subscribing<\/a>. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\nAnd these changes come as the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has transformed the department over the past year. From firing several top health officials to handpicking a new CDC vaccine panel.<\/p>\n
He says these changes are part of his \u201cMake America Healthy Again,\u201d also known as MAHA, initiative\u2014despite the fact that much of it seems to defy the best-known practices of public health. I talked with Dan Vergano, a senior editor at Scientific American, to understand what this drastic overhaul to the backbone of the country\u2019s public health system will do to, well, public health.<\/p>\n
Thank you for joining us today.<\/p>\n
Dan Vergano: Great to be with you.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: I think for most people we\u2019ve grown up under a system where we take a lot of things for granted, whether it\u2019s access to medicine or food safety, and I think for a lot of us we\u2019re having difficulty maybe wrapping our heads around what this kind of upheaval would actually mean practically. And so can you talk a little bit about, like, what are the consequences of this kind of massive shift?<\/p>\n
Vergano: RFK Jr. is now the head, essentially, of the MAHA movement, the Make America Healthy Again, which is this sort of agglomeration of people concerned about food additives, vaccines, the pharmaceutical industry in general. So basically, your federal government is gonna do less for you when it comes to your health, is the gist of the MAHA movement and RFK Jr.\u2019s influence on HHS.<\/p>\n
At [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], when there is food poisoning or some sort of disease outbreak in your state, you won\u2019t have federal help anymore. When [the Food and Drug Administration] evaluates a new drug there\u2019ll be questions about whether the right number of reviews were done or whether the right scientific voices were listened to in order to evaluate its safety. Where before we were pretty confident in that, now we have to wonder, like, what was going on there. Likewise, you see this in particular with vaccines at CDC: the committee that oversees their safety has been replaced by a bunch of vaccine deniers who have their own agenda that isn\u2019t really vaccine-friendly.<\/p>\n
In terms of other areas that the Trump administration\u2019s focused on, an example is transgender health care. Children won\u2019t get the medical standard anymore\u2014it just won\u2019t be the case because [lawmakers have] decided to make a political issue out of them.<\/p>\n
And so there is this alignment of the Make America Healthy Again sort of movement, which is concerned about food additives and things like that in the food industry but is\u2014also vaccines, seeing them as unsafe, meshing with the Trump administration\u2019s sort of disdain for health equity and minority health, coming together to sort of throw a spanner in the works of a lot of things that have been the focus of agencies at HHS for the last four decades.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: One of the things that you\u2019ve brought up is gender-affirming care, and can we talk a little bit about that, especially for young people?<\/p>\n
Vergano: So the first thing we have to say is: Why are we talking about gender-affirming care? And the reason is, of course, that political activists in the Republican Party decided about five, 10 years ago that, will be the way to go. And they found a winning issue in the notion of boys competing in girls\u2019 sports in high school. And that wedge issue, which is created solely to generate votes, has now morphed into this attack on gender-affirming health care for kids. And you saw that because it\u2019s a political movement\u2014it started in 2022, 2021 in state legislature: suddenly, there was all these bills that were identical outlawing it.<\/p>\n
Now that\u2019s crescendoed with RFK Jr. in charge of HHS, pushing this plan to deny medical Medicaid funding, Children\u2019s Health Insurance [Program] funding to hospitals that treat kids with gender-affirming health care. And all that means is kids get counseling as well as possibly getting puberty-blocking hormones; if they want it, things like testosterone; and only incredibly rarely\u2014I mean, so vanishingly rare that it\u2019s almost never\u2014does this advance to the point of some kind of surgical interventions. And that\u2019s only after extensive counseling, of course. But, like, they\u2019ve moved to cut that funding, basically to attract the voters who they\u2019ve created by making this into a political issue.<\/p>\n
All of that activity crescendoed last month in a big announcement at the Hubert [H.] Humphrey Building with RFK Jr. and a whole bunch of politicians, basically, announcing these cuts to funding for hospitals that give kids this care. And they based it on a [roughly] 300-page report\u2014like that\u2019s somehow significant; you know the number of pages in medicine\u2014that, you know, has sort of been challenged by other medical authorities, saying there wasn\u2019t really good evidence for what it found. But their claim was that \u201cthere\u2019s not enough evidence that gender-affirming care helps kids, so we\u2019re not gonna pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And instead, what they seem to be pushing is just counseling, which we know doesn\u2019t work. And kids in this kind of care are tend to be suicidal. And so they\u2019re pushing the kids away from the thing that makes them less suicidal to something that makes them more suicidal.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: My understanding is that, at least in New York State, [Attorney General] Letitia James [has sued] against those changes. And it seems, in general, that certain states are really stepping up to push back against the administration, like the Northeast medical compact and I believe there\u2019s, like, a similar one out West where they\u2019re issuing their own vaccine guidelines and things like that. How much pushback are you seeing sort of more broadly?<\/p>\n
