As RFK Jr. continues to dismantle public health in this country policy brick by policy brick, there have fortunately been some consistent sources of sanity for the public to turn to. One of those sources has been the American Academy of Pediatrics, an important organization that provides guidance and dispenses funds to healthcare professionals and researchers to provide for the public health of American children writ large. Because the AAP is made up of medical professionals that are sane, it has been a vocal critic of many of Kennedy’s policy decisions, particularly when it comes to Kennedy’s war on childhood vaccines and his misinformation about autism.
While Kennedy used to fashion himself a liberal, he has become a remarkably quick learner when it comes to the finer points of facism from his boss. His latest move is downright Trumpian: HHS has yanked back millions in approved grants to the AAP.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has canceled millions of dollars in grants awarded to the American Academy of Pediatrics, it said on Wednesday, including ones the group said were aimed at reducing sudden infant death and early detection of autism.
The move comes as the AAP, a vocal critic of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., challenged vaccine policies enacted under his leadership in federal court. Kennedy, a longtime critic of vaccines, has accused the organization of accepting funding from drug and vaccine makers to further their interests.
“These grants, previously awarded to the American Academy of Pediatrics, were canceled along with a number of other grants to other organizations because they no longer align with the Department’s mission or priorities,” an HHS spokesperson said.
SID and autism detection are the headliners and for good reason. This is a cruel move that will likely result in some increase in the deaths of babies. It also takes away detection of Kennedy’s favorite hobbyhorse in autism spectrum diagnoses. Those are two things that Kennedy claims to very much care about, yet here we are.
But those aren’t the only things those grants funded. There are also things like mental health services and healthcare access in rural areas, the latter of which tend to be Trump territory. It seems that those who voted for Trump often times are his preferred victims.
CEO Mark Del Monte explains how bad this is and what they try to do about it.
“The sudden withdrawal of these funds will directly impact and potentially harm infants, children, youth, and their families in communities across the United States,” said Del Monte, adding that the group is assessing its options, including potential legal action.
No explanation I can find has been given for these clawbacks of previously approved grants. In lieu of such an explanation, we can but speculate, and the most reasonable speculation out there is that Kennedy is big mad that AAP has disagreed with him, and denounced him, at times. And so he punished American children and rural areas in desperate need of more access to healthcare.
He’s an egomaniac, in other words. And while that sure does make him fit in nice and comfy in the Trump administration, he remains likely the worst HHS Secretary in its nearly 50 years of existence.
There are lots of good reasons to call for the impeachment or ouster or RFK Jr. He’s flatly unqualified for the role. He’s introducing all kinds of health risks for diseases we shouldn’t even have to worry about any longer because he’s an anti-vaxxer con-artist. He’s so bad at his job that high level administrators at DHS and its child agencies are leaving in droves, sometimes after only being on the job for weeks at a time. These are all great, righteous reasons to state publicly that RFK Jr. must go.
Please welcome Mike Pence to the team, I guess. His organization also recently stated publicly that RFK Jr. should be exited from his cabinet position. That it took a failure to review an abortion pill to get him there and not all of that other shit I mentioned is disappointing, though not in any way surprising.
In a statement posted on the social platform X, Pence’s nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom, said, “HHS Secretary RFK Jr. continues to refuse to review the dangerous chemical abortion pill, mifepristone. Despite the calls of state attorneys general across the country and pro-life promises made to Congress, RFK Jr. has followed in the footsteps of the Obama and Biden administrations by stonewalling pro-life efforts at HHS.”
“RFK Jr. must go,” the group added.
Folks, I’m in no way qualified to talk at any length about mifepristone and how safe or not it is. I can tell you that the current FDA website says that it is when properly used, as does the Johns Hopkins website. Basically every medical organization that has anything to do with obstetrics and gynecology has said that the drug is very safe (and you would think they would know). The American Medical Association has pointed out that reducing access to mifepristone would lead to real harm for patients. Basically, almost every credible expert on this topic appears to agree.
I can also tell you the listing of side effects on the Mayo Clinic’s site is long. So, is a review of the drug warranted? I’m going to rest comfortably on the idea that I am in no way qualified to say one way or the other.
Like me, Mike Pence is also not a medical professional. Unlike me, Mike Pence has been remarkably silent about RFK Jr. as he’s taken a flamethrower to HHS, to federal vaccine guidance, and has overseen the worst measles outbreak in America in over three decades. Apparently failing to review an FDA approved drug with a decades-long track record of safety is just a bridge too far.
No more aborted babies, all of you! If they aren’t brought to term, how are they supposed to get measles and Hep B?
