family, or older person. But I do think we need to think about this and the way we get there, Mark, is I think we set that risk tolerance as very risk averse. It means we demand a lot of our vaccine candidates.

And it does mean that sometimes we’re going to kick out candidates, that if they’re not safe enough.

Now remember that this risk calculus shifts. So if suddenly, somehow, we had – I’m just gonna make up hypothetical, the Ebola Kansas strain suddenly, sorry didn’t mean to pick on any place, and there was a 25% mortality, and you had a vaccine that caused an incidence of GBS or something of 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000, you’d say, nope sorry, we’re going to deploy. Right. We’d shift that risk calculus based on the threat.

But for – and this has to be– this risk calculus is something that also seems to get lost.

Because what has happened is we for vaccines, we are continually focusing now only on adverse events and not on benefits. And I think that’s because of the success we’ve had with vaccines.

Measles vaccine is an incredible victim of its success. But if you want to see what happens when you don’t have measles vaccine, you don’t have to go very far, just take a trip to Africa and Asia, and you can see what happens when you don’t have measles vaccine.

You have a 149,000 deaths in a year.

…

Peter Marks, FDA [02:04:02]

We shouldn’t like have like magical thinking the that we had our 1 in 100 years pandemic, and we’re not going to see any infectious diseases for the next hundred years. That’s magical thinking, we don’t need that.

We probably do need to be prepared for the next time we have an infectious outbreak that’s pretty widespread.

And one of the things that I think you you’re spot on, we could do is think about how we could construct, somewhat, although they’re a little bit artificial, we have a– because we’re going to naturally have differences across the country in uptake of vaccines, we may have the ability to look in a randomized manner if we have the right way to measure infectious spread, be it wastewater or other metrics in a given area that combined with understanding the vaccine coverage in those areas could allow us to get at some of these questions in a much more efficient manner.

And in a way that’s almost incidental to data we’re going to obtain anyway, right? So it’s not like some big incremental cost.

The COVID study that was going to be done was going to involve going to a college and doing nasal swabs on students like every other day, for three months, which was gonna cost tens of millions of dollars. Here you would be doing something that would be going on a regular– you’d be doing this as part of your surveillance anyway, potentially. And some of the data you’d be, would be automatically captured from the vaccines that would be given.

So I think you’re right. If we did some planning and advance, we probably could bake some of this in and it’s one of those things that you design it, you put it aside and at some point you activate it when you need to, you probably want to freshen it every few years. But it’s a pretty good chance that we’re gonna need to activate it at some point.

…

Peter Marks, FDA [02:11:13]

I think it’s been a– these are really all interesting things to think about.

I do think this is – it is really– we are fast approaching a time when we are going to have to understand individual and societal benefits of vaccination.

And they do both– I know we have this incredible bent for the individual right now, but just like we have speed limits to prevent disasters on highways, right. We have safe, mandatory safety belt use to prevent the cost of having people needing major trauma surgery, when they get into massive accidents, to reduce that.

Vaccines, I think we have to try to make the case here, by a combination of showing how safe we can make them. We have to make them as safe as we possibly can and trying to figure out ways to help people understand how much they can help those, once again, in their communities by gathering the evidence to show them what a difference it can make in their communities.

Sen Bill Cassidy on Susan Monarez

“CDC needs reform. That’s why I launched a Senate Republican CDC working group. I look forward to meeting Dr. Susan Monarez and learning more about her vision for the agency.”

Robert F Kennedy Jr at White House cabinet meeting

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:15:32]

I’m very grateful to you and very grateful for the partnership with DOGE, with Elon.

We’ve identified extraordinary waste in my department and HHS.

The expenditures, the budget of HHS during the administration went up by 38%. The employees went up by 17% and healthcare went down.

We have 40 comms departments. We have 40 procurement departments. We have 40 IT departments. And we have 40 HR. None of them talking to each other.

We are with Elon’s help eliminating the redundancies. We are streamlining our department.

We’re going to go back to providing gold standard science.

We’re going to get the money to the scientists and to the patients rather than to the administrators and to the bureaucrats.

And we’re going to restore gold standard science, and we’re going to make America healthy again.

HHS spokesperson on Children’s Health Defense

Secretary Kennedy has instructed the Office of the General Counsel to send a formal demand to Children’s Health Defense requesting the removal of their website. At HHS, we are dedicated to restoring our agencies to their tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science. We will leave no stone unturned in identifying the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic as part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again.

March 20, 2025

CDC spokesperson on ACIP meeting

Attributable to CDC Spokesperson:

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting originally set for February 2025 has been rescheduled to April 15 and 16, 2025, which will include a measles update.

Background:

The Federal Register Notice is expected to post on Friday, March 21, and be published on Monday, March 24. Once published, the updated agenda will be available online at ACIP Meeting Information ACIP CDC. Written public comment will be available from March 31 to April 11, 2025. For instructions on how to request to make an oral public comment, please visit the public comment section of the ACIP meeting information page.

Robert F Kennedy Jr on “Fox and Friends” discussing formula, cell phones, food additives

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:00:04]

We’re not saying that there’s dangerous levels of heavy metals in formula.

These are very, very complex formulations and there’s some indication– there’s a report in Consumer Report that says that there are high levels. Although none of them violate the current safety guidelines.

We have an– FDA and NIH have not tested in the past for these. And we’re going to test comprehensively now.

We’re actually– we’re going to also look at the– we’re going to review the formulations for the first time since 1998, and really make sure to do comprehensive tests to make sure this is the healthiest product that our kids can have, and that we can produce it here in the United States.

Some parents prefer the European formulas and we’re gonna extend the personal importation ban from them, but we want to be able to produce all of this in the United States.

We have at least one organic producer now in this country. And we met with all of the big companies at a round table and talked to them about being able to help them to reform their formulations, to strip away the red tape, to make sure that, if they– that they can change ingredients without a lot of regulatory restrictions.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:01:42]

I don’t think that this is going to bring the cost of baby formula down, but we need new competition. There are new companies that are making baby formula in this country.

It is a very narrow market right now. And the only way– which means there’s only really four companies that are producing almost all of our baby formula. And when there’s no competition, you’re going to get high prices.

