Donald Trump and maga Republicans including Senator Susan Collins must stand up for American health care!

Trump’s Harmful Policies Are Endangering Your Health

Editorial opinion published in The New York Times

Donald Trump turned Make America Healthy Again into one of his administration’s signature promises. It is a laudable goal, too. By several measures, the United States is the world’s least healthy high-income country.

Nevertheless, as is so often the case with Trump, he both identified a real problem and enacted a set of policies that will worsen that problem. With public health, the damage could be vast. His administration is rejecting basic medical knowledge and turning back the clock to an era when people were sicker and died sooner.

The administration’s hostility to lifesaving vaccines, led by the incompetent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, has already contributed to a rise in measles.  Trump’s cuts to scientific research will forestall future treatments of cancer, heart disease and childhood illnesses. His cuts to Medicaid, which pay for tax breaks for the wealthy, will leave millions of Americans without health insurance and, by extension, health care. His rollback of environmental regulations has allowed corporations to pump more pollution into the air and water, which will contribute to lung diseases and other ailments.

As disappointing as the pre-Trump trends in public health were, Americans remain far healthier than in previous generations. Life expectancy today is almost 80, up from less than 60 a century ago. In that century, we have conquered smallpox and polio. We have cleaned our cities of the smog that was once normal. We have made progress against cancers and cardiovascular diseases that once were death sentences. Trump and Kennedy are dismantling the eight decades of work that made that progress possible. There is a great deal to lose.

Here’s what they are doing to harm our health:

1. Exposing Americans to preventable diseases: The taming of infectious diseases, including polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, tetanus, influenza and, most recently, Covid-19, has been one of humankind’s greatest achievements. These diseases have all been made far less deadly, and in some cases virtually nonexistent, thanks to vaccines. Mr. Trump himself recently said that vaccines work, “pure and simple.”

Yet as his top health official he has appointed a conspiracist, Mr. Kennedy, who exaggerates or outright lies about the risks that come with these vaccines. Mr. Kennedy has filled an important federal panel, which shapes which vaccines are covered by insurers, with other conspiracists. Republican-led states are following the administration’s lead; Florida is trying to repeal vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.

These misguided changes are already having an effect. The Covid vaccine has become harder to get, even for some vulnerable people. Childhood vaccination rates, which were falling before Mr. Trump returned to office, seem likely to fall further as Mr. Kennedy fans parents’ fears. Already, measles outbreaks have occurred in Texas and elsewhere, and the effects may be far worse in the coming years as society risks losing the herd immunity that it had achieved.

We know about the consequences from these diseases because humanity has lived them. Before vaccines, illnesses like smallpox, measles and polio left people scarred, paralyzed, blind or dead. Many of the victims were children. The Trump administration is condemning more people to suffer and die from diseases that we know how to prevent.

2. Making a future pandemic more deadly: Nobody knows when the next pandemic will arrive. Whenever it does, the United States may be even less prepared than it was for Covid.


With Elon Musk’s help, Trump this year dismantled the United States Agency for International Development. He also withdrew from the World Health Organization, the global hub for tracking health emergencies, and emptied the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response. These moves may have their biggest effects on poor citizens of other countries who previously benefited from American aid, but they put Americans at risk, too.

Trump fired the experts and community health workers who once monitored the world for outbreaks and helped restrain those outbreaks before they spread. In the past few decades alone, these workers led the fight against SARS, Zika, Ebola, bird flu and other illnesses, and Americans were largely spared from their effects.

Perhaps the strangest part of Trump’s health policy is his turn against mRNA vaccines. In his first term, his administration helped make possible the stunningly rapid development of mRNA vaccines for Covid. Trump could claim mRNA as his greatest accomplishment. Instead, he caved to vaccine skeptics within the MAGA movement and canceled $500 million in contracts to develop future mRNA vaccines.😓😨😥 That will slow the development of treatments for a future pandemic, when every week without a vaccine can lead to thousands of additional deaths.

3. Eliminating future cures:  In addition to cutting mRNA funding, the administration has sharply cut medical research funding. Mr. Trump and his aides have justified these cuts by citing government efficiency and the “wokeness” of the universities that conduct much of the research. But science funding represents just 0.6 percent of federal spending, and most medical researchers have little to do with the wokeness wars. Their goal is to find effective treatments.

Without federal funding, much of this research — into cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, addiction, diabetes and more — will not happen. It involves basic science that tends to be unprofitable for any one company but can have enormous returns for society. In all, basic research may lose one-third of its federal funding.

Consider the work that a team of researchers at the University of Mississippi and Ohio State University is doing into glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer that is usually deadly within 18 months of diagnosis. The Trump administration cut the team’s funding without a good explanation, forcing the project to pause. After the funding was cut, Eden Tanner, a chemist on the project, received a flood of emails from people affected by the disease. “It’s really heartbreaking to tell them,” she said.

4. Dirtying the air and water:  One public-health success story of the past half-century has been the sharp reduction of air and water pollution. As a result of regulations and clean energy breakthroughs, we breathe and drink many fewer toxins than Americans did decades ago. Pollution-related illnesses, like severe asthma, have declined as a result.