We’ve obviously done a ton of coverage on RFK Jr. as the head of Health and Human Services because, well, he’s an unmitigated disaster. Between all the chaos he’s created with his hiring/firing practices at HHS and its child agencies, the mass exodus of talent from those agencies, and all the anti-vaxx bullshit he’s pulled with ACIP, the CDC, and agency websites, he’s a damned problem and not nearly enough of our Congress people seem willing to do anything about it. And that’s not even getting into the ongoing measles and pertussis outbreaks that are occurring in several states as we speak.
In many of our posts on Kennedy, we have begged for someone to do something about all of this. One of those possible things that could be done is to at least try to impeach this brain-wormed assclown. And now, finally, someone did. Rep. Haley Stevens of Mighigan introduced articles of impeachment this week.
“RFK Jr. has got to go. Today, I introduced articles of impeachment to remove him from office. RFK Jr. has turned his back on science and public health and on the American people,” Stevens said in a video statement released on the social platform X. “Under his watch, families are less safe, health care costs are skyrocketing, and lifesaving research — including right here in Michigan — is being gutted,” she said in the video.
“I cannot and I will not stand by while one man dismantles decades of medical progress,” she continued. “Enough is enough, and that is why I’m pushing to impeach RFK Jr., to hold him accountable and to protect the health, safety and future of every Michigander because our health, our science and our future are worth fighting for.”
Now, let me prepare you for what you’re about to hear. Stevens, as mentioned, is campaigning for a Senate seat in her state. Thus far, polling suggests it’s not going all that well, with Stevens trailing Republican Mike Rogers by several points, though she has been closing the gap recently. What you’re going to hear about this, from Republicans and some Democrats, is that this impeachment effort is a stunt to raise Stevens’ profile in the race to get more name recognition and build turnout among Democrats.
Let me make this as clear as I possibly can: even if that is true, I don’t fucking care. If that’s what it takes to at least attempt to oust Kennedy from his role, so be it. But I also do not think that is what Stevens is doing, given her larger track record on Kennedy.
Stevens has repeatedly called for Kennedy’s removal from his role since he became HHS secretary and said in September she intended to file impeachment articles against him over the “heath care chaos” under his watch. The measure is not likely to pass in a Republicans-controlled Congress.
We’ll just have to see about that last bit. It’s probably correct that Republicans won’t go against Dear Leader and do the right thing, but they should be put on the record as such. Vote against impeachment if you wish. Make yourself a responsible party to all of the horrors Kennedy has, is, and will visit upon Americans’ health. The deaths from measles. The Hep B infections in newborns, along with the long-tail health effects of those infections, including deaths. Declining vaccination rates due to the misinformation vomited from Kennedy and his hand-picked cadre of cronies. A vote against impeaching Kennedy will serve as cosigning all of the above. All of it.
Bill Cassidy could certainly help here, if he wants to stop being a partisan for ten minutes and put his doctor’s coat back on. Cassidy was a crucial vote in Kennedy’s confirmation to HHS, as well as being something of a silent whip for other Republican votes that were unsure on voting for Kennedy’s confirmation. He can likewise now serve the opposite purpose. He can come out in favor of Stevens’ articles of impeachment, whip Republican votes for it, and begin to undo the harm that he helped create through the confirmation process. He’s spilled plenty of words worrying out loud about what Kennedy is doing. Now let him back it up.
Either way, get everyone on the record. Are you okay with Kennedy’s dismantling of decades of progress made on various matters of health, or are you not? That is what an impeachment vote would be asking.
In mid-November, we talked about yet more chaos occurring under RFK Jr., this time at the FDA. At issue was George Tidmarsh, who joined the FDA in July as the agency’s chief drug regulator. Tidmarsh had been accused of using his position to exact a vendetta campaign against a former business partner, Kevin Tang, and companies related to him. Tang had pushed Tidmarsh to resign from three companies years back and Tang recently sued Tidmarsh, claiming he’d dangled the approval of a drug ingredient over his head unless he made monetary payments to an organization associated with Tidmarsh for decades.
Tidmarsh resigned amidst the accusations, putting his tenure at the FDA at less than half a year. In his place came Richard Pazdur, an FDA veteran of over 25 years. His appointment was received well by many in the medical community, seen as a consummate professional stepping into the role. For example:
Cancer Nation applauds the choice of Dr. Richard Pazdur as the Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). We can think of no better person than Dr. Pazdur for this position, as he will bring scientific rigor, evidence-based regulatory review, and a commitment to patients to his work as CDER head.
“We are grateful that someone with both scientific rigor and lived compassion will be leading CDER, and we look forward to continuing our shared work to make sure every survivor gets the care they need to live well,” said Shelley Fuld Nasso, Cancer Nation CEO.