And the only way that we’re gonna bring those prices down is to bring more competition in the United States, make sure that we can manufacture all of these products in the United States. It is a national security issue as well.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:03:05]

There are many other countries in the world that have banned cell phones in our schools. There’s now 19 states with these restrictions.

I applaud Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia. And I asked him to take me out to one of the schools that was the first one to adopt his executive order, which was the Louisa county high school. And that school’s one of the top performing schools in the state. I think it is the top performing school in the state.

And I wanted to see– I wanted to talk to parents and students and the teachers about what they felt about the cell phone ban. And I was shocked by how supportive they were, particularly the students.

I polled students in a bunch of classrooms and in the cafeteria, only one of them said he didn’t like the ban. The other one said that it helped them. It increased their socialization. It helped them do better homework.

And the parents were very happy because the discipline of not having a cell phone at school also meant that it was easier to teach your kids not to use it when they were driving their car and to do their homework at home without referencing their cell phones all the time.

The cell phones also produce electromagnetic radiation. Which has been shown to damage, to do neurological damage to kids when it’s around them all day. And to cause cause cellular damage and even cancer.

So a cell phone use and social media use on the cell phone has been directly connected with depression, with poor performance in schools, with suicidal ideation, with substance abuse.

And you know, the other countries have done this. The states that are doing this have found that it is a much healthier environment when kids are not using cell phones at schools.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:05:51]

We told them that we wanted the dyes out of the food.

The science on the dyes is so overwhelming. They’re making products now in this country that have the dyes in them like Froot Loops, for example, and you buy the same product in Canada and it doesn’t have the dyes. You buy the same product in Europe and it doesn’t have the dyes.

So there are a lot of ingredients and one of the of the things that we’re doing is we’ve launched a review of the GRAS standards and we’re going to get rid of the GRAS standards for most products.

The GRAS standards is a standard that was adopted in 1958. It it’s a– it was adopted because when FDA was created to regulate food, there were foods that were generally recognized as safe, GRAS, generally recognized as safe, like flour, like dairy, like eggs. And they didn’t want to make companies test those products. So they created that designation.

But that designation was expanded by an industry that began taking advantage of it. So that any new chemical that they want to add to our food is generally recognized as safe, and gets no review.

That’s why we have 10,000 ingredients in our food in this country. In Europe, they only have 400 and we have the worst chronic disease burden of any country in the world.

So we are going to get rid of the GRAS standards for new products. We’re going to go back and review all of these old ingredients to make sure that they are safe. And we’re going to encourage these companies to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:07:42]

In this country, food ingredients are innocent until proven guilty. In Europe and other countries, they have to prove themselves safe before you add them. And we ought to have that kind of protection for American citizens.

David Weldon statement on pick for CDC director

I thoroughly support Dr. Ladapo for CDC director. He should be at the top of President Trump’s list. He has done a great job for us here in Florida and his education and experience make him the perfect choice.

…

Who ever they pick, to get past Cassidy, it’s best if they have never said anything remotely critical of the childhood vaccine program. Though 90% of parents are refusing COVID shots for their kids, 50% are refusing the flu shot, and 10% are refusing the measles.

March 19, 2025

CDC spokesperson on streamlining CDC’s HIV prevention

Attributable to a CDC spokesperson: HHS is following the Administration’s guidance and taking a careful look at all divisions to see where there is overlap that could be streamlined to support the President’s broader efforts to restructure the federal government. This is to ensure that HHS better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard. No final decision on streamlining CDC’s HIV prevention division has been made.

On background, attributable to an HHS Official: if this decision is even made, this work would be continued elsewhere at HHS.

HHS spokesperson on funding for mRNA vaccines research

A data call was conducted by NIH to understand what NIH is funding on mRNA vaccines. No mRNA vaccine funding has been cancelled.

March 14, 2025

Brett Giroir statement on continuing at Altesa BioSciences

During the Trump transition, I have been serving as an unpaid advisor at the request of the immediate past HHS Acting Secretary, Dorothy Fink. This work will soon end. No one from the Administration has contacted me to discuss leading CDC. As I’ve stated from the outset, I intend to remain focused as CEO of Altesa BioSciences on the exciting progress being made developing new treatments for viral infections in vulnerable populations. ADM Brett Giroir MD

Mehmet Oz at Senate finance hearing on nomination for CMS

11:12:18 SEN WYDEN

What I want to know, yes or no, since you cherish Medicaid, will you agree to oppose cuts in the Medicaid program?

MEHMET OZ

I cherish Medicaid and I’ve worked within the Medicaid environment quite extensively, as I highlighted, practicing at Columbia University.

…

11:41:35 MEHMET OZ

This issue of preauthorization is a pox on the system. We spend 12% of the health care budget on administrative costs. Pre-authorization is misused in some settings.

There needs to be a mechanism to confirm that procedures are worthwhile, but I’ll offer some ideas on how this might work. And if confirmed, I’d love to push some of these ideas and share them with other members of the committee.

There are about 15,000 procedures that could have pre-authorization. They represent most of the things that are done. Not just operations, but medications that are given, etc.

Insurance companies today use preauthorization for about 5,500 of those procedures. But interestingly, not all insurance companies focus on the same things. And even within the idea– the procedure that’s being preauthorized, the criteria for accepting it are also all over the place.

So it’s very difficult to automate that. And so it tends to be misused, because it stalls the process, as your physician colleague in Florida pointed out, makes it more expensive. And we’re spending money, wasting money, trying to do a process that should be automated. 

I would argue we could limit the number of preauthorized procedures to a thousand. Be very clear, if you’re going to have a knee replacement and you can bend your knee more than 120 degrees, you don’t get to get the knee replacement or whatever number you want to put in there.

And then if we know those numbers ahead of time, like a credit card approval doesn’t take you three months. You know immediately whether the transaction is approved or not. We will be able to do something similar so that pre-authorization could happen rapidly.

…

11:45:35 MEHMET OZ

So the MedPAC assessments have revealed what you just shared, that we’re actually apparently paying more for Medicare Advantage than we’re paying for regular Medicare. So it’s upside down.