This trend may now be over. The Trump administration is hollowing out the Environmental Protection Agency, rolling back regulations, withdrawing support for clean energy and promoting dirty energy that causes illnesses. One example: The administration has given hundreds of industrial facilities a two-year pass on pollution rules. Another example: The J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in West Olive, Michigan, was on the verge of closing until the Trump administration issued an emergency order, forcing it to stay open — even though the power company had not asked to keep it open. The plant continues to operate today, producing fine particle pollution that is associated with cardiac problems, asthma and other lung diseases.

The effects will be largest in red states, which tend to have more industrial facilities and lighter regulation. In Texas, coal plants are now allowed to release more than twice as much wastewater pollution as they were at the beginning of this year, as well as more than five times as much sulfur dioxide and more than six times as much carbon dioxide, according to the Sierra Club. These changes are also likely to aggravate climate change.
5. Taking away medical care

Trump’s recently passed domestic policy law will leave 10 million Americans without health insurance, experts estimate. Another 4.2 million could lose health insurance if Republicans in Congress refuse to extend expanded tax credits under the Affordable Care Act. Together, these changes would undo about one-third of the coverage gains from that law.

Without health insurance, millions of Americans will not be able to get crucial medical care. A large recent study concluded that poor adults who received Medicaid were 21 percent less likely to die than those who were not enrolled. People with insurance are also more likely to be healthy enough to lead happy, productive lives than people without it. Among the biggest victims of the Medicaid cuts, as we recently explained, will be people addicted to opioids — a group Mr. Trump repeatedly promised to help.

The Medicaid cuts exist largely to finance tax cuts for affluent Americans. That same recent law also includes cuts to food stamps, which will leave poor Americans less able to feed their families and almost certainly less healthy. Wealthy Americans who do not need the money nonetheless receive more of it, while lower-income Americans lose food stamps and health coverage.

In each of these areas, it is easy to name ways that our health system has failed many Americans over the past few decades. Insurance is too expensive. Pollution is concentrated in lower-income communities. Cutting-edge medical treatments are sometimes available only to the affluent. Preventive care and chronic diseases receive too little attention from insurers, doctors, scientific researchers and government agencies. Ultraprocessed foods and “overmedicalization” have hurt children, as RFKjr (Kennedy) has noted.

All of which shows the need for a true Make America Healthy Again movement. Trump is not leading that movement, though. He is instead taking the country backward to a time when many health threats were much more ominous than they are today. Trump is surrendering America to curable diseases.

Robert F. Kennedy jr uses a bibliography to cancel millions in COVID vaccine research but the document was created using a word search

"The COVID vaccine prevented 3.2 million U.S. deaths"...But, every day is another incompetent statement from RFKjr (Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, jr.). Kennedy cut funds designated for COVID (mRNA) vaccine research and used a 180 page report to justify his wrongminded, stupid decision. At least one social media friend wrote to her Maine Congressman Jared Golden to oppose RFKjr's actions.  In the newsletter STAT, Dr. Jake Scott, an infection disease physician, actually read the document referenced by RFKjr as justification for the cuts to research funding. In fact, the document is just a bibliography created by using particular search words, but some of the articles listed actually contradict Kennedy's false premise becasue, obviously, they were not read for content by an individual who could competently understand the data. 

Kennedy’s case against mRNA vaccines collapses under his own evidence: RFK Jr.’s ‘evidence’ doesn’t support ending the research — it makes the case for expanding it.* Reported by STAT

My social media friend Sally-Ann joins millions who are worried about RKjr's stupidity, so she immediately sent an email to Maine Congressman Jared Golden. The news always reminds me of the book title from the 1980s--A Confederacy of Dunces. (A good book--I've read it probably a dozen times, but not recently.) I decided I would just type and not worry about a pretty letter, because I am already worried.

Dear Congressman Golden: First I would like to thank you for the work you are doing in Washington D.C. in these unprecedented times. It seems that daily we have bad news that touches us or people we love. Today's news comes from Robert Kennedy Jr., who is not going to renew contracts for rna vaccines in spite of their wide-spread use and effectiveness.

Back in the 1970s, I worked as a Certified Nuring Assistant (CNA) for three years. During these years I put myself through nursing school. After that I worked as an R.N. for 41 years. I worked in med-surg units, in an ICU, in home care, and in both inpatient and outpatient psychiatry and addiction medicine. I now am working as a volunteer Faith Community Nurse, and still have my nursing license.

I also worked during the pandemic, giving vaccines to people at the Augusta Civic Center. (And even President Trump benefited from the COVID vaccine!) That was some of the most rewarding work of my career. People were so grateful to receive the vaccines. Many of them had not seen their families since the beginning of the pandemic, and the vaccine was their ticket to traveling to see their children.
Now that RFKjr is wielding his power, things are different. He is not qualified for the position he is in. I hope Congress can do something about this travesty--at least regarding the mRNA vaccines, which have saved so may lives.

*When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. terminated $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine research last week, claiming he had “reviewed the science,” his press release linked to a 181-page document as justification.  After reviewing Kennedy’s “evidence”,  it doesn’t support ending mRNA vaccine development. It makes the case for expanding it.