Unfortunately for all those feeling the warm fuzzies about Pazdur’s appointment, Padzur decided last week to retire entirely from the FDA. While he will serve in the role through December, his resignation comes a mere two-and-a-half Scaramucci’s after his appointment. (For the uninitiated, a Scaramucci is 11 days, termed due to the length of time Anthony Scaramucci served as White House Communications Director in Trump’s first administration.)
Why is Pazdur retiring so soon after his appointment to be the top drug regulator for the FDA? Simple: his professionalism is at complete odds with the Kennedy-appointed assclowns with whom he’d have to work.
Just days on the job, Pazdur expressed deep concerns about the legality and public health risks of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary’s plans to overhaul and expedite agency operations. On November 21, the Post reported that Pazdur disagreed with Makary’s plans to reduce the number of studies needed to make drug-related decisions, such as label changes. Pazdur was further concerned that Makary’s plan to shorten drug review times was not sufficiently transparent and could be illegal. Pazdur also pushed back on Makary’s plan to exclude agency career scientists from some drug review processes deemed political priorities.
The immediate tensions led Pazdur to first consider retirement last month, according to the Post’s sources. He has now filed paperwork to retire at the end of this month, according to Stat News, which was first to report his planned departure. The outlet noted that he could still change his mind as the retirement plan is not finalized. But a source for the Post said such a reversal is unlikely.
“This is a very sad day for science and for patients,” Ellen Sigal, chairperson and founder of advocacy group Friends of Cancer Research, told the Post. “Rick was our guiding light and this loss is profound.”
The retention of talent is typically a primary metric by which those in management are judged. And during Kennedy’s time at DHS, retention is best used as a word for delivering a punchline. Susan Monarez was also CDC Director for a mere three weeks, or two-and-a-half Scaramuccis, before being fired by Kennedy, reportedly over her refusal to rubber stamp Kennedy’s anti-vaxxer nonsense.
Whatever you think of RFK Jr., even if you’re a huge fan, this draining of talent over his management style and his anti-scientific bullshit is having a deleterious effect on American health. And that’s sort of the opposite of what a Secretary of HHS should be hoping to achieve.
We talked yesterday about how newborn vaccinations for hepatitis B were on the agenda for this latest meeting at ACIP, the CDC’s immunization advisory panel. You likely know all this already, but RFK Jr. fired all ACIP panel members earlier this year, replacing them with hand-picked anti-vaxxer quack-jobs who are aligned with Kennedy’s anti-medicine, anti-science stances on vaccines. No matter the nonsense you hear out of Kennedy’s grumbly mouth, these are deeply unserious people that have been given an enormous responsibility that they are in no way qualified to have. ACIP recommendations are really important, with its guidance driving everything from what private insurers will or are mandated to cover, guiding medical professionals on how to advise their patients, and guiding the public on the types of immunization decisions they ought to be making.
ACIP just told all of those groups that whether or not newborns catch hep B and/or ultimately reach an untimely and painful death is a personal choice they should discuss with their doctors. Doctors that may now advise against vaccination within 24 hours of birth.
On Friday morning, the ACIP voted 8-3 to remove its previous recommendation that all children in the U.S. be vaccinated against hepatitis B starting at birth. In its place, the panel is endorsing “individual-based decision-making” for determining when most children should get their first hepatitis B shot. Many outside groups and experts have sharply criticized the ACIP’s about-face, noting that scant credible data was presented to justify such a dramatic reversal.
“If that recommendation goes forward, it will be without evidence and will ignore over 30 years of existing evidence and gambles with the safety of children,” James Campbell, vice chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, told Gizmodo.
CDC staff and outside experts tried. They really did. They explained what this disease is, what is does, how infectious it is, and how the mass immunization program starting in the early 90s saved thousands of children from infection, from long term complications, and an ultimately early death for some. Here is one simple chart that CDC staff presented to ACIP earlier this year on the matter.
How in the actual hell do you look at that chart and decide vaccinations have to go? Like measles, this is another disease for which we were on the cusp of achieving elimination status. 90% of infections in children become chronic infections. Something like 25% of those infected as children will develop liver cancer or cirrhosis. The fatality rate for both is enormous, even as deaths during the acute phase of the disease are low. In other words, this is a disease that rips years of life away from those infected long after their initial symptoms disappear. Worse, most infections are asymptomatic during the acute infection stage, meaning many of the infected don’t even know it until they get cancer or cirrhosis.
And ACIP has decided we need more of this.
For children born to mothers who test negative for antibodies to hepatitis B, the ACIP is now pushing for an individualized approach, one where “parents should consult with health care providers and decide when or if their child will begin the HBV vaccine series.” And for families who choose not to start vaccination at birth, the ACIP recommended that vaccination not start any earlier than two months (the ACIP offered no clear rationale or evidence for this specific cut-off).