And I think there are ways for us to look, for example, at the upcoding that’s going on, that’s happening systemically in many systems, in many programs to make sure that people who are being appropriately paid for taking care of sick patients, but not for patients who aren’t ill.

So for example, if someone’s showing up at your home to figure out if you have a small plaque in your carotid because they’re going to charge a lot more for the care of your plaque, which they’re not actually going to do anything for, that’s wrong. And I think we have numerous tools. 

A part of this is just recognizing there’s a new sheriff in town. We actually have to go after places and areas where we’re not managing the American people’s money well. And if we can do that effectively, and both of us, I think, agree that there are opportunities to do that that are massive in scope, but they’re also important emotionally for the program. 

You want people to have confidence in the program. The employees administering, the career employees administering Medicare, and the beneficiaries should all feel the system is working for them.

…

12:34:31 SEN SMITH

How do you think or do you think that AI should be used in prior authorization decisions?

MEHMET OZ

Senator Smith, I enjoyed visiting with you and thank you for sharing some of your ideas at that time. And this is a good place to start.

AI can be used for good or for evil. And it, to a large extent, depends on who’s using it for what purpose.

I think AI could play a vital role in accelerating preauthorization.

One reality in the healthcare system right now is the average insurance company has about 3,000 procedures that they use–they rely on preauthorization from. But they’re not the same 3,000 procedures.

So if you switch insurance companies, you may move from one that used to preauthorize a knee replacement, the new one doesn’t.

So I would argue that to use AI wisely, we would make a decision, which is we’re only going to preauthorize 1,000 procedures. Everything else just should get done because it’s only 1,000 where there’s a concern. 

…

12:42:10 MEHMET OZ

The deeper promise that we should all be making to America is we’re going to make it easy for America to do the right thing when it comes to their health.

Some of these decisions are not difficult. Some of them need to be simplified. And some of them need to be reminded frequently.

And Senator Wyden and I had spoken about this a little bit, the idea of giving incentives to patients is an idea that I think is a worthy one, especially for Medicaid beneficiaries.

If people don’t feel Like it matters what they do. If they don’t think they have agency over their future, that they’re getting up in the morning doesn’t really make the world a better place, then yeah, they’re not going to take proactive steps to reduce their diabetes or another action that would dramatically reduce their life expectancy and their cost to the healthcare system.

So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to do this. And we should be innovative and explore ideas. And I think there’s an ecosystem we can build together to engender that kind of enthusiasm from people on the outside of medicine who want to make it better.

We have got to challenge the incumbents in the system to have new ideas bubble to the top so we can pick the winners based on competition.

…

12:50:06 SEN LUJAN 

Yes or no, will you continue to defend Medicare drug pricing negotiation programs in court?

MEHMET OZ

It’s the law. I’m going to defend it and use it.

SEN LUJAN

Yes or no, will you commit to the process of negotiating prescription drug prices in Medicare?

MEHMET OZ

I’m going to look, as the president has instructed me to already, for every single way that we can reduce drug prices.

And there are lots of options available. I feel compelled to pursue every one of them.

SEN LUJAN

I’ll ask you one more time because I think I heard it, but I’ll give you another chance.

Yes or no, will you commit to the process of negotiating prescription drug prices in Medicare?

MEHMET OZ

Senator, it’s one of many approaches I want to use.

…

12:53:27 MEHMET OZ

The answer to is I am in favor of work requirements, and I don’t believe we should allow–

SEN WARNOCK

Do you think a family should have to fill out paperwork every month? Just to get health care?

MEHMET OZ

I don’t think you need to use paperwork to prove a work requirement. And I don’t think that should be used as an obstacle, a disingenuous effort to block people from getting on Medicaid.

However, I believe we would both probably agree that there’s value in work and it doesn’t have to be going to a job. It could be getting education. It should be showing that you want to contribute to society.

Frankly, you could volunteer at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where I did a show with you once, that would, for me, fulfill the requirement.

…

13:23:39 SEN WYDEN

In terms of what you’re going to be dealing with if confirmed, what do you think the biggest abuses are right now in the private insurance sector?

MEHMET OZ

Medicare Advantage sales. 

SEN WYDEN 

Such as? I mean, give me an example of–

MEHMET OZ

There’s brokers that get involved in churning policies. So they get you to switch from policy to policy.

We should potentially consider whether you need to reelect Medicare Advantage every year and potentially offer multi-year programs for seniors, because that would save some of the money that the brokers are taking out of the middle.

Some brokers do a great job, some don’t. We probably have too many. I think there are ways for us to ensure that that marketing process works better for the folks involved.

But it’s also what the Medicare Advantage plans also do with the monies that they use to incentivize the American people, the 32, 33 million people on Medicare Advantage to come into their programs.

And we should examine whether some of that money should be reimbursed to the American people to ensure that Medicare Advantage does not cost more than fee-for-service Medicare. 

March 13, 2025

Dr David Weldon’s statement on nomination being pulled

Twelve hours before my scheduled confirmation hearing in The Senate, I received a phone call from an assistant at the White House informing me that my nomination to be Director of CDC was being withdrawn because there were not enough votes to get me confirmed. I then spoke to HHS Secretary Bobbie Kennedy who was very upset. He was told the same thing and that he had been looking forward to working with me at CDC. He said I was the perfect person for the job.

Bobbie told me that earlier that morning he had breakfast with Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine who said she now had reservations about my nomination and was considering voting no. I had a very pleasant meeting with her 2 weeks prior where she expressed no reservation, but at my meeting with her staff on March 11 they were suddenly very hostile-a bad sign. They repeatedly accusing me of being “antivax”, even though I reminded them that I actually give hundreds of vaccines every year in my medical practice. More than Twenty years ago, while in congress I raised some concerns about childhood vaccine safety, and for some reason Collins staff suddenly couldn’t get over that no matter what I said back.

There are 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee so losing one, was a problem if all the Democrats vote no which they have been doing. I can assume that the White House staff had my nomination withdrawn also because the Republican Chairman Dr. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was also voting no. Ironically, he is also an internist like me and I have known him for years and I thought we were friends. But he too was also throwing around the claim that I was “antivax” or that I believed that vaccines cause autism which I have never said. He actually once asked that my nomination be withdrawn. So, he was a big problem and losing Collins too was clearly too much for the White House. The president is a busy man doing good work for our nation and the last thing he needs is a controversy about CDC.

