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I like the suggestion, but this is not a debate really, this is action. Kennedy isn’t debating anyone.

by mrtksn 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
somenameforme 1y ago
His decisions are not arbitrary. He lays out his logic, rationale, and evidence, but people seemingly are either unaware or uninterested in such, instead preferring to create strawmen to fight against. For instance another post here claims he doesn't "believe" in germ theory. That should immediately be a red flag of something taken out of context or misrepresented, and indeed it was. Here [1] is a blog which is highly critical of RFK's view on germ theory yet, unlike most media sources, it also lays out what he said in a vaguely reasonable way. He obviously does not reject germ theory in the least, but believes that having an overall healthier lifestyle and avoiding environmental toxins is a more effective means of ensuring your body can fight off infection than by focusing solely on specific germs. The article offers a quote that seems reasonable: "When a starving African child succumbs to measles, the miasmist attributes the death to malnutrition; germ theory proponents (a.k.a. virologists) blame the virus. The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune response." Of course one can engage with modern medicine and live a healthy life, but I think his entire schtick is that the whole live a healthy life aspect of healthcare has been largely neglected over the past half century. Just reducing the obesity rate, for instance, would probably have a dramatically greater impact on health outcomes than any new medical discovery over the next 50 years - as we seem to have entered well into the domain of diminishing returns. But yet there will be many trillions of dollars pumped into those discoveries, with little to no meaningful effort made to curb obesity, unless it can be done with a drug - because that's where the $$$ is. [1] - https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-a-new-form-of-germ-theory https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-a...
- mrtksn 1y ago
  Nothing is arbitrary, this doesn't make it a debate though. You can have a statement at best if he states the reasons. About the healthy life stuff, yes most of the rest of the world already practice this without wedging war on modern science and have plenty of regulations in place to protect the citizens. Additionally, a lot of countries have some form of centralized healthcare structure that has has preventive healthcare. Maybe RFK wants to make USA like EU using BS to avoid being called socialist. Also, I previously said that I like the spirit of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44134479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44134479
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    Something I find extremely interesting is life expectancy. If you look back to the upper classes of old their life expectancy was extremely similar to those of today. So for instance in modern history, of the 15 key Founding Fathers, 7 lived to at least 80 years old: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, John Jay. John Adams himself lived to 90. The youngest to die were Hamilton who died in a duel, and John Hancock who died of gout of an undocumented cause - it can be caused by excessive alcohol consumption. All the others lived into their 60s and 70s. So their overall life expectancy was pretty much the same as we have today. And this was long before vaccines or even us knowing that surgeons washing their hands before surgery was a good thing to do. It's the same as you go back further into history. A study [1] of all men of renown in Ancient Greece was 71.3, and that was from thousands of years ago! The most primitive medical technology, antibiotics in particular, could have likely expanded these lives well beyond current day. So the idea here is not to just add more regulations to medicine or have people go to the hospital even more for preventative care but to start living healthier lives in general. Less crap food, more time outdoors, more exercise, less obesity, and so on. And these are things that the government should have been pushing all along. [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/
    - mrtksn 1y ago
      Regulations are usually about the absolute minimum, if you look at EU you can see that there are large discrepancies between countries despite being under the same regulations. You can't regulate your way into prosperity. IMHO it's the culture that matters and distrust into science and institutions breeds bad culture.
- bettercaust 1y ago
  This "miasmist approach" to public health starts from a belief, not a basis of fact or empiricism. There are certainly circumstances in which malnutrition makes someone more susceptible to infectious disease, but what evidence is there that this is a significant contributor to infectious disease in countries like the US? What evidence is there that an otherwise healthy immune system could be "boosted" with proper nutrition and elimination of environmental toxins to the point that it would have a meaningful impact on infectious disease? No one's against nutritional public health measures or elimination of environmental toxins to improve public health. The fact is lifestyle interventions are ALWAYS first-line recommendations by medical doctors for things like obesity, but Americans are stressed out, overworked, inactive, eating garbage food, and have clamored for easy solutions like taking a pill for a long time rather than making lifestyle changes. There's been no neglect of "living a healthy life", it's just that Americans don't want to do it because it requires lifting a finger. There are many positive public health impacts HHS and the Trump admin could have, but they are talking out of both sides of their mouth when they claim "MAHA" while cutting food access entitlements, rolling back environmental regulations for clean air and water, and of course "drill baby drill". RFK Jr. made a deal with the devil to be HHS secretary.
  - alejohausner 1y ago
    I know I'm coming to the discussion late, but actually there is good evidence that improvements in nutrition, working conditions, and sanitation are a big factor in improving resistance to infectious diseases. Look at "The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century", by Mckinlay and McKinley (1977). I know it's an old paper, but it has some fascinating and, to me, very persuasive time series. Those plots show mortality from various infectious diseases over the 20th century. Example: death rates (per 1000) from scarlet fever dropped from 0.1 in 1900 to effectively 0 in 1940. There is NO VACCINE for scarlet fever. Example: death rates from measles (lately very much in the news) dropped from 0.12 in 1900 to 0 in 1960 (a vaccine for measles was introduced in 1960). A similar trend exists for many other infectious diseases: huge drops in mortality PRECEDE the introduction of vaccines or antibiotics for the disease. Surely we can't credit vaccines with such a drop in death rates. I don't see how anybody could come to such a conclusion.
- stouset 1y ago
  His logic, rationale, and evidence are worthless when his evidence is fabricated and/or cherry-picked and his logic and rationale stem from a pre-drawn conclusion incompatible with the existing evidence. If he wants to focus on encouraging Americans to live more healthily, that doesn't need to come at the expense of vaccines. Further, he wouldn't be focused on areas of questionable or marginal value like food dyes, but on junk food as a whole. And if you want to focus on junk food, the place to start is economics: junk food is cheap in both time and money, and a financially-struggling population lacks both.