This is incredibly stupid. Even if the CDC adopts the recommendation, I am sure most doctors will still recommend vaccination at birth, since they can read the damned chart above as well or better than I can. But it won’t be all doctors. What insurance companies do as a result of this change is anyone’s guess. Some states are already stating that they’ll go against ACIP’s change and follow the old guidance.
But again, it won’t be all of them. I am confident that a non-zero number of children will get infected with hepatitis B and die an early death as a result of this. I’m confident that some newborns will suffer chronically from the disease as a result of this.
RFK Jr. is harming the health of American newborns. Full stop. Period, paragraph. Hey, Bill Cassidy: anytime you want to do something about this, feel free.
Part of what makes it difficult for the importance of so much of what is happening in the Trump administration to break through to the public mind is that it’s all chaos, all the time. Moving layers deeper to get at specifics can actually make the problem worse, in fact. Take all of our coverage of RFK Jr., for instance. Recall all the topics on him alone that we’ve covered: his anti-vaxxer stances, his failures to advocate for his staff at HHS and its child agencies, his war on Tylenol, his swimming in a creek rife with human waste, his thoughts on sperm counts, his thoughts on circumcision, his hiring and firing practices at HHS, measles, ACIP, and goddamned chemtrails. How are you supposed to focus on anything meaningful in that cornucopia of chaos?
The problem is that it’s all interrelated. The overarching theme is that Kennedy is an anti-science ignoramus who espouses eugenic tendencies and puts his beliefs into practice as a matter of public policy and/or guidance, all of which leads to adverse impacts on the American public.
Let’s put some examples to that theme. We talked recently about how the CDC changed its webpage advising the public on concerns about vaccines and autism such that it now informs the public that there may indeed be a link. Its stated reason for doing this is, essentially, because a link between the two has not been “disproven”. As I mentioned in my post, that isn’t how science works. You don’t have to prove a negative in science. The onus of evidence is on the party making a claim. If there is no valid evidence to support a claim, the default is null, or to behave as if the claim is not true.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. personally directed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to update its website to contradict its longtime guidance that vaccines don’t cause autism, he told The New York Times in an interview published Friday.
“The whole thing about ‘vaccines have been tested and there’s been this determination made,’ is just a lie,” Kennedy said in the interview, which was conducted Thursday.
Again, this isn’t how science works. It’s not a “determination” that’s been made. It’s that the claim that autism and vaccines are linked has not been demonstrated through evidence and science and therefore is not considered a valid claim. If researchers want to do more peer-reviewed research, following good scientific methodology, have at it. More good data is always good. But we no more have to make a “determination” that vaccines don’t cause autism currently than we would need to make a “determination” that chocolate milk causes autism. A link has simply not been established, so we behave as though there is no link. That’s how this works.
Couple that with the even more recent news that Kennedy’s new Deputy Director of the CDC is Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham. Abraham himself has espoused many of the anti-vaxxer views that he shares with Kennedy.
Under Abraham’s leadership, the Louisiana health department waited months to inform residents about a deadly whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak. He also has a clear record of anti-vaccine views. Earlier this year, he told a Louisiana news outlet he doesn’t recommend COVID-19 vaccines because “I prefer natural immunity.” In February, he ordered the health department to stop promoting mass vaccinations, including flu shots, and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns.
While he doesn’t support lifesaving vaccines, he is a big fan of using the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine and the de-worming drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19, despite studies finding both ineffective against the viral infection. In his newsletter, Faust notes that in 2021, Abraham was the seventh-highest prescriber of ivermectin out of 12,000 practicing physicians in the state. This fits with his longer record of troubling prescriptions. In 2013, he was one of the top opioid prescribers.
So, Kennedy publicly puts anti-vaxxer talking points on display as public guidance via the CDC website, not to mention all the words that manage to tumble from his mouth, and continues to put anti-vaxxer and anti-medicine officials to lead HHS and its child agencies. What’s the result? Pertussis is on the rise. America is about to lose its elimination status of measles.
And, if you want to put a local lens on all of this, communities in South Carolina, that have essentially behaved as Kennedy would wish, are suffering from outbreaks of measles and still people won’t get vaccinated.
South Carolina’s measles outbreak isn’t yet as large as those in other states, such as New Mexico, Arizona, and Kansas. But it shows how a confluence of larger national trends — including historically low vaccination rates, skepticism fueled by the pandemic, misinformation, and “health freedom” ideologies proliferated by conservative politicians — have put some communities at risk for the reemergence of a preventable, potentially deadly virus.