The concern of many people is that big Pharma was behind this which is probably true. They are hands-down, the most powerful lobby organization in Washington DC giving millions of dollars to politicians on both sides of the aisle. They also purchased millions of dollars of advertising in newspapers, magazines, and on television. For any news or organization to take on big Pharma could be suicide. Many media actually carry water for Pharma. They also give generously to medical societies and colleges and universities. I have learned the hard way don’t mess with Pharma.

I have been told that Big Pharma had desperately tried to get rid of Bobby Kennedy but were unable due to the strong support of President Trump. Many people feel big Pharma actually feared me more than they feared Bobby because of my credibility and my knowledge of science and medicine. So, if they had to live with Bobby for 4 years they were definitely not going to have both him and me and put serious pressure on Collins and Cassidy.

My big sin was that as a congressman 25 years ago I had the temerity to take on the CDC and big Pharma on two critical childhood vaccine safety issues. Hundreds of parents had been coming to me from all over the country, insisting that their child has been seriously damaged by the inoculations. Some claimed it caused autism. The parents made two different assertions. One was the fact that FDA, CDC, and Pharma had allowed a tremendous amount of a neurotoxic preservative called thimerosal into the infant schedule and that the thimerosal was the cause of the problem.

Under pressure from me and many other members of the House, both Democrat and Republican, the CDC and Pharma removed the neurotoxic thimerosal, but it took them years to do it. One of the things that seemed to unite us in The House who engaged on this was that none of us took money from Pharma. Bernie Sanders actually joined us.

CDC ended up publishing a research study claiming the mercury had done no harm, but there were credible accusations that CDC had incorrectly manipulated the data to exonerate themselves. If confirmed I was planning on going back into the CDC database and quietly investigate this claim. Ironically, I was hoping to find no evidence of corruption of the science at CDC. Maybe in hearing it from me members of the public might be reassured and it might help improve the currently somewhat tarnished image of CDC and Pharma.

But I unfortunately also had the temerity to take on CDC and Pharma regarding another childhood vaccine safety issue, the safety of the measles vaccine called MMR. More than 25 years ago there were a series of articles published by a British pediatric gastroenterologist named of Andrew Wakefield. He had seen many parents who claimed that after the MMR their child had not only deteriorated developmentally but had also become fussy eaters and developed diarrhea. He did colonoscopies on the children and discovered that they had a new form of inflammatory bowel disease. His research was later duplicated and to this day he has been credited for defining this form of childhood inflammatory bowel disease.

Wakefield published 15 papers in all. Only one was withdrawn. The one that created the big controversy was published in a journal called Lancet and one of the co-authors on the paper was a highly respected Irish virologist by the name of O’Leary. I actually knew of O’Leary. I used to take care of AIDS patients prior to going to congress and I knew of O’Leary’s reputation as a solid scientist. One of the complications the AIDS patients were developing was a form of cancer called Kaposi Sarcoma and O’Leary had shown that the cancer occurred in the AIDS patients when there was co-infection with a second virus called Herpes Simplex Type 8.

Wakefield decided to give some of the colon biopsy specimens to O’Leary who was able to show using a technique called PCR that the inflammatory bowel disease biopsies in these children contained the vaccine strain measles viruses. The live virus in the vaccine was supposed to be weekend and not cause illness. This suggested that the children were not able to handle the viral particles and that it was causing an infection in their bowels which also might have been affecting their central nervous system and causing the autistic features.

When this article was published thousands of British parents started refusing the MMR and there were measles outbreaks. British health officials had their hands full. They decided to get the journal Lancet to withdraw the article and they actually got O’Leary to withdraw his research findings. I was following all of this closely and had actually met with O’Leary and I had looked at his biopsy micrographs and his PCR findings. It certainly looked to me like the vaccine particles were causing the problem in these children, and I was surprised that O’Leary withdrew his assertions.

I then called O’Leary on the phone and asked him why he was doing this. There was a very long pregnant pause. He then said that it had taken him many years to get to the place where he was in the scientific community, and after another pause, he said he had four small children at home. I had small children at home myself at the time and I understood what he was saying. If he didn’t do it, he was going to be fired. He was going to be ruined.

British officials were not satisfied with just getting the journal to withdraw the article and getting Dr. O’Leary to withdraw his claims. They then decided to begin proceedings to take away Dr. Wakefield’s medical license and one of his lead co-authors. Wakefield by this time had moved to the United States and to defend himself in court would have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars so he let them take his license away. But his lead co-author Dr. Simon Murch was still practicing medicine in England and decided to defend himself in court, and the government lost and they were not able to take his license away. If Wakefield had the money to defend himself, he would never have lost his license. The court documents clearly show that Wakefield and his co-authors had not done anything unethical or inappropriate and their work was possibly valid.

But that was all big Pharma needed. They could go around, saying it and feeding it to the media that the research had been withdrawn and Wakefield lost his license. But I looked at the micrographs and it sure looked to me like there was vaccine strain measles particles infecting the bowels of these kids.

The CDC was charged with the responsibility of repeating to Wakefield research and showing that the measles vaccine was safe, but they never did it the right way. They decided to de epidemiologic studies instead of a clinical study. Again, as in the mercury study there were claims made that indicators that there was a problem with MMR were there. CDC was accused again of changing the protocol and data analysis until the association went away.

Ironically, I talked with Wakefield after all of this was over. He agreed with me that we have to vaccinate our kids for measles. He thought the solution was to give the vaccine at a slightly older age, like they do in many European countries. Or we might be able to do research and figure out why some kids have a bad reaction to the MMR. Clearly, big Pharma didn’t want me in the CDC investigating any of this.

There are a lot of additional ironies in all of this. I believe the CDC is mostly made up of really good people who really care about public health for our nation, though its credibility has been seriously tarnished because of the failures in the way the COVID-19 crisis was managed. 40% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans, don’t trust the CDC. Many don’t trust Pharma as well. I really wanted to try to make the CDC a better more respected agency and killing my nomination may have the opposite effect. Distrust may worsen.