I like the suggestion, but this is not a debate really, this is action. Kennedy isn’t debating anyone.

by mrtksn 1y ago

I like the suggestion, but this is not a debate really, this is action. Kennedy isn’t debating anyone.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

somenameforme 1y ago

His decisions are not arbitrary. He lays out his logic, rationale, and evidence, but people seemingly are either unaware or uninterested in such, instead preferring to create strawmen to fight against. For instance another post here claims he doesn't "believe" in germ theory. That should immediately be a red flag of something taken out of context or misrepresented, and indeed it was. Here [1] is a blog which is highly critical of RFK's view on germ theory yet, unlike most media sources, it also lays out what he said in a vaguely reasonable way. He obviously does not reject germ theory in the least, but believes that having an overall healthier lifestyle and avoiding environmental toxins is a more effective means of ensuring your body can fight off infection than by focusing solely on specific germs. The article offers a quote that seems reasonable: "When a starving African child succumbs to measles, the miasmist attributes the death to malnutrition; germ theory proponents (a.k.a. virologists) blame the virus. The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune response." Of course one can engage with modern medicine and live a healthy life, but I think his entire schtick is that the whole live a healthy life aspect of healthcare has been largely neglected over the past half century. Just reducing the obesity rate, for instance, would probably have a dramatically greater impact on health outcomes than any new medical discovery over the next 50 years - as we seem to have entered well into the domain of diminishing returns. But yet there will be many trillions of dollars pumped into those discoveries, with little to no meaningful effort made to curb obesity, unless it can be done with a drug - because that's where the $$$ is. [1] - https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-a-new-form-of-germ-theory https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-a...