“Everyone talks about it being the canary in the coal mine because it’s the most contagious infectious disease out there,” said Josh Michaud, associate director for global and public health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. “The logic is indisputable that we’re likely to see more outbreaks.”
10% of children enrolled in Spartanburg County do not meet the vaccination requirements, including for the MMR vaccine. Many have religious exemptions, which are laughably easy to obtain and don’t require any affirmative description of what religion we’re even talking about. And the drop from 95% vaccinated status, the percentage in which a community will obtain herd immunity, happened in the last five or so years. Right when Kennedy became a nationally public figure. Go back a decade and its even worse.
The number of students in South Carolina who have been granted religious exemptions has increased dramatically over the past decade. That’s particularly true in the Upstate region, where religious exemptions have increased sixfold from a decade ago. During the 2013-14 school year, 2,044 students in the Upstate were granted a religious exemption to the vaccine requirements, according to data published by The Post and Courier. By fall 2024, that number had jumped to more than 13,000.
Public health officials are putting on mobile vaccination clinics in the area, but very few people are showing up. Misinformation, it seems, is more powerful than watching your fellow neighbors get infected with measles.
This all looks like chaos. And to a large degree it is chaos. But you can draw a straight line between the national bullshit that Kennedy and his cadre of sycophants are engaging in and the illness that is taking hold in places like Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Do not mistake one as being separate from the other. They are in direct relation.
Unlike the many causes Kennedy has claimed for autism.
In all of our conversations surrounding RFK Jr.’s appointment to lead HHS and the legitimization of his anti-vaxxer beliefs as a result, we have understandably been hyper-focused on measles. The reason for that is mostly that this is as stark an example of just how stupid and horrible anti-vaccination misinformation is combined with the horror that is measles infections. This disease was essentially gone as of the year 2,000, but it has come roaring back due to unvaccinated populations being slammed by major outbreaks this year. Three people have died and thousands have been needlessly infected with measles all because Kennedy, and people like him, want to play pretend with medicine and science.
But it isn’t just measles. Pertussis, commonly referred to as whooping cough, has also been on the increase over the past few years. While the data on who is getting infected is much more varied with pertussis, due primarily to the vaccine’s waning protections for it over time compared with measles vaccines, it’s still the case that the unvaccinated account for a heavy number of the infected and the deaths that have resulted from it. Kentucky appears to be getting hit particularly hard by pertussis, with the state tallying three infant deaths from the disease so far this year.
Kentucky’s three infant deaths from whooping cough over the past 12 months are the state’s first reported since 2018. None of the infants or their mothers had been vaccinated against the respiratory disease, the Kentucky Department of Public Health confirmed.
Kentucky is in the midst of its largest pertussis spike since 2012, says a Monday state news release that says the disease has increased nationwide as vaccination rates decline.
As of Nov. 19, there have been 566 cases of whooping cough identified in Kentucky, with health officials anticipating more cases as the year ends. Babies younger than 1 year old are at the greatest risk for whooping cough.
Local healthcare providers are advocating for the public to get themselves and their children vaccinated to prevent the spread of the disease, but Kentucky has a fairly terrible adoption of the pertussis vaccine. School-aged children in the state currently have a vaccination rate of roughly 85%. That may sound like a big number, but you’re typically looking at a target of 95% vaccination rate to achieve herd immunity. It’s herd immunity that best protects those most vulnerable, such as very young children and those who cannot get vaccinated for unrelated medical reasons.
And that is precisely who is dying in Kentucky from pertussis. Infants. Infants are dying, all so that Kennedy and the vaccine-deniers out there can sit on their stupid soap boxes and spew stupid.
“We are deeply saddened to learn of another infant death in Kentucky due to pertussis and are concerned by the volume of cases we are seeing throughout the commonwealth,” said Dr. Steven Stack, secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. “We continue to urge Kentuckians to get their whooping cough vaccine and to make sure they are up to date on all other recommended immunizations. Many illnesses can be prevented through vaccination, which helps protect not only the individual but also those around them.”
Unfortunately, the very person in charge of American health at the moment is not urging anyone to get vaccinated. Quite the opposite, in fact. And it all appears to be largely ego-driven.
Ego in favor of infants remaining alive. If that doesn’t turn your stomach, you have no soul.
While we’ve talked quite a bit about the horror show that is RFK Jr.’s position as Secretary of HHS, most of the focus of those posts has been around what is happening at the CDC. And for good reason, too. The ongoing measles outbreak, the quick hiring/firing of Susan Monarez, and all the anti-vaxx bullshit going on at ACIP have all occurred at the CDC, which is itself suffering from defunding, staffing shortages, and a morale problem that Kennedy personally appears to occasionally look at from afar while wondering, “Hm, how can I make this worse?”