I also have a lot of respect for the pharmaceutical industry. I practice internal medicine and I use medication’s in caring for my patients that were invented by American pharmaceutical companies. I can tell you firsthand they are very effective and help a lot of people. The new ones are outrageously expensive, but once they go off patent, they can become very affordable and very life-saving for many people with chronic and acute illnesses.

But I unfortunately, am viewed very negatively by the industry that I use on a daily basis to help my patients. Bobby Kennedy is a good man who really is passionate about improving the health of the American people. President Trump did a good thing in making him secretary of HHS. Hopefully they can find someone for CDC who can survive the confirmation process and get past pharma and find some answers.

White House official on background about MAHA commission

On background from a WH official:

Yesterday’s roundtable, moderated by Sec. Kennedy, was broken into four main segments: nutrition, physical activity, over-medicalization and standards of care, and environmental impacts. For each segment, an agency official opened it up before taking questions from MAHA moms. MAHA Commission and agency officials directly sought input from MAHA moms (and everyday moms) for what they would like to see addressed in the “Making our Children Healthy Again Assessment” and the subsequent strategy in order to help make it easier for mothers and fathers to raise healthy kids and families.

Roundtable Participants Included:

Sub-Topics Covered:

March 12, 2025

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Hannity, continued

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:00:43]

Some years we have hundreds of measles outbreaks. We have measles outbreaks every year. And you know, part of that is that there are people who don’t vaccinate, but also the vaccine itself wanes. The vaccine wanes about 4.5% per year. So that means older people are essentially unvaccinated.

They aren’t– their immune system is not protected. And one of the problems is that tends to shift measles infections to older groups and also to very young children. So, if you get – it used to be when I were kids, everybody got measles and measles gave you protective, lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that.

The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but many people it wanes. And one of the problems is it does not appear to provide maternal immunity. It used to be a very young kid, you don’t want a very– a one year old kid getting measles. That’s very dangerous. They were protected by breast milk and by maternal immunity.

And women who get vaccinated do not provide that level of maternal immunity that the natural measles infection did. So you’re now seeing measles hit very, very young kids and hitting older people within whom the vaccine has waned. And that is something that we need to worry about. And that we’re looking at HHS.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:02:37]

Death is very, you know, from measles historically, it was between one and 1 in 1,200 and 1 in 10,000. And so it does not have a high infection fatality rate. And the people who tended to die were people who had comorbidities and they were malnourished, which is less a problem because we, the vaccine came around in 1963 and the WICS program, which fed all of these hungry kids in our country came in in 64.

And so– but it’s something that we’re worried about. It’s something that we’re keeping an eye on. I’ve met, I’ve spoken with Governor Abbott, I’ve spoken with health officials all over Texas. I’ve spoken with the family of the one girl who died and it’s a heartbreaking story. And– and I’ve spoken with health officials all over.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.[00:03:54]

I’m a freedom of choice person. We should have transparency. We should have an informed choice. And– but if people don’t want it, they shouldn’t be– the government shouldn’t force them to do it.

There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year, it causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes. Encephalitis, and blindness, etc. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.

And what we need to do is give them the best information, encourage them to vaccinate, the vaccine does stop the spread of the disease.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:05:23]

First of all, avian flu will never be eradicated. It is endemic in wild populations of birds and particularly mallards. And that’s what infects the domestic flocks.

And so you’ll never get rid of it and it doesn’t appear to hurt wild birds. They have some kind of immunity.

And the strategy– the White House, all of my agencies have advised against vaccination of birds. Because if you vaccinate with a leaky vaccine, in other words, a vaccine that does not provide sterilizing immunity, that does not absolutely protect against the disease, you turn those flocks into mutation factories.

They’re generating, they’re teaching the organism how to mutate and it’s much– it destabilizes it. And it’s much more likely to jump to animals if you do that.

So all my agency heads from NIH, CDC and FDA had all said, we should not be vaccinating, it’s dangerous for human beings to vaccinate the birds.

The question is, should you cull those blocks? Most of our scientists are against the culling operation. They think that we should be testing therapeutics on those flocks. They should isolate them. You should let the disease go through them and identify the birds that survive, which are the birds that probably have a genetic capacity, genetic inclination for immunity. And those should be the birds that we breed, like the wild population.

Right now, the White House strategy is to repopulate those farms that have been depopulated. We’ve killed 166 million chickens. That’s why we have an egg crisis.

And, the disease is not passed through food. So you cannot get it, as far as we know, you cannot get it from an egg or or milk or meat from an infected animal.

The White House strategy now, and Brooke Rollins who runs USDA and I am all on board with this. Now we should armor the domestic populations to insulate them from wild infiltration.

This is how these birds are getting infected, a wild mallard, most of them are in open air poultry farms. A mallard will fly in to eat some of the corn and that infected mallard will infect the flock.

And so I think that that is the best strategy and also to intensively test therapeutic drugs on those flocks, so that, for example, you tell you– you put a therapy in with half the population. And if that half that is treated survives, now you have a drug that potentially is useful in human beings to treat avian flu.

That’s what we should be doing.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:08:25]

I saw him yesterday and I think he’s lost 30 pounds.

Sean Hannity [00:08:28]

Okay. He looks great. And he told me he’s not using, for example, if he has a burger now, he usually doesn’t have it with a bun.

He’s made–

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:08:38]

I didn’t know that he was actually changing his diet.

Sean Hannity [00:08:40]

Oh, you didn’t know that part?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:08:42]

No.

March 11, 2025

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Hannity

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:01:29]

Processed foods and seed oil is one of the components of processed foods. And that is, you know, all the science indicates that ultra processed foods are what are behind the principal culprit in this extraordinary explosion, the epidemic we have, of chronic disease.

When my uncle was president, 3% of Americans had chronic disease. Today, 60% do. We have 66% of adults are diabetic or prediabetic, 38% of teens.

