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The head of our health and services department is not so far off Dr Rush's opinions on how human health works. 250 years after Dr Rush and somehow the head doc

by cco 1y ago

The head of our health and services department is not so far off Dr Rush's opinions on how human health works. 250 years after Dr Rush and somehow the head doctor in our country believes in the miasma theory of disease, only marginally more modern (still ancient Greek).

n4r9 1y ago
Oh my Lord, you're right: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine-stance-is-rooted-in-a-disbelief-in-germ-theory/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine...
- antonvs 1y ago
  > The section is titled "Miasma vs. Germ Theory," in the chapter "The White Man's Burden" [in his book attacking Fauci, titled "The Real Anthony Fauci"] RFK Jr. seems to be trying to answer the question, how misguided can one man be?
- goodluckchuck 1y ago
  The article defeats itself by acknowledging that he uses the term in a different sense… which doesn’t deny the existence or effect of germs, but focuses on the fact that for example many of the worst effects from COVID-19 were in obese people. His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. He’s saying we miss the forest for the trees when we forget to focus on the underlying health of our bodies. Of course they wanted to write a hit piece… and what he’s saying isn’t actually controversial.
  - jeltz 1y ago
    > His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. That is a quite controversial claim and one I hope he did not make. Do you seriously mean we should not have developed a vaccine because fat people dying would have been preferrable? If we had not developed a vaccine I do not think people would have changed their habits, more overweight people would just have died. The medical community has taken overweight very seriously and a lot of money has been put into developing weight loss drugs but it is not like CDC can magically make people eat better.
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      > Do you seriously mean we should not have developed a vaccine because fat people dying would have been preferrable? I really have no idea how you could read that from those words? He's saying he wishes we had been more proactive in tackling obesity prior to the pandemic. As you say, yes, they already do a lot, so it's still quite misguided, but still very far from how you were framing it.
  - tim333 1y ago
    Yeah. Here's the section for those interested https://justpaste.it/k4rqx https://justpaste.it/k4rqx He uses the terms in a muddled way rather than disputing germs existence. Eg: >Miasma exponents posit that disease occurs where a weakened immune system provides germs an enfeebled target to exploit.
    - 010101010101 1y ago
      > 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. This is in the second paragraph and is exactly what tfa represented. It also argues directly against the idea that “a weakened immune system provides germs an enfeebled target to exploit” using measles deaths in otherwise healthy yet unvaccinated American children as an example. This is only a “hit piece” in that it’s blatantly critical of RFK Jr. and his ideas - those ideas are complete garbage and deserving of ridicule, and the leader of HHS espousing them should make him a target of far more criticism than this.
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    > His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. Maybe I need reevaluate my interpretation here, but this reads heavily like you’re not only blaming doctors for failing to “cure” people’s obesity, but also for waiting too long to address it, instead (incorrectly) opting to treat or prevent the virus that the patient is seeing them for. Am I reading that right? Basically “doctors refuse to treat the real problem - obesity - and instead wait until the last second and (wrongly) treat the virus”?