mrtksn 1y ago
Nothing is arbitrary, this doesn't make it a debate though. You can have a statement at best if he states the reasons. About the healthy life stuff, yes most of the rest of the world already practice this without wedging war on modern science and have plenty of regulations in place to protect the citizens. Additionally, a lot of countries have some form of centralized healthcare structure that has has preventive healthcare. Maybe RFK wants to make USA like EU using BS to avoid being called socialist. Also, I previously said that I like the spirit of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44134479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44134479
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Something I find extremely interesting is life expectancy. If you look back to the upper classes of old their life expectancy was extremely similar to those of today. So for instance in modern history, of the 15 key Founding Fathers, 7 lived to at least 80 years old: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, John Jay. John Adams himself lived to 90. The youngest to die were Hamilton who died in a duel, and John Hancock who died of gout of an undocumented cause - it can be caused by excessive alcohol consumption. All the others lived into their 60s and 70s. So their overall life expectancy was pretty much the same as we have today. And this was long before vaccines or even us knowing that surgeons washing their hands before surgery was a good thing to do. It's the same as you go back further into history. A study [1] of all men of renown in Ancient Greece was 71.3, and that was from thousands of years ago! The most primitive medical technology, antibiotics in particular, could have likely expanded these lives well beyond current day. So the idea here is not to just add more regulations to medicine or have people go to the hospital even more for preventative care but to start living healthier lives in general. Less crap food, more time outdoors, more exercise, less obesity, and so on. And these are things that the government should have been pushing all along. [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/
  - mrtksn 1y ago
    Regulations are usually about the absolute minimum, if you look at EU you can see that there are large discrepancies between countries despite being under the same regulations. You can't regulate your way into prosperity. IMHO it's the culture that matters and distrust into science and institutions breeds bad culture.
bettercaust 1y ago
This "miasmist approach" to public health starts from a belief, not a basis of fact or empiricism. There are certainly circumstances in which malnutrition makes someone more susceptible to infectious disease, but what evidence is there that this is a significant contributor to infectious disease in countries like the US? What evidence is there that an otherwise healthy immune system could be "boosted" with proper nutrition and elimination of environmental toxins to the point that it would have a meaningful impact on infectious disease? No one's against nutritional public health measures or elimination of environmental toxins to improve public health. The fact is lifestyle interventions are ALWAYS first-line recommendations by medical doctors for things like obesity, but Americans are stressed out, overworked, inactive, eating garbage food, and have clamored for easy solutions like taking a pill for a long time rather than making lifestyle changes. There's been no neglect of "living a healthy life", it's just that Americans don't want to do it because it requires lifting a finger. There are many positive public health impacts HHS and the Trump admin could have, but they are talking out of both sides of their mouth when they claim "MAHA" while cutting food access entitlements, rolling back environmental regulations for clean air and water, and of course "drill baby drill". RFK Jr. made a deal with the devil to be HHS secretary.
- alejohausner 1y ago
  I know I'm coming to the discussion late, but actually there is good evidence that improvements in nutrition, working conditions, and sanitation are a big factor in improving resistance to infectious diseases. Look at "The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century", by Mckinlay and McKinley (1977). I know it's an old paper, but it has some fascinating and, to me, very persuasive time series. Those plots show mortality from various infectious diseases over the 20th century. Example: death rates (per 1000) from scarlet fever dropped from 0.1 in 1900 to effectively 0 in 1940. There is NO VACCINE for scarlet fever. Example: death rates from measles (lately very much in the news) dropped from 0.12 in 1900 to 0 in 1960 (a vaccine for measles was introduced in 1960). A similar trend exists for many other infectious diseases: huge drops in mortality PRECEDE the introduction of vaccines or antibiotics for the disease. Surely we can't credit vaccines with such a drop in death rates. I don't see how anybody could come to such a conclusion.
stouset 1y ago
His logic, rationale, and evidence are worthless when his evidence is fabricated and/or cherry-picked and his logic and rationale stem from a pre-drawn conclusion incompatible with the existing evidence. If he wants to focus on encouraging Americans to live more healthily, that doesn't need to come at the expense of vaccines. Further, he wouldn't be focused on areas of questionable or marginal value like food dyes, but on junk food as a whole. And if you want to focus on junk food, the place to start is economics: junk food is cheap in both time and money, and a financially-struggling population lacks both.