When you and I were kids, Sean, the average pediatrician would see one case of juvenile diabetes in his lifetime, over a 40 or 50 year career. Today, one out of every three kids who walks through his office door is diabetic or pre diabetic.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:02:34]

We are poisoning ourselves. And it’s coming from principally these ultra processed foods and what we’re trying to do, and as President Trump wants us to have radical transparency and to incentivize companies like this one to switch to traditional ingredients like beef tallow.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:04:25]

Popeyes, Outback, Sweet Green, Buffalo Wild, they’ve all made the switch or they’re in the transition of making the switch.

We want to do everything that we can to incentivize these companies to be transparent, to switch over from ultra processed food, and to be part of this movement, to make America healthy again.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:07:15]

There are studies coming out of Stanford and Harvard that show a lot of mental illness, including anxiety and depression, are related to food. And that changing your diet, food is medicine, by changing your diet, you can lose some of those diagnoses.

And this Sean is a uniquely American problem. This is not happening, like it is here, elsewhere in the world.

March 10, 2025

FDA email to staff on voluntary separation incentive payments

Eligible Positions: Employees in any FDA VSIP-eligible occupation, Center, Office, or Program including the following:

Ineligible Positions: Inspectors and investigators in the Office of Inspections and Investigations (Oll) including positions within the Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI); reviewers in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), the Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), and reviewers in OC offices; physical security positions; cybersecurity positions; and all PHS Commissioned Corps Officers.

March 7, 2025

CDC spokesperson on report of vaccines and autism study

As President Trump said in his Joint Address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening. The American people expect high quality research and transparency and that is what CDC is delivering.

March 6, 2025

Marty Makary at Senate health committee hearing

10:17:42 SEN MURRAY

I want to know what you are reevaluating it on. What are you looking at to make a decision, whether to reconvene it?

MAKARY

In conjunction with the center director of the biologics center, I would reevaluate which topics deserve a convening of the advisory committee members on VRBPAC, and which may not require the convening.

Obviously, during–

SEN MURRAY

Well, what would you base the decision on?

MAKARY

Well, you can ask the Biden administration that chose not to convene the committee meeting for the COVID booster.

…

11:06:13 MAKARY

I do think it makes sense to review the totality of data and ongoing data.

I know personally of OB doctors who prefer to insist, even though they have the option to prescribe otherwise, but they choose to insist that mifepristone be taken when necessary, in their office, as they observe the person taking it. 

And I think their concern there is that if this drug is in the wrong hands, it could be used for coercion.

…

11:17:56 MAKARY

So I think seed oils are a good example of where we could benefit from a consolidation of the scientific research. And I don’t think it’s any one ingredient in the food supply that’s making our nation’s children sick.

With a 30% rate of insulin resistance and diabetes in American teenagers today, that is a massive signal in the data. And so I think we have to look at the totality of every single thing in school lunch programs, in the diet of our nation’s children, when we’re using tax dollars to make purchases of foods that we know make our nation’s children sick, we have to reexamine how we’re spending those tax dollars.

So one thing I would like to work on is a school lunch program for some school districts on a pilot basis to transition to healthier foods. A lot of school districts want to, but they don’t know how, and they may not have the funds. So I’ve been discussing this with Jay Bhattacharya and others in the administration.

And I hope that’s something we can do.

March 5, 2025

Robert F Kennedy Jr on Fox Nation interview about measles and others

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:04:04]

I’ve been in touch with the governor, with Governor Abbott, who I talked to last week, as you know.

A little girl died. She was a member of the Mennonite community. She was unvaccinated and she’s the first measles death since 2015 in our country, the second measles death since 2005.

So the disease is a self-limiting childhood disease of the four childhood diseases of mumps, chickenpox, German measles, also known as rubella. It was always the most serious, it can cause death. It can cause encephalopathy and pneumonia and blindness.

In rare cases, the death rate for measles in our country, in 1963, prior to the introduction of the vaccines was about 1 in 1,200 to 1 in 10,000. So it’s a very, very low infection fatality rate. The overall population death rate of measles was about one in half a million.

But it can result in very serious consequences in some cases, and we are doing everything we can that that to make sure that that doesn’t happen again, that people have access to good medicines, including those who want them, to vaccines, which do prevent infection.

I’ve been in touch with the department of health there, with leaders of the Mennonite community. I have spoken to the parents of the child who died. It was very, very emotional and long conversation with them.

And I think I have some understanding of what’s happening in the Mennonite community and why they have this resistance.

But I’ve also spoken to frontline doctors, which is something that I think the CDC has not been good at doing in the past, to see what’s working.

There are two wonderful doctors there. A doctor called Richard Bartlett and another called Ed Benjamin.

Ed Benjamin is a family physician from Lubbock. Richard Barlett is an emergency room physician from Midland and Amarillo.

And they have treated most of the patients, actually, over 108 patients in the last 48 hours. And they’re getting very, very good results they report from budesonide, which is a steroid, it’s a 30 year old steroid and they clarithromycin and also cod liver oil, which has high concentrations of vitamin A and vitamin D. And they’re seeing what they describe as almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery from that.

We don’t make it at HHS because we haven’t done a clinical trial on those and we should have, but we haven’t, and we’re going to.

We need to look at those therapies and other therapies. We need to really do a good job of talking to the frontline doctors and see what is working on the ground, because those therapeutics have really been ignored by the agency for a long, long time.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:07:54]

What Dr. Bartlett and Dr. Benjamin have said, what other doctors say, is that the best, the safest application of vitamin A is through cod liver oil, because, you’re getting it through food and you’re not– and the toxicity issue is no longer an issue.

You can test people at the hospital for vitamin A, there are lots of good studies out there, and there’s not the kind of studies that we should be doing that we’re doing now, but there’s lots of good studies out there that show that even as a prophylaxis, it’s effective in early treatment, mild cases.

You could ideally test people for vitamin A deficiencies, when they first get sick, but this rarely happens and it’s more expensive. And we recommend to local physicians that they consider vitamin A in their protocols, but also, you know, we’re going to try to provide as best we can, the experiences of frontline doctors, so that physicians really have a battery and arsenal of therapies to use when children actually do get sick.

You pointed out there is malnutrition in west Texas, in Gaines county, and in the Mennonite community. The doctors that I’m talking to on the ground, the leaders, the community are reporting that the people who are getting sick are people who are, and the little girl who died, were malnutrition may have been an issue in her death.