But fear not, dear friends, because the other agencies under Kennedy are super fucked up, too! The most recent news comes from the FDA, which just lost its chief drug regulator because he appears to have been both extorting a drug company while also running a vendetta campaign against a former colleague.
However, the FDA’s latest scandal includes a different Trump-era leader: the top drug regulator, George Tidmarsh, who left the FDA this weekend amid a flurry of events. The drama centers around allegations that, since joining the FDA in July, Tidmarsh used his position to exact petty revenge on an old business associate, Kevin Tang, who had asked Tidmarsh to resign from three companies six years ago, allegedly sparking a long-standing grudge.
Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, with Tang on its board, sued Tidmarsh recently over these allegations. And that lawsuit contains details as to what actions Tidmarsh took against Tang and his company. Those actions, if true, are almost too much to be believed.
The lawsuit contains brow-raising texts and emails from Tidmarsh to Tang and associates over the last six years, documenting taunts and threats, including “enjoying failure?”, “You will be exposed,” there’s “[m]ore bad karma to come,” “[t]he pain is not over,” and an ominous “I’m Not powerless.”
In early August, soon after joining the FDA, Tidmarsh announced actions that would effectively remove from the market a drug ingredient made by a company associated with Tang. Tidmarsh’s lawyer then sent a letter to Tang proposing that he extend a “service agreement” for “another 10 years,” which would see Tang making payments to a Tidmarsh-associated entity until 2044. The email was seen as attempted extortion, with such payments being in exchange for Tidmarsh rolling back the FDA’s regulatory change.
And then after that, in September, Tidmarsh hopped over to LinkedIn, of all places, to post publicly about how an Aurinia drug for treating lupus, already FDA-approved, didn’t work and that Aurinia hadn’t put the drug through the trials to prove it did. Aurinia’s stock fell by twenty percent that same day. But the drug had gone through FDA trials and was already approved for use in many, many other countries.
Tidmarsh resigned Sunday as the media shitstorm over all of this was kicking up. And that’s good; Tidmarsh has no business being in government in a role that is supposed to serve public health. But what this really represents is yet another data point in the circus that HHS and its child agencies have become under Kennedy’s leadership.
If the allegations in Aurinia’s lawsuit are true, Tidmarsh’s behavior would be egregious for a federal regulator. But already, the claims and other scandals have outsiders concerned that the high-stakes “soap opera” is destroying the agency’s credibility, as Stat reported Tuesday.
“We are witnessing nothing less than a clown show at FDA right now,” one venture capital investor told the outlet. “For the sake of patients, we need a stable and consistent FDA!”
“What’s happening at the top of the FDA is embarrassing,” a portfolio manager at a large biotech fund added. “How am I supposed to convince people, other investors, that this sector is doing important work when the leaders of the FDA are acting this way?”
There’s a solution and we all know what it is. A competent leader at HHS that can yank our public health agencies back into some semblance of professionalism would do wonders here.
But we’re not going to get that so long as RFK Jr. is at HHS.
You may be tired of hearing about measles by now, but measles is not tired of infecting Americans. It’s worth reminding ourselves that this is a disease that was declared gone in America. Cases and transmission rates were so low in 2000, thanks almost entirely to the widespread promotion and adoption of the MMR vaccine, that we officially put the disease on America’s pay-no-mind list.
But thanks to RFK Jr.’s promotion of vaccine conspiracy theories, ironically demoted in preference of conspiracy theories more recently of Tylenol and circumcision, fewer people got themselves or their children vaccinated and the case counts began to rise. The ultimate betrayal of our public health system was performed by Donald Trump and his compliant drones in Congress in putting Kennedy in charge of HHS and America’s health. That was combined with whatever that whole DOGE experience was supposed to be, which helped to reduce HHS staffing by at least 1/8th of its previous workforce. Once that was done, the consequences for disease control became inevitable.
You will have heard about the huge measles outbreak that began in Texas. We also just talked about another outbreak that is currently underway in South Carolina that is seeing hundreds of children in quarantine. But those are certainly not the only places where measles cases in at least double digits are popping up in 2025. Here’s a map that shows where cases are occurring, with the larger circles being a large number of cases.
It’s basically everywhere, including in Alaska and Hawaii. That map is also lagging behind CDC’s reported counts, which itself lags weekly, as the reporting is only updated every Wednesday. And those numbers? Yeah, they are almost certainly wildly under-reported.
Nearly two months after a deadly, massive measles outbreak in Texas was declared over, the highly contagious disease continues to spread across the country. The U.S. has now confirmed 1,596 cases this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the highest annual number in more than three decades.
But the true total could be even higher, says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“If you talk to people on the ground, including not only in Texas, but other states, they all say the same thing, which is that the numbers are much worse than that. Probably closer to 5,000 cases,” Offit says. “And it’s not done.”