  - n4r9 1y ago
    In which case he's misusing the term "miasma", oversimplifying modern medicine by labelling the entire practice as "germ theory", and presenting a false balance on the issue. And it's kinda dangerous to dog-whistle like that; vaccines have saved far more lives than simple nutrition and healthy living would be able to replace. We've seen the outcome of RFK spewing misinformation about the measles vaccine in Samoa. People suffer and die.
  - smelendez 1y ago
    Doctors have tried lots of ways to treat obesity—drugs, diet and exercise recommendations, various surgeries, hypnosis, peer support groups. It’s not a problem they ignore and obviously one you can be richly rewarded for treating, as we see with the GLP-1 drugs. It’s just difficult for many people to lose weight and keep it off.
    - Forgeties79 1y ago
      Yeah I feel like there’s this weird implication in the prior comment that obesity is something for a doctor to cure that they simply choose not to because of idk money or other incentives or whatever
- tim333 1y ago
  Interesting from that article that he as diagnosed with mercury poisoning, famous for making people a bit mad, hence the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland as hatters in the day used mercury.
  - pstuart 1y ago
    And a parasitic brain worm to boot.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
robocat 1y ago
We disbelieved in miasma during Covid: yet Covid turned out to be transmitted by "bad air" . . . regardless of how strongly it was argued against at the beginning of 2020. Even wrong theories can have a kernel of truth. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory
- vintermann 1y ago
  If we go by theories by their earliest incarnations, "germ theory" rejected that diseases could be caused by deficiency in micronutrients. "Terrain theory" arguably was the closest to the truth on those. Also, by the standards of so-called "evidence based medicine" where we care less about the proposed mechanism a treatment works by, and more about whether it actually works, then miasma theory (or maybe it's more accurate to call it miasma practice, then?) doesn't look so bad. Florence Nightingale didn't bury horses because she believed in germ theory, she did it because they stank - and because she had developed statistical evidence that such hygiene interventions worked, whatever the mechanism. It took a long time for germ theory to get sophisticated enough that we can say it started saving more lives than sanitation (which was developed based on miasma theory). The first incarnations of an ultimately correct theory often work worse in practice at the start. Not that it excuses Kennedy.
- n4r9 1y ago
  So what? Geocentricity can predict some observations but it's bonkers to believe in it today.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  I guess if we're doing mental gymnastics, an airborne virus is indeed "bad air", and opening a window helps get the bad air out and wearing a mask keeps the bad air in. If "bad air" convinced people to take measures then I'll take it as a win.
- jibal 1y ago
  There were no arguments against a virus causing respiratory disease being carried airborne. There was uncertainty as to whether the disease could be contracted from surfaces. And viruses being airborne (carried on droplets) simply isn't what miasma theory is. Actual miasma theory is wrong and has no kernel of truth ... a fine example of how correlation is not causation. And let's get back to the point: > somehow the head doctor in our country believes in the miasma theory of disease The man is an extraordinarily dangerous crank who is putting the health of Americans at grave risk ... he has already killed numerous children and it will soon get much worse. Any attempt to defend him in any way is vile.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by cco 1y ago