So there’s a lot of poverty in that area, the food is kind of a food desert. The best thing that Americans can do is to keep themselves healthy.

It is very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person. So if you’re healthy, well nourished, in fact, the– measles at one point was killing about 10,000 people a year in our country at the time, but those deaths were eliminated through nutrition and sanitation.

Measles still is a very, very lethal disease in foreign countries and developed countries where there’s malnutrition, that’s mainly– and there were in 1963 prior to the introduction of the vaccine, there was about 400 people who died from measles. Almost all of them were malnourished children.

And so nutrition is absolutely critical and we need to eat good foods. We need to eat whole foods. We need to get plenty of exercise. And we see a correlation between people who get hurt by measles and people who are– who don’t have good nutrition or who don’t have good exercise regimen.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:11:35]

Measles vaccines protects the community. And there are people who cannot be, who should not be vaccinated in the community because they have autoimmune disease or other immune problems.

And if you do get vaccinated, you’re protecting those people from a possible spread.

The vaccine is contraindicated for people who are already sick, but it appears to work for people who are exposed or are likely to be exposed. So in highly unvaccinated communities like Mennonites, it’s something that we recommend.

But we also understand, there’s a lot of mistrust of the vaccines in that community. One of the consistent themes was that the Mennonites have told me and their leaders is there’s a number of vaccine injured kids, about a dozen, in that community.

And when we said, when I said, I’m going to send CDC and we have a CDC team arriving today, and I said that to the Mennonites, they said, well, we want them to also look into our vaccine injured kids and look them in the eye.

So they have religious reasons. They have other reasons with CDC in the past, has not done a good job at quantifying the risk of vaccines. We are going to do that now, so that people can make a real informed choice about what’s best for them, for their families and their communities.

At this point, we are recommending that people in those communities get vaccines. We understand a lot of them will not. And we’re going to try to make sure that they’re taken care of through the best therapeutic interventions that we can provide them or recommend for them.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:14:02]

We’re making sure that anybody who wants a vaccine can get that vaccine. And– but we also recognize there is religious reasons, and there is other barriers of mistrust for our government.

And we’re trying to remedy that. My approach to this issue is just going to be absolute radical transparency.

We’re going to get the information. You know, we have a vaccine surveillance system in this country that just doesn’t work. The CDC system, the CDC was ordered in 1986– when we gave– when Congress gave immunity from liability to vaccine companies, it ordered CDC to create a surveillance system that really captures all vaccine injuries.

Under CDC’s own studies, show that the current system that we have, the VAERS system, the vaccine adverse event reporting system, captures fewer than 1% of vaccine injury. That is absolutely inexcusable.

People need to know. We don’t know what the risk profile is for these products. Americans have the right to know, to be able to make an informed choice. You need to know the cost and the benefits, and we’ve never quantified the cost.

And that’s why there’s so much mistrust and we need to restore government trust. And we’re gonna do that by telling the truth. And by doing rigorous science, understand both safety and efficacy issues.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:17:19]

And we’ve in fact, said at the USDA, that they should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds and preserve the birds that are immune to it.

The vaccines do not– there’s no indication that those vaccines actually provide sterilizing immunity and all three of my health agencies, NIH, CDC, and FDA, the acting heads of those agencies have all recommended against the use of the bird flu vaccine for that particular genotype, because the vaccine could actually promote antigenic shift, which means you’re turning those birds into mutant factories.

And that could actually accelerate the jump to human beings. There’s never in history that we know of, bird flu’s been around for a hundred years. There’s never been human to human transmission.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:19:55]

We’re really taking direction from the state health departments and from Governor Abbott.

Right now, we have– we’re delivering vitamin A, we are providing assistance if people need ambulance rides.

You know, there’s a very– Gaines County where most the cases occurred is a very remote county. The nearest urgent care is in Seminole, Texas. And then, but the nearest real hospital is in Lubbock, which could be 70 or 80 miles from these cases.

Some of the Mennonites have said to me that they don’t feel comfortable going to Lubbock. They feel that there is religious prejudice that there’s– that has been a theme in their expression.

So what we’re trying to do is really to restore faith in government and to make sure that we are there to help them with their needs and not particularly to dictate what they ought to be doing.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:22:39]

We have this chronic disease epidemic.

And, you know, as I said, we’ve had two measles death in 20 years in this country, we have a hundred thousand autism diagnosises every year.

So, we need to keep our eye on the ball. Chronic disease is our enemy.

We had during COVID the highest death rate on the planet. We had 16% of the COVID deaths in our country, and we only have 4.2% of the global population. Why is that?

CDC says that it’s because we have the highest chronic disease burden in the world.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:23:32]

We need to understand the relationship between good health and chronic disease.

If you are healthy, it’s almost impossible for you to be killed by an infectious disease, in modern times, because we have nutrition, because we have access to medicines.

It’s very, very difficult for an infectious disease to kill a healthy human being. So we need to get America healthy again, and that will take care of 99 percent.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:25:03]

I went to measles parties when I was a kid, I went to chicken pox parties, and I had natural immunity and there’s a lot of studies out there that show that if you actually do get the wild infection, you’re protected later, it boosts your immune system later in life against cancers, atopic disease, cardiac disease, etc.

It’s not well studied. It ought to be well studied because we ought to understand those relationships. But I would never advise somebody to get sick, but I– what we need is good science on all of these things so that people can make rational choices.

And it is well known and it was well known during COVID and very well documented and natural immunity in every viral infection that we know that natural immunity is broader spectrum and more durable. In other words, it’s much more robust and lasts much longer than vaccine-induced immunity, including with measles.

So, we need to understand all of those things, and we need to get people so that they’re making rational choices that protect themselves, that protect their communities and protect particularly people who have immune problems in their communities.

So vaccination is part of that arsenal, but we’re not going to focus in on the only thing. We’re going to look at these more holistically.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:26:48]

This is one of those things that we worry about in the culling operations is that the states are using all different kinds of PCR cycles.

And some of those may be finding viruses where the virus is dead and harmless and then killing all the birds. And that doesn’t make sense.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:28:32]

I read that story. I don’t know anything about it. We– I never spoke to that person.