Not by a long shot. If you’re not from the Southwest, you probably haven’t even heard about the new outbreak occurring along the border of Arizona and Utah, where over 130 total cases of measles have been reported just this year. That’s about half the number of measles cases that occurred in 2024 nationally. Minnesota also is seeing a surge in new cases very recently. While the officially reported case count there is listed at 20, experts expect that to grow as those cases have been popping up these past few weeks.
So how many outbreaks have there been this year? Way more than you probably think, and definitely way more than Kennedy or anyone at HHS is talking about.
All told, the CDC has confirmed 44 measles outbreaks in 41 states this year. The agency defines an outbreak as three or more cases that are linked.The vast majority of cases were in people who were unvaccinated; 27% percent have been in children under the age of 5. About 1 in 8 measles cases have resulted in hospitalization.
This is all preventable. We can’t seriously want to go back to the days like in 1990 when there were nearly 28,000 cases of measles… can we? And what horrible, painful thing do we have to do to make sure more people, and especially children, aren’t getting this horrific and deadly disease?
While news about measles in recent months may have been a surprise, it’s also alarming. Experts warn that the number of cases (and possibly deaths) are likely to increase. And due to falling vaccination rates, outbreaks are bound to keep occurring. One study estimates that between nine and 15 million children in the US could be susceptible to measles.
But there’s also good news: we know that measles outbreaks can be contained and the disease itself can be eliminated. Learn how to protect yourself and your family. Engage respectfully with people who are vaccine hesitant: share what you’ve learned from reliable sources about the disease, especially about the well-established safety of vaccination.
Too late, Harvard. This country has been conditioned to distrust “experts” and “knowledge” and “data.” We do shit on vibes now.
This is going to get worse before it gets better. The story of how we eliminated measles long ago is found in that same 1990 statistic I cited earlier. The public was so horrified with what was happening to children in this country that they were ready to get a safe and effective MMR vaccine to put it to an end.
Why in the hell do we have to wait for those horrors to resurface before we put this diseased genie back in the bottle?
Look, folks, I’m sorry, but RFK Jr. is going to force us to talk about sperm. And I’m very much going to try to keep the jokes at an absolute minimum, because, as per usual when Kennedy starts spouting off about something health-related, this isn’t actually funny.
At this point I don’t think it makes sense to write up an intro to the post about how batshit crazy RFK Jr. is, how awful it is that he is currently running HHS, and how dangerous his policies and ramblings are. I’ve said it all before many, many times. He sucks, you get it, let’s move on.
Kennedy is very interested in your teenager’s sperm. He’s been talking about it for nearly a year now, typically as it relates to his claims that today’s teenage boy has a lower sperm count than men in their sixties and seventies. He growled out this claim once again at a recent White House presser.
RFK Jr: "Today the average teenager in this country has 50% of the sperm count, 50% of the testosterone of a 65 year old man. Our girls are hitting puberty 6 years early … our parents aren't having children."
Let’s focus in real hard on the claim about teenagers’ sperm count. You know, like putting it under a microscope, as you would do to analyze the sperm concentration in a sample! But not a teenage boy’s sperm count, because, like… why are you even collecting that in the sort of significant numbers that would be required for a proper sample size in a study?
Contrary to Kennedy’s claims, sperm counts decline with age, so young men have much higher counts than older men. And data about sperm counts in teen boys largely does not exist.
Well, of course it doesn’t exist. Why would it? Why in the absolute hell would the parent of a 15 year old be getting that child’s sperm concentration medically tested? Generally, this just isn’t a thing.
This is the hallmark of an RFK Jr. claim. You take outlier studies in unsettled science and declare the minority position conclusively right, so long as it aligns with some larger philosophy you have. In this case, two philosophies of Kennedy’s: a war against environmental chemicals like pesticides and a sort of man-dominated fascism in which hyper-masculinity is of high value.
And here is where I’d like to coin a term: masculofascism. Yes, hyper-masculinity has long been a tenant of fascism generally, but this is, I think, differently emphasized in America’s modern day version. Masculofascism isn’t a word currently — Hi, Webster’s Dictionary! Feel free to adopt this one! –, but I asked Google to tell me what it thinks it would mean on a lark
I mean, come on comrades and friends, I might as well have asked Google to describe RFK Jr. to me.
Anyway, back to sperm. Are sperm rates for teenagers falling? How about for young men, or even men generally? Is this even a thing?
Well, like all manner of health-related topics, it’s complicated.
