The idea that scientific progress is the devil

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been in the news this past week for three different issues and none of them are good. Renuka Rayasam, in an article for KFF Health News posted to Daily Kos, discussed the contradiction of the Republicans in Congress cutting food assistance, making healthy food more out of reach for poor people, as Kennedy pushes his healthy eating as the cure for America’s illnesses. In many grocery stores fruits and vegetables, the healthy stuff, are cheaper than highly processed food, now considered the unhealthiest. But stores that carry the healthy stuff are usually not in poor neighborhoods. Tiffany Terrell founded A Better Way Grocers in 2017 to bring fresh and healthy food to people who can’t travel to a grocery store. She bought a school bus, replaced the seats with shelves with produce, meats, and eggs and drives her mobile grocery to senior communities, public housing developments, and rural areas. It’s an important effort. But not enough to undo the harm of widespread cutting of food assistance. Stephanie Armour for KFF wrote the second Kennedy story posted on Kos. This isn’t about what Kennedy said recently, more about the whole effect of what Kennedy and his people at the Department of Health and Human Services are saying. The general message is: Have a chronic illness? It’s your own fault.

“This is at the heart of so much of our national problem with health,” said Robert Califf, who led the Food and Drug Administration during the Obama and Biden administrations. “It’s these two extreme views. It’s every health decision is up to the ‘rugged individual,’ versus the other extreme view that it’s all controlled by environment and social determinants of health. The truth is, it’s on a continuum.”

Some of the messages, many of which are quite harmful: Treat diabetes with cooking classes and not just throw insulin at people. My sister was diabetic and would have died as a child, decades before she did, without insulin. Birth control polls show a “disrespect for life.” Children diagnosed with ADHD are fidgety because they have sedentary lives, limited sunlight, and too much untraprocessed food. But those messages don’t take into account lack of access to healthy food, having too many jobs and no time to cook, or in a rough environment where outside exercise isn’t possible. These faulty messages are now affecting policy decisions.

“It’s impacting the kind of care and treatments patients will have,” said Andrea Love, a biomedical scientist and founder of ImmunoLogic, a science communication organization. “It sends the message that it’s your fault. It’s very much victim-blaming. It creates the idea that scientific progress is the devil, demonizes things that aren’t individually harming health, while avoiding addressing systemic issues that play a much larger role in health.”

The third article is by the Associated Press, posted on Kos:

The Department of Health and Human Services will cancel contracts and pull funding for some vaccines that are being developed to fight respiratory viruses like COVID-19 and the flu. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary and a longtime vaccine critic, announced in a statement Tuesday that $500 million worth of vaccine development projects, all using mRNA technology, will be halted. The projects — 22 of them — are being led by some of the nation’s leading pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna to prevent flu, COVID-19 and H5N1 infections. The mRNA vaccines are credited with slowing the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Kennedy said in the Tuesday statement that he wants the health department to move away from mRNA vaccines, calling on the department to start “investing in better solutions.” He provided no details on what those technologies might be.

A lot of health officials have said how wrong this decision is. More on the continuing saga of Democrats of the Texas House breaking quorum by leaving the state to prevent the Republicans from passing a more highly gerrymandered Congressional map. Emily Singer of Kos says Democrats are fighting back. They’ve found their spine. It’s the resistance Democratic voters have been yearning for since the nasty guy started wrecking the federal government. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has made a variety of threats against the absent Democrats, including expelling them and appointing their replacements. But legal experts say he can’t do either of those things. Various Democratic governors vow to gerrymander their states to favor their party, which would prompt other Republican states to do the same, a gerrymander war. One of those Democratic governors is Gavin Newsom. California was one of the early states to turn their redistricting to an independent citizen commission. To gerrymander Democratic seats in Congress he would have to work around or through them. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois is hosting many of those Texas Democrats. He said:

“What do MAGA Republicans in Texas do when Donald Trump ignores, well, his oath of office and theirs, and they're taking it upon themselves to thwart the will of the American people?” Pritzker said. “When Donald Trump calls, they say, 'Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boots, sir.' When Donald Trump says ‘Jump,’ [Texas Gov.] Greg Abbott and [Texas Attorney General] Ken Paxton say ‘How high?’ They don't care that they're violating the Voting Rights Act and racially gerrymandering their state. Well, they're hoping they can rob the bank and get away before anyone notices.”

