Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offers remarks on the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown Resort on Aug. 23, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. Photograph by Rebecca Noble/Getty Photographs.
I’m one of many 68 million Individuals residing with psychological sickness and one of many over 10 million Individuals who’ve been identified with bipolar dysfunction.
On February 13, President Trump issued an executive order establishing the President’s Make America Wholesome Once more Fee, chaired by Secretary of Well being and Human Companies Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Amongst different initiatives, the fee is charged with assessing “the prevalence of and menace posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, temper stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss medicine.”
The place does this initiative discover its genesis, and what could be the results if Kennedy’s previous and present public statements turn into actuality?
We’re discovering out proper now.
In July 2024, during a presidential campaign town hall, Kennedy referred to Individuals who take psychiatric drugs for ADHD, despair and nervousness as “addicts.” He shared his plan to ship Individuals residing with habit — together with presumably individuals with psychological well being diagnoses — to “wellness farms” in rural areas. He has described these “farms” as locations the place individuals could be cured of illness by consuming natural produce and never taking beforehand prescribed treatment.
Throughout his Senate confirmation hearing in January, Kennedy recommended antidepressant drugs could also be as addictive as heroin — a claim contradicted by research.
To check his credibility on the psychiatric medicines thousands and thousands of Individuals want, let’s study his views on extra well-known medical points, like vaccines.
In February, Kennedy mentioned “nothing is going to be off limits” with regard to kids’s vaccine schedules, in response to a leaked video considered by The Hill.
Now we’ve got seen the primary penalties of Kennedy’s actions. On February 26, the FDA — beneath Kennedy’s route— cancelled a meeting of seasonal flu vaccine experts that had been scheduled to start out planning the nationwide response to the subsequent flu season.
On March 10, amidst a lethal measles outbreak in Texas, Kennedy suggested that the measles vaccine had harmed children, amongst many different false and deceptive claims not supported by analysis. Now we’re studying that NIH is planning to terminate or limit grants for studies on why certain communities do not get vaccinated, as occurred within the Mennonite neighborhood in Texas.
Peter Marks, the highest vaccine official on the FDA, was forced to resign, saying that Kennedy was largely taken with “subservient affirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
Both by merciless malice or incompetence, Kennedy is steering the ship of nationwide public well being right into a Charybdis that would have extra devastating penalties than the Trump administration’s response to the 2020 pandemic.
The drugs that I’m prescribed for bipolar dysfunction and diabetes have significantly improved my life, and actually made my life attainable.
I take 120 mg of lurasidone day by day, which is an antipsychotic treatment that will likely be focused by Kennedy’s fee. Medical psychosis is the place excited mind exercise causes false ideas, like delusions about being invisible or capable of fly. I had my first episode in 2013 after I was 20 years previous, a standard age for a primary episode. I had my second episode in 2017 after I requested my physician for permission that I am going off of lurasidone to reduce weight. That was a mistake in hindsight, and I dwell with a variety of trauma as a result of I wasn’t on that treatment to forestall one other episode of psychosis.
I take lithium and lamotrigine, that are temper stabilizers that work in several methods. I take 1,800 mg of lithium carbonate (the mineral) day by day and 100 mg of lamotrigine day by day. These drugs are additionally focused by Kennedy’s fee. They assist regulate the ups and down of mania and despair which might be frequent for Individuals with bipolar dysfunction who should not on treatment.
I additionally take two diabetes medicine. In Could of 2023, my A1C, which is the measurement for diabetes, was within the diabetic vary, so I began a GLP-1 treatment to assist appropriate that. I’m now within the wholesome, regular A1C vary and take tirzepatide and metformin for diabetes and weight reduction. These drugs are additionally being focused by Kennedy’s fee.
Like several good son of Abraham, I do know that we people should not good. Our brains and our bodies weren’t developed to be all the time effectively adjusted; they have been developed to maintain us alive in a harmful world. In case you are paranoid about getting eaten alive, possibly there’s a higher probability that you just and your loved ones will survive and prosper.
However we dwell within the yr 2025. We don’t must dwell with scientific despair, nervousness, PTSD and all the remainder. We will take drugs backed by many years of scientific analysis that make enormous enhancements in our high quality of life, each single day.
Till lately, we additionally didn’t must dwell with polio, measles or different illnesses simply prevented with vaccines developed many years in the past.
If Kennedy is ready to absolutely full his imaginative and prescient for American well being care, 341 million Individuals could be left with out the seasonal flu vaccine and presumably different vaccines about which he has raised doubts.
Already, the Trump administration has stopped funding appropriated by Congress for COVID-19 check kits and different public well being campaigns, resulting in a mass layoff of employees on the Minnesota Division of Well being.
Kennedy and Trump are additionally slicing funding for fundamental medical analysis, slashing the finances of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, which is accountable for lots of our medical breakthroughs and drug improvement, together with in psychiatry.
The logical conclusion of Kennedy’s previous statements and present actions is that he wish to rescind FDA approvals for psychotropic drugs like these taken by me and tens of thousands and thousands of Individuals on daily basis.
So what’s the worst that would occur? Contemplate a standard illness just like the flu: In response to data from Centers for Disease Control, from 1999 by 2015, the best mortality charges in different international locations across the globe from seasonal flu are about 4 instances that of the U.S.
Within the 2024-2025 flu season, the estimated flu deaths within the U.S. with present availability of vaccines and coverings is 21,000 to 100,000 for the season. So there’s a actual potential for someplace on the order of 300,000 extra deaths per yr if Kennedy succeeds in his anti-scientific marketing campaign. And that’s solely the seasonal flu.
Individuals have already been going to Canada for extra reasonably priced pharmaceuticals for the previous a number of many years, particularly earlier than the Inexpensive Care Act and former President Biden’s transfer to curb the price of treatment.
If present developments proceed, we could effectively see thousands and thousands of Individuals crossing the border to get their seasonal flu and COVID pictures, their antidepressant treatment, and different well being care wants that have been as soon as authorized and regular in America. We might even see contraband lithium carbonate labeled as sweet shipped in from Mexico. We will make a joke about how extremely silly all of it is, nevertheless it’s no joke that Kennedy has the potential to kill a whole lot of hundreds and upend or wreck thousands and thousands of lives which have been made effectively by prescribed treatment backed by many years of scientific analysis.
The menace is actual. It’s posted right on the White House website. It’s occurring proper now with the seasonal flu vaccine, measles and scientific analysis.
It’s necessary to talk up, name out what’s silly and dangerous, share the tales of thousands and thousands of Individuals, and cease Kennedy’s fever goals from coming to go.
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