All of the agencies are consulted and all of them, what we’re doing is consensual, right? Everything that we’ve done is consensual in all the agencies.

I think that individual had personnel problems and was about to be terminated. And, so they may have made up a story to explain their termination and then, you know, quit before before he got that news.

So, but I don’t know anything about him, as I said, I’ve never met him.

…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:29:30]

The explanation that I read in Politico was not true. There was no dispute between me and this individual.

And as far as I know, we haven’t heard anything from our agencies, from my subagencies, from CDC and NIH and FDA, except, all of the steps that we’re taking are consensual. All of them are the product of long debates and conversations.

We come to a consensus and we do what’s right for the American people.

Jay Bhattacharya at Senate health committee hearing

10:22:45 BHATTACHARYA 

Senator, it’s a tragedy that a child would die from a vaccine preventable disease. I fully support children being vaccinated for diseases, like measles, that can be prevented with the vaccination efforts. 

As far as research on autism and vaccines, I don’t generally believe that there is a link. And based on my reading of the literature. 

But what I have seen is that there’s tremendous distrust in medicine and science coming out of the pandemic. And we do have, as you know, senator, a sharp rise in autism rates in this country. And I don’t know, and I don’t think any scientist really knows, the cause of it. 

So I would support an agenda of– a broad agenda, a broad scientific agenda based on data to get an answer to that.

…

10:26:53 BHATTACHARYA 

I think the most important childhood health problems have to do with childhood diabetes, childhood obesity. That’s where the vast, vast majority of the effort should go. 

Prevention of childhood infectious diseases also, I think, is important. I mean, all of those are– I think you and agree would be the main priorities.

That’s the priorities I’ll have if I’m NIH director.

…

10:27:52 BHATTACHARYA

I don’t have a full answer to that question, but I agree with your concern. And the fact that we do pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. 

If I’m NIH director, if I’m confirmed as NIH director, I think there’s a very specific thing that we haven’t done but we should do.

The NIH should fund research on off-patent, off-label use of off-patent drugs, inexpensive drugs. 

I’ll give you an example from the pandemic, senator. There was a tremendous– tremendous achievement, I think. There was a study done in the United Kingdom of a cheap steroid called dexamethasone very early in the pandemic.

…

10:35:44 BHATTACHARYA

Senator, I think that the resources the NIH– the taxpayers give to the NIH are precious. And if confirmed, I absolutely commit to changing the grant committee makeup so that they focus on the most important questions that address– that impact American health. 

I mean, there needs to be a mix of basic science work, and I’m not a basic scientist myself, but I can understand how some somewhat abstract basic science work have fund advances. But at the same time, the research should really be focused on making America healthy. 

That’s the mission of the NIH.

…

11:06:43 BHATTACHARYA

Senator, I should say I have a background as an economist as well as being a doctor. And to me, that background, what it leads me to do is understand that every dollar wasted on a frivolous study is a dollar not spent– every dollar wasted on administrative costs that are not needed, is a dollar not spent on research. 

The team I’m going to put together is going to be hyper-focused to make sure that the portfolio of grants that the NIH funds is devoted to the chronic disease problems of this country. 

It’s going to be devoted to making sure we have not just incremental progress, but research projects that have the capacity to make huge advances in treatment for cancer, for diabetes, for obesity. 

That’s how I’m going to decide what the team is. And the NIH, actually, I’m blessed in some ways because it already has so many excellent scientists there to advise me on the areas I don’t know about. 

And I want to tap that resource. I want to make sure I talk to every single person who’s already a leader at the NIH to understand where those opportunities are.

…

11:08:35 BHATTACHARYA

Senator, first of all, I want to make sure that– and I want to work with the Congress to make sure that there’s appropriate regulation of any risky research. 

The NIH should have– I don’t think should be doing any research that has the potential to cause a pandemic. 

And I want to work with Congress to make sure that happens.

March 4, 2025

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Fox News about measles

02:32:03 PM

SIEGEL: To provide many more doses of the shot in Texas, though he continues to believe at the same time in personal choice, he says, most of the people impacted are part of the Mennonite community, including an unvaccinated little girl who tragically died.

KENNEDY:

In highly unvaccinated communities like the Mennonites, it’s something that we recommend.

But we also understand, you know, there’s a lot of mistrust of the vaccines in that community (TRANSITION) and there are people who cannot be, who should not be vaccinated in the community because they have autoimmune disease or other immune problems.

And if you do get vaccinated, you’re protecting those people from a possible spread.

SIEGEL:

He says, a startling 108 patients were treated in Texas in the last 48 hours, and that therapies, such as the use of cod liver oil which contains vitamin A and D are working.

He says, the sudden resignation of HHS employee Thomas Corry was not over a clash about the outbreak as reported by Politico.

KENNEDY:

I think that individual had personnel problems and was about to be terminated, and so they may have made up a story to explain their termination, and then, you know, quit before he got that news.

So– but I don’t know anything about him. As I said, I’ve never met him.

SIEGEL:

Secretary Kennedy, inspired by his father’s commitment to public health for all Americans, as he related to me, plans to focus on improving the Indian Health Service.

KENNEDY:

Indian Health Service has been the red-headed stepchild of the of HHS. It’s chronically underfunded. It usually receives about 30% of what it really needs.

SIEGEL:

Kennedy is also calling for transparency, more studies on vaccines and accurate reporting of vaccine injury.

March 3, 2025

HHS statement on supporting Texas measles response

“The measles outbreak is a top priority for Secretary Kennedy as he noted in this op-ed Sunday,” said Senior Counselor and Principal Deputy Chief of Staff Stefanie Spear. “The CDC is actively supporting Texas state health officials and will be on the ground Tuesday working with the frontline health care providers.

“As Kennedy said in his op-ed, ‘The measles outbreak in Texas is a call to action for all of us to reaffirm our commitment to public health. By working together – parents, healthcare providers, community leaders, and government officials, we can prevent future outbreaks and protect the health of our nation. Under my leadership, HHS is and will always be committed to radical transparency to regain the public’s trust in its health agencies.’”