I had heard Texans didn’t draw this map. The nasty guy’s minions did. And Texas is quite happy to approve it. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on comments by state Rep. Ann Johnson, one of those Democrats not in Texas. She objected to being described as “running away.”

“Abandoning your job is going to Cancun in the middle of a deadly freeze, right?” Johnson said, referring to Sen. Ted Cruz. “Abandoning your job is cutting health care when people need access. Abandoning your job is cutting public education when we already have one of the worst education systems in the nation. What we are doing is the fundamental protection by our founding fathers in the Texas Constitution that says the minority party has the opportunity to break quorum when you know that the majority has really gone off the rails.” Johnson also compared what’s happening in Texas to how Georgia officials resisted Donald Trump's attempt to change the results of the 2020 election after he lost to former President Joe Biden. “They said, ‘No, sir. That's a step too far.’ But when he called Texas Republicans and said, ‘I need you to fill me five seats,’ they said, ‘Does July work for you?’” Johnson said. “This is not just about our voters—it's about the nation. And it's important for people to know. They have threatened us personally. They have threatened our arrest. They have threatened our jobs. They have threatened us. The solution is, if we show up today at 3:00 and sit and be quiet, then we get to keep ours. But it kills the voice of everybody in this country. And so we won't. We won't sit and shut up to have them shut up the voices of voters.”

I heard on NPR (no link handy) that the Texas legislature pay is minimal (it is also not full time). Members need an outside job. Which means Democrats can’t stay away forever. They will soon have to return to their jobs. So Republicans will likely win. Which is what happened the first time Republicans gerrymandered the state twenty years ago. Singer reported on the staffing problems at Immigration and Customs Enforcement in their efforts to arrest and deport 3,000 people a day. They were far from meeting that goal in June and arrests were down 20% in July. Another issue is ICE agents with a bit of humanity are quitting. They were told they would be arresting actual criminals, but to get their numbers up they are going after the easy cases – day laborers and farm workers. ICE needs agents. They need to replace the ones who have quit and add to the ranks to meet their quota. To help with recruiting efforts they have removed the age limit (I think it had been 55). They have also removed the requirement of an undergraduate degree. Singer wrote, “All uneducated racists are welcome!” To further entice people they are offering signing bonuses of up to $50,000 and offering student loan forgiveness. Singer concluded:

But relaxing standards for ICE agent hires is dangerous. History shows that doing this could increase misconduct in the agency—which is already abducting citizens off streets and holding them in detention facilities without charges. ... “Any time you have massive political pressure to beef up overnight, it never turns out well,” T.J. Bonner, former president of the Border Patrol agents union, told the Associated Press. “Too many corners have to be cut. Then when things go wrong, the fingers get pointed.”

Clay Bennett posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows the traditional costume of Uncle Sam with the shirt and coat on a hanger, the striped pants neatly folded, the stars and stripes tophat set aside. On top is a note:

Representing the United States of America has been a great honor, but after the embarrassment of the past six months, I am resigning my position effective immediately.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos commented on the shooting in Fort Stewart, Georgia, in which a few soldiers were injured (and expected to recover). Bill took on the NRA mantra of “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” But in this incident the soldiers who tackled and subdued the shooter were all unarmed. This is the 1100th post to this blog that I’ve tagged with “GOP.” That’s out of 5494 posts over 17 years. I’m pretty sure none of those 1100 posts were complimentary to Republicans. Other subjects most frequently tagged are: “Gay marriage/Marriage Equality” (name change partway through) – 711, “Donald Trump” – 672, “Supreme Court” – 403, “Michigan” – 400, “Gay acceptance” – 360, “Coronavirus” (the term used before reporting settled on COVID) – 348, “Racism” – 332, “Authoritarian Rule” – 304, and “Conservatism” – 303.