How America went MAHA
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went before the Senate finance committee Wednesday to make his case that he should be confirmed as President Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to pursue his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Democrats focused their criticism on Kennedy’s long-standing vaccine skepticism. The former environmental lawyer has spent decades spreading pseudo-science and lies about the efficacy and safety of vaccines and their debunked links to autism. His calls to reevaluate our vaccine use remain broadly unpopular, even as the recent drop-off in child vaccinations worries doctors and public health experts.
Kennedy wanted to focus on topics that are much less divisive: America’s chronic disease epidemic and the unhealthy food that is widely available and consumed in this country.
“We will scrutinize the chemical additives in our food supply. We will remove financial conflicts from our agencies … We will reverse the chronic disease epidemic, and put the nation back on the road to good health,” he said in his opening statement.
One of Kennedy’s most important advisers and allies in that fight was in the hearing room.
Calley Means is a former lobbyist for food and pharmaceutical companies who is now a health-startup entrepreneur and healthy-food evangelist. Along with his sister Casey Means, he wrote the bestseller Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health. He supported Kennedy’s third party bid for the presidency, and then helped connect Kennedy with Donald Trump.
“Bobby Kennedy has not lowered or weakened faith in our public health authorities. The public health authorities have done that,” Means told Today, Explained cohost Noel King. “The insane thing to do would be to continue the current path. The smart thing to do would be to give someone a chance who’s talking about shifting the paradigm of our health focus to preventing and reversing chronic disease.”
Means talked to Noel about how he became a healthy-food crusader, why he thinks Kennedy’s agenda as HHS secretary would be broadly popular, and why he thinks we should all be more skeptical of how America administers vaccines. Below is a transcript of the interview, edited for length and clarity. Make sure to listen to the whole episode.
Noel King
You’re in a very unique position because you didn’t entirely witness this as a civilian. You say you were, in fact, also a lobbyist for food and pharma. Can I ask what you saw as a lobbyist that has brought you to this place?
Calley Means
In hindsight, what I saw is that the health care system is working to propagate a system where more Americans are sick and to perform interventions on those Americans — not to cure any disease but manage it. That’s 95 percent of our medical spending. 95 percent of our medical spending is management of chronic disease.
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