Vergano: Right, we\u2019re gonna see the classic blue-red divide in this country; you know, that is what we\u2019re seeing. These\u2014there will be lawsuits; there are lawsuits, like the ones you mentioned, going forward. And what we\u2019re gonna end up with is this patchwork country, where kids in some states can get this kind of health care and kids in others can\u2019t or, you know, won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
And how it\u2019ll come out we don\u2019t know. The Supreme Court had this curious decision saying states could outlaw it that also seemed to say that states could defend it if they want to. I\u2019m not a lawyer, so I can\u2019t tell you where they\u2019ll draw the line. The Supreme Court does have this tendency to support the administration\u2019s political outcomes\u2014the Supreme Court majority that we have. So, you know, it might be that states have to make up the shortfall themselves in terms of the federal funding eventually, but that\u2019s a few court cases down the road.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: And then the other thing that\u2019s really been targeted under this administration is vaccines in children. And it kind of highlights the fact that, like, to me, one of the things that stands out when we\u2019re looking at, you know, Make America Healthy Again and what RFK Jr. is doing with [HHS] is that we\u2019re not all equally vulnerable, right? Like, I\u2019m fully grown. I\u2019m fully vaccinated. I have all my shots, minus shingles because I\u2019m not old enough. [Laughs.] But young people in particular are particularly at risk from some of these changes, right?<\/p>\n
Vergano: Well, yeah, I mean, the clearest example of the vulnerability is the hepatitis B back-and-forth that we\u2019ve seen, where it seems clear that RFK\u2019s HHS wants to remove the vaccination for newborns for hepatitis B, which is a terrible disease that will kill people. And, you know, the medical evidence stretching back to, like, 1991, when it was first implemented, is that if you do this, some kids will get this terrible disease, which will hurt them, possibly kill them, for no reason\u2014it\u2019s a preventable disease. There\u2019s just this fear of, reluctance to have a requirement for a vaccination behind it. And so you\u2019ll see that in all sorts of cases.<\/p>\n
You know, in the broad sense they are discouraging people from getting flu vaccinations for kids. It\u2019s never been complete coverage; it\u2019s, like, 60 percent is a good year for flu vaccines for kids. And, you know, fewer kids will get it if more people are hearing the news that maybe they\u2019re not good. And that\u2019s a mistake. The flu vaccine\u2014you know, nobody ever pretended …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Vergano: That it [fully] prevented the flu, but it sure does, on balance, seem to make the disease less severe, which is a great thing if you don\u2019t want kids harmed. So they\u2019re hurt, and, you know, more broadly even are the people who, you know, have immune deficiencies or are otherwise vulnerable, the elderly. You know, it\u2019s: the grandkids give the flu to the grandfather, and that\u2019s who dies. And, you know, other people have, you know, vulnerabilities just like that, so vaccines aren\u2019t just about you. \u201cVaccines help protect the society as a whole\u201d is just a message that just isn\u2019t getting ground at RFK\u2019s HHS.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: So it was reported last year that RFK Jr. was considering aligning the U.S. vaccine schedule with Denmark’s childhood schedule. And ultimately, the U.S. recommendations released this week are pretty close to Denmark’s albeit with a few differences. The new recommendations keep the chickenpox vaccine, which isn’t on the Danish schedule.<\/p>\n
And my understanding is many vaccine supporters are saying that\u2019s a bad idea. Some people in Denmark have said, \u201cHey, actually, that\u2019s a bad idea.\u201d Why wouldn\u2019t we necessarily want to align ourselves to another country\u2019s vaccine schedule?<\/p>\n
Vergano: So Denmark and the U.S. are completely different countries, of course, and that\u2019s the reason why you wouldn\u2019t use somebody else\u2019s vaccine schedule. I mean, you know, why not Japan or Greenland\u2019s? Because they\u2019re a bad match. And for the same reason you wouldn\u2019t use Denmark\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Denmark has universal health care. We don\u2019t have that. It has universal treatment of these vaccine-preventable diseases. We don\u2019t have that, which is why we need the vaccines. Denmark has a homogenous population that can, you know, receive health care in the same way and reliably get it delivered. We certainly don\u2019t have that; we have this patchwork of 50 states, and all kinds of different communities that get their health care in all kinds of different ways\u2014and don\u2019t get it in all kinds of different ways.<\/p>\n
