Within days of Donald Trump’s election victory, healthcare entrepreneur Callie Means turned to social media to crowdsource advice.
“The first 100 days,” said Means, a former consultant for a major pharmaceutical company who uses social platform X to draw attention to chronic disease. “What should we do to reform the FDA?”
The question was more than just rhetoric. Means is among a cadre of medical business leaders and fringe doctors who are influencing President Donald Trump’s focus on health care policy.
Trump’s return to the White House has given Means and other players in the field greater influence in shaping the new administration and its federal agencies’ initial health policy. It’s also given new momentum to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), a controversial movement that challenges conventional thinking about public health and chronic disease.
Its adherents advocate their ideals with terms like “health freedom” and “true health.” Their causes range from reviewing certain agricultural subsidies, firing National Institutes of Health employees, reconsidering childhood immunization schedules, and banning the marketing of ultra-processed foods to children on television.
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Public health leaders say the emerging Trump administration’s interest in promoting sometimes unorthodox concepts is undermining decades of scientific progress and fueling the rise in preventable diseases. , states that the consequences could be catastrophic. They worry that the administration’s support could undermine trust in public health institutions.
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said he welcomes broad intellectual and scientific debate, but that President Trump is treating untested and unproven public health ideas he has heard as if they were facts. He said he was concerned that people would just parrot it as if it were something that happened.
Experience has shown that people with unproven ideas end up having his ear and a “very big bully pulpit,” he said. “Because he’s the president, people will trust him not to say anything that’s not true. This president would.”
However, those in the MAHA camp have a completely different view. They say they have been vilified as dangerous for questioning the status quo. They argue that elections provide a huge opportunity to shape politics and policy without compromising public health. Instead, it claims to restore trust in federal health agencies that have lost public support during the pandemic.
“This could be a great strategy by the right,” said Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who has come under fire for saying coronavirus vaccines are unsafe. He was explaining some of the election season messages that brought their perspective into the mainstream. “The right was claiming we care about health care and environmental issues. The left was pursuing abortion rights and negative campaigning against Trump. But everyone should care about their health. Health should be independent of politics.”
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The movement is primarily anti-regulation, anti-big government, whether it’s raw milk or drug approvals, but more regulation is needed to implement changes. Many of its concepts intersect to include ideas that have also been supported by parts of the far left.
Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President Trump nominated for Secretary of Health and Human Services, has fired hundreds of people at the National Institutes of Health, removed fluoride from water, and banned federal restrictions on psychedelic therapies. We are calling for stronger support. , relaxing restrictions on raw milk that could expose consumers to food poisoning if consumed. Its sales led to federal raids on farms for not complying with food safety regulations.
Means pushed for top-down changes at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which he says have been adopted by the food industry.
Although he himself has no scientific or medical training, he said it is highly unlikely that people will die from COVID-19 under the following circumstances:metabolically healthywhich refers to eating, sleeping, exercise, and stress management habits, states that approximately 85% of deaths and medical costs in the United States are related to preventable foodborne metabolic conditions.
co-founder of true meda company that helps consumers take advantage of pre-tax savings and reimbursement programs for things like supplements, sleep aids and exercise equipment, said Means has had behind-closed-doors conversations with dozens of lawmakers. He also said he was instrumental in bringing RFK Jr. and Trump together. RFK Jr. endorsed President Trump in August after ending his independent presidential campaign.
“Actually, I’ve had this vision for a year. It may sound like a rumor, but I was in a sweat tent with him at an election event in Austin six months ago. “I had a strong vision that he was on Trump’s side.” said recently on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast.
The former self-proclaimed never Trumper said he felt it was a powerful moment after President Trump’s first assassination attempt. Mr. Means called RFK Jr. and worked with conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson to connect him to the former president. Trump and RFK Jr. then spoke over the next few weeks about topics such as childhood obesity and the causes of infertility, Means said.
“He and I really felt that this could be a realignment of American politics,” Means said.
His sister, Casey Means, a Stanford-trained physician and co-author with her brother of Good Energy, a book on improving metabolic health, is also involved in the effort. They blamed big pharmaceutical companies and the agricultural industry for the rise in obesity, depression and chronic health conditions in the country. They also raised questions about vaccines.
“Yes, I think one vaccine probably doesn’t cause autism, but what happens when you get 20 vaccines by 18 months?” Casey Means told Joe Rogan. Ta. podcast episode along with her younger brother.
The movement, which challenges what its supporters call “the cult of science,” gained significant momentum during the pandemic in the wake of the backlash against vaccines and mask mandates that flourished under the Biden administration. Many of its supporters say they have won over supporters who believe they are being misinformed about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
In July 2022, Deborah Birx, who served as the COVID-19 response coordinator in the first Trump administration, said on Fox News that vaccines are indeed effective, but “we are overhyping them.” It was too much,” he said.
Anthony Fauci, who advised President Trump during the pandemic, said in December 2020 that the vaccine could reduce COVID-19 infections in the same way that the polio vaccine helped reduce COVID-19 infections. Said to be a game changer.
But it eventually became clear that the shots do not necessarily prevent infection and that the booster’s effectiveness wears off over time, leading some conservatives to disillusion and interest in the health freedom movement. He claims to have increased it.
Federal health officials say the rollout of coronavirus vaccines marks a turning point in the pandemic, saying vaccinations reduce the severity of the disease by teaching the immune system to recognize and fight the causative virus.
After the election, some Trump supporters, including Elon Musk, called for Fauci to be prosecuted. Fauci declined to comment.
Joe Grogan, a former White House Domestic Policy Council director and Trump aide, said conservatives are trying to make clear why government control of health care is troubling.
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“Two things have happened: the government has completely overreached, lied about a lot of things during COVID-19, and shown no compassion for the needs of people outside of COVID-19. ” he said. “RFK Jr. came in and said very simply that we can’t trust government health care, we’re spending money and it’s not making anyone healthier. In some cases. That can make people sicker.”
The MAHA movement draws on many of the unconventional health concepts that have become darlings of the left, such as promoting organic foods and food as medicine. But in a polarized political environment, some medical analysts say the rise of leaders who challenge the so-called cult of science could lead to further confusion and division among the public.
Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy research group, said in a statement that he agrees with RFK Jr.’s focus on reevaluating the public health system. But he says it comes with risks.
“We are concerned that many of Mr. RFK Jr.’s claims about vaccine safety, environmental toxins, and food additives lack evidence, are fueling public anxiety, and are contributing to declining childhood vaccination rates. ” he said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, measles vaccination rates among U.S. kindergarteners fell from 95.2% in the 2019-2020 school year to 92.7% in the 2023-24 school year. The agency announced that this puts approximately 280,000 kindergarten children at risk.
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