“This is a very contentious issue in our field, and for every paper that you find that suggests a decline and raises an alarm for this issue, there’s another paper that says that the numbers aren’t changing, and that there’s no cause for concern,” said Dr. Scott Lundy, a reproductive urologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
In fact, this is a topic and debate that goes back decades. Studies have been coming out since the early 90s suggesting that sperm counts in men were in decline compared with their male counterparts in decades past. In fact, the 50% reduction line is just as old.
In 1993, scientist Louis Guillette shocked Congress when he testified at a hearing that “every man sitting in this room today is half the man his grandfather was.”
Guillette was referring to a generational decline in sperm count. A year before his testimony, a review of papers published from 1938 to 1991determined that the average sperm count had fallen around 50%.
As Dr. Lundy indicated earlier, there are other studies that show no decline, too. More of those, actually. Following that hearing, in follow up studies, 35 more studies were done on this topic analyzing historical data, and 27 of them either showed no change or an increase in sperm count (21), or had inconclusive data (6). Only eight of them showed any kind of decline in sperm count or semen quality, a minority position. It’s the minority position.
Oh, and that study’s methodology was heavily disputed.
“The paper was widely, wildly cited,” but “the statistics were not solid,” said Dolores Lamb, who researches male infertility at Children’s Mercy Kansas City.
I’ll just add to all of that the simple fact that the American population in 1990 was 248.7 million people. In 2023 it was 336.8 million. Somehow, amidst all this drop in sperm count and fertility, the population grew 35% in 30 years.
But we’re not done. More recently, in 2021, Shanna Swan wrote the book Count Down. Swan is a reproductive epidemiologist and argued that sperm counts had fallen by 52% (man, that number keeps coming up) across several continents from 1973 to 2011. In that same book, she argued that the median sperm count would reach null in 25 years. That would essentially end the human race as we know it, of course, which sounds quite alarming. And Swan, to be clear, is well-credentialed.
But it’s very difficult to square her claims with the fact that the population in most if not all of the continents she studied over that same time period has increased, not decreased. Here’s the North American population chart since 1950. If you can spot any sort of real cause for concern, feel free to point it out.
But men’s groups lost their minds over her paper. They argued that something was going on that was causing men to lose their masculinity. That’s the theme here. No longer are men real men. We’re something less than that now and you can tell because we don’t produce as many DNA missiles as we used to.
Unfortunately for all this testicle-wringing, Swan’s methodology was also questioned. As was the analysis based on point in time sperm samples generally.
Lamb said the analyses from Swan and her co-authors had a major weakness in their methodology. They assumed that laboratories in different parts of the world were collecting and testing semen in the same way, she said, when in fact the methods likely varied.
Swan stood by her team’s results, saying in an email that they accounted for differences in methodologies across studies, as well as the challenges of getting accurate sperm counts.
Lundy, of the Cleveland Clinic, said measuring sperm counts can be hard to do consistently. The count itself can go up and down depending on the frequency of ejaculation, time of year, or whether someone is injured or has a fever.
His analysis last year found a subtle decline in sperm count among men in the U.S. from 1970 to 2018 but one that most likely wouldn’t affect fertility in real life.
And, of course, there are a ton of potential mitigating factors to account for that could also impact a point in time sperm sample. Smoking effects sperm vitality. While smoking is largely on the decline (probably also seen as a decline in masculinity), there’s no indication a smoking status was accounted for in the samples analyzed for these studies. Alcohol also lowers sperm count and I really hope we aren’t going to argue that America saw a steep decline in alcohol consumption from 1970 to the 2010s (yes, there is currently a trend in America for reduced alcohol consumption, but that’s too new to show up in this data).
And, hey, I’ll give Kennedy some credit: studying pesticide effects on human reproduction, as well as many other healthcare factors, is a worthy area of study. But he undermines his own position when he takes the minority view of a scientific endeavor or area of study and simply declares that view dispositive. And he does this all the time.
And it’s often hypocritical. You know what else vastly decreases sperm count?
Testosterone replacement therapy — a treatment that has exploded in popularity among young men looking to feel more energized or to increase their sex drive — can also shut off sperm production entirely.
“Men on testosterone are almost uniformly azoospermic and totally infertile, and sometimes that is only partially reversible if they’ve been on high-dose testosterone for many years,” Lundy said.
Kennedy himself told Newsmax in 2023 that he takes testosterone replacement as part of an “anti-aging protocol.”
And, of course, there is vastly more to human fertility, or even male fertility, than sperm count. Nuance is what is at play here, not simple answers to complex issues. Or non-issues, as is likely in this context.
But you won’t get that out of Kennedy. Instead, you get that fourth bullet in Google’s interpretation of masculofascism: a devaluation of critical thinking and a preference for quick and simple action in lieu of intellectual discourse.
A more perfect description of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I cannot find.