And so the notion that the U.S. system could be grafted onto Denmark\u2019s, where the attraction seems to be they just get fewer vaccines, and that\u2019s because they get better health care. It just doesn\u2019t align to the U.S. medical situation, and so why would you do that? We\u2019ve built up this extensive vaccine-protocol system for the country over the last 40 years. Why would we suddenly plug in one from a bunch of Danes?<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: That\u2019s a really good question. [What] seems especially apparent to me is, like, these decisions are being made now, but we\u2019re not necessarily feeling them now, right? So kind of, like, what is the concern, longer term, of these changes?<\/p>\n
Vergano: Right, the long-term concern is that we will wreck the whole vaccination project in this country, which has been built up over a century, you know, in terms of people getting your vaccines, getting your shots as being something you do to protect your health. If it becomes sort of a Russian situation, where nobody believes anything, and nobody trusts anybody, so why get your shot, you know, then we\u2019ll just have a whole lot of illness in our society for no reason.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s sort of the fear of the vaccine experts, is\u2014we saw from the pandemic, right, that vaccine hesitancy …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Vergano: Is the whole game, right? You can make the best vaccine in the world, and if people don\u2019t believe in it and won\u2019t take it, then it doesn\u2019t do anybody any good. And so what you\u2019re seeing is the vaccine hesitancy that cropped up in the pandemic sort of being franchised across the entire, you know, vaccination enterprise and, you know, that sort of distrust becoming the norm in this country and, you know, that leading to a whole lot of public health problems, which, you know, nutraceuticals and doing pull-ups at the airport like RFK Jr. wants you to do ain\u2019t gonna help with a bit.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: It is interesting because I feel like, since COVID and the rise of kind of vaccine hesitancy, it\u2019s almost had the opposite effect on me, where I\u2019m like, \u201cGotta catch \u2019em all.\u201d [Laughs.] Like, I, I joke that I\u2019m playing Pok\u00e9mon with vaccines …<\/p>\n
Vergano: Right.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: And trying to see which ones I don\u2019t have and which ones I should potentially get because, I guess, in my case I\u2019m\u2014I am a little bit afraid that some of these are gonna go away.<\/p>\n
Vergano: Those people are particularly outta luck, right, if people who have real concerns about getting sick in this atmosphere feel a lot of stigma. I mean, like, people will give you a hard time if you wear a mask in some places, you know, where you don\u2019t know what this person might have to face\u2014you know, they might have a sick grandparent or a kid with an immune deficiency at home, and they\u2019re trying not to give them the flu.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Is there any hope\u2014or is there anything that we can do to sort of pump the brakes on this trajectory that we\u2019re on?<\/p>\n
Vergano: Yeah, of course, and we\u2019re seeing it. We need public health officials to keep speaking out. We need your doctor to keep speaking out; the people do trust their doctor …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Vergano: And so it\u2019s gonna have to happen at the level of when people go see their doctor, the doctor tells \u2019em, like, \u201cYeah, I know RFK Jr.\u2019s saying all this nonsense, but you really do need to get your vaccines.\u201d And that\u2019s where the battlefront really is, is in the doctor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
So I think if your local provider does tell people, \u201cGeez, you really oughta do this\u201d; if when you go to the 24-hour pharmaceutical clinic and they say, \u201cYeah, that\u2019s all nonsense\u2014you gotta do that,\u201d and people buy it; if your pastor doesn\u2019t rail from the pulpit that vaccines are bad but says, \u201cYou know, you really oughta do it\u201d; then you can reverse it.<\/p>\n
I think people will have to wise up, one conversation with a nurse, one conversation with a doctor at a time\u2014the people who aren\u2019t already convinced that, you know, vaccines are a good deal. I really think it\u2019s gonna take every one of us sort of being forthright about, like, the decision to get a vaccine being a good one to sort of reverse that.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: That seems like a good place to end this conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.<\/p>\n
Vergano: You bet.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: That\u2019s all for today! Tune in on Friday, when we explore how GLP-1s are evolving to become more potent drugs\u2014and not just for weight loss.<\/p>\n
Science Quickly is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.<\/p>\n
For Scientific American, this is Kendra Pierre-Louis. See you next time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American\u2019s Science Quickly, I\u2019m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. This week federal officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":{"0":"post-399187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}