n4r9 1y ago

Oh my Lord, you're right: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine-stance-is-rooted-in-a-disbelief-in-germ-theory/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine...

antonvs 1y ago
> The section is titled "Miasma vs. Germ Theory," in the chapter "The White Man's Burden" [in his book attacking Fauci, titled "The Real Anthony Fauci"] RFK Jr. seems to be trying to answer the question, how misguided can one man be?
goodluckchuck 1y ago
The article defeats itself by acknowledging that he uses the term in a different sense… which doesn’t deny the existence or effect of germs, but focuses on the fact that for example many of the worst effects from COVID-19 were in obese people. His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. He’s saying we miss the forest for the trees when we forget to focus on the underlying health of our bodies. Of course they wanted to write a hit piece… and what he’s saying isn’t actually controversial.
- jeltz 1y ago
  > His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. That is a quite controversial claim and one I hope he did not make. Do you seriously mean we should not have developed a vaccine because fat people dying would have been preferrable? If we had not developed a vaccine I do not think people would have changed their habits, more overweight people would just have died. The medical community has taken overweight very seriously and a lot of money has been put into developing weight loss drugs but it is not like CDC can magically make people eat better.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    > Do you seriously mean we should not have developed a vaccine because fat people dying would have been preferrable? I really have no idea how you could read that from those words? He's saying he wishes we had been more proactive in tackling obesity prior to the pandemic. As you say, yes, they already do a lot, so it's still quite misguided, but still very far from how you were framing it.
- tim333 1y ago
  Yeah. Here's the section for those interested https://justpaste.it/k4rqx https://justpaste.it/k4rqx He uses the terms in a muddled way rather than disputing germs existence. Eg: >Miasma exponents posit that disease occurs where a weakened immune system provides germs an enfeebled target to exploit.
  - 010101010101 1y ago
    > 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. This is in the second paragraph and is exactly what tfa represented. It also argues directly against the idea that “a weakened immune system provides germs an enfeebled target to exploit” using measles deaths in otherwise healthy yet unvaccinated American children as an example. This is only a “hit piece” in that it’s blatantly critical of RFK Jr. and his ideas - those ideas are complete garbage and deserving of ridicule, and the leader of HHS espousing them should make him a target of far more criticism than this.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  > His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. Maybe I need reevaluate my interpretation here, but this reads heavily like you’re not only blaming doctors for failing to “cure” people’s obesity, but also for waiting too long to address it, instead (incorrectly) opting to treat or prevent the virus that the patient is seeing them for. Am I reading that right? Basically “doctors refuse to treat the real problem - obesity - and instead wait until the last second and (wrongly) treat the virus”?
- n4r9 1y ago
  In which case he's misusing the term "miasma", oversimplifying modern medicine by labelling the entire practice as "germ theory", and presenting a false balance on the issue. And it's kinda dangerous to dog-whistle like that; vaccines have saved far more lives than simple nutrition and healthy living would be able to replace. We've seen the outcome of RFK spewing misinformation about the measles vaccine in Samoa. People suffer and die.
- smelendez 1y ago
  Doctors have tried lots of ways to treat obesity—drugs, diet and exercise recommendations, various surgeries, hypnosis, peer support groups. It’s not a problem they ignore and obviously one you can be richly rewarded for treating, as we see with the GLP-1 drugs. It’s just difficult for many people to lose weight and keep it off.
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    Yeah I feel like there’s this weird implication in the prior comment that obesity is something for a doctor to cure that they simply choose not to because of idk money or other incentives or whatever
tim333 1y ago
Interesting from that article that he as diagnosed with mercury poisoning, famous for making people a bit mad, hence the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland as hatters in the day used mercury.
- pstuart 1y ago
  And a parasitic brain worm to boot.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

robocat 1y ago

We disbelieved in miasma during Covid: yet Covid turned out to be transmitted by "bad air" . . . regardless of how strongly it was argued against at the beginning of 2020. Even wrong theories can have a kernel of truth. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory

vintermann 1y ago
If we go by theories by their earliest incarnations, "germ theory" rejected that diseases could be caused by deficiency in micronutrients. "Terrain theory" arguably was the closest to the truth on those. Also, by the standards of so-called "evidence based medicine" where we care less about the proposed mechanism a treatment works by, and more about whether it actually works, then miasma theory (or maybe it's more accurate to call it miasma practice, then?) doesn't look so bad. Florence Nightingale didn't bury horses because she believed in germ theory, she did it because they stank - and because she had developed statistical evidence that such hygiene interventions worked, whatever the mechanism. It took a long time for germ theory to get sophisticated enough that we can say it started saving more lives than sanitation (which was developed based on miasma theory). The first incarnations of an ultimately correct theory often work worse in practice at the start. Not that it excuses Kennedy.
n4r9 1y ago
So what? Geocentricity can predict some observations but it's bonkers to believe in it today.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
I guess if we're doing mental gymnastics, an airborne virus is indeed "bad air", and opening a window helps get the bad air out and wearing a mask keeps the bad air in. If "bad air" convinced people to take measures then I'll take it as a win.
jibal 1y ago
There were no arguments against a virus causing respiratory disease being carried airborne. There was uncertainty as to whether the disease could be contracted from surfaces. And viruses being airborne (carried on droplets) simply isn't what miasma theory is. Actual miasma theory is wrong and has no kernel of truth ... a fine example of how correlation is not causation. And let's get back to the point: > somehow the head doctor in our country believes in the miasma theory of disease The man is an extraordinarily dangerous crank who is putting the health of Americans at grave risk ... he has already killed numerous children and it will soon get much worse. Any attempt to defend him in any way is vile.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]