The document isn’t a government analysis or systematic review. 

Rather, it’s a bibliography assembled by outside authors that, according to its own title page, “originated with contributions to TOXIC SHOT: Facing the Dangers of the COVID ‘Vaccines’” with a foreword by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.). The lead compiler is a dentist, not an immunologist, virologist, or vaccine expert.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has suggested the funding was terminated due to lack of public trust in mRNA vaccines. 

But misrepresenting evidence to justify policy decisions is precisely what erodes public trust. If we want to restore confidence in public health, we need to start by accurately representing what the science actually says.

Here’s what Kennedy obviously missed: Most of the compiled papers are in vitro studies (laboratory experiments in test tubes or petri dishes) documenting effects of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, not vaccination. These laboratory experiments, while limited in their clinical relevance and unable to establish causation, consistently show harmful effects from the spike protein produced during infection. The implicit message throughout: Infection produces spike protein that can cause harm, therefore vaccination, which produces controlled amounts of spike without the virus making copies of itself, makes sense.

Some of the papers included in the bibliography are even explicit about this. One examining neurological effects concludes “the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination far outweigh the risks of a neurological complication.” Another review in the packet directly compares infection with vaccination and concludes vaccination is “the more favorable option for protection.” Kennedy is literally citing evidence that contradicts his position.

The document’s methodology reveals how this happened. The authors of the compilation acknowledge that “most in vitro studies cited here used recombinant spike proteins or spike proteins in pseudoviral vectors,” not actual vaccines. They grabbed papers using any mention of spike protein, whether from infection or vaccination, and presented them as evidence against vaccines.

The apparent deception runs deeper. Multiple cited studies inject spike protein or mRNA intravenously into mice, inducing myocarditis, or even directly into brain tissue, routes obviously never used in human vaccination. (Vaccines are injected into shoulder muscle.) The packet includes studies with hippocampal injection of spike, brain infusion in mice, and injection into cerebrospinal fluid. While these experiments help identify theoretical hazards, they reveal nothing about the real-world risk from the intended intramuscular injection in humans.

When it isn’t misreading studies’ conclusions, the compilation uses them in an intellectually dishonest way. For instance, it misleads about how long spike protein stays in the body. It cites studies showing spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 infection lasting months, driven by the virus continuously making copies of itself, to suggest vaccine spike persists similarly.

But vaccine spike typically clears within two weeks because there’s no replicating virus. Those who assembled the document know this distinction but obscure it.

The safety distortions are egregious. The document highlights anaphylaxis rates as high as 1 in 2,280 doses from selective studies, while systematic CDC surveillance estimates 4.5 per million doses, 400 times lower. 

They emphasize myocarditis (a treatable infection in the cardiac muscle) in young males, which peaked at about 100 per million among males ages 16-17 after the second dose, without mentioning that SARS-CoV-2 infection causes myocarditis at higher rates with worse outcomes, or that rates have since dropped to background levels.

Most damning is what’s absent. The compilation ignores the Danish nationwide study of approximately 1 million JN.1 booster recipients that found no increased risk for 29 specified conditions. It omits the Global Vaccine Data Network analysis of 99 million vaccinated across multiple countries finding no new or hidden safety signals. It excludes CDC data showing the unvaccinated had a 53-fold higher risk of death during Delta, demonstrating the critical importance of mRNA vaccination. The Commonwealth Fund estimates Covid vaccines prevented approximately 3.2 million U.S. deaths through 2022.

The papers themselves often contradict the compilation’s framing. Multiple studies state “we cannot infer any causality” from their findings. The document’s own sources describe challenges as surmountable, not fatal flaws. 

Nevertheless, the incompetent Kennedy presents these tentative findings, which the authors themselves call preliminary, as definitive evidence requiring immediate action.

Beyond Covid vaccines, Kennedy’s decision undermines pandemic preparedness. The 22 terminated projects worth $500 million represent the expensive late-stage development that BARDA uniquely funds — Phase 3 trials, manufacturing scale-up, and strategic stockpiling that private companies can’t afford. Kennedy promises “safer, broader, whole-virus vaccines” as alternatives, apparently unaware these take six months minimum to update versus weeks for mRNA. When the next pandemic virus emerges, those extra months will translate directly into preventable deaths.

I’ve analyzed Covid vaccine safety data intensively since 2020. There are real discussions to have about rare side effects, risk communication, and policy trade-offs. But those require honest representation of evidence.

What Kennedy has done is different. Most papers in the compilation found infection-related harms, evidence that actually supports vaccination, yet he is wielding it against vaccines. 😓😕💢He’s citing sources that explicitly support vaccination while claiming they oppose it.

This isn’t scientific disagreement. It’s either staggering incompetence or willful misrepresentation. When half-billion-dollar decisions affecting pandemic preparedness rest on such foundations, the scientific community must respond clearly: Kennedy is using evidence that refutes his own position to justify dismantling tools we’ll desperately need when the next pandemic arrives.

Jake Scott, M.D., is an infectious disease physician and clinical associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.