ANDREW MILLER: Robert F Kennedy Jr’s zany conspiracy theories have no place in a modern healthcare system

Any hopes of a quieter second term for reality TV star turned President, Donald Trump, are fading fast as we watch his cabinet selections. In proposing the anti-vaxxer activist Robert F Kennedy Jr for US Health Secretary, Trump has signalled that there is an even lower bar to recruitment than “no experience necessary” — being an unqualified conspiracy peddler. At this rate the president-elect’s brilliant medical suggestions might get on the pharmacopeia. Remember, don’t try these at home, shining a light inside the body and downing shots of bleach to defeat COVID-19? Trump is using the Dunning-Kruger method: selecting people with the highest ratio of confidence to knowledge, then bestowing them credibility with the gravitas of the role. Everyone knows US healthcare is in trouble; it’s obvious that their corporate insurers and big pharma need a tighter leash. They profit egregiously from what they quaintly call the “managed care” of those lucky enough to have cover. Your doctor thinks you need an MRI scan? That will require pre-approval, so don’t be surprised when the computer says “no.” Will disruptive Kennedy be a good force — removing bureaucracy and industry super-profits — or simply a tool of misinformation, leaving patients even worse off? He is a 70-year-old environmental lawyer with no health background. He runs with a crowd who think there are evil forces behind every 5G phone tower and approved medication. Not all Kennedy’s views are wrong though — a grain of verifiable truth often makes conspiracy theories more persuasive. Like most Americans, he seems to support access to abortion so far. Experts agree with him that part of the solution to the chronic disease burden is better nutrition. He could sponsor a sugar tax on sodas and processed foods, and a floor price on alcohol, if he has the cojones to take on those political-donor behemoths. The rest of his grab-bag of theories are from the cuckoo school of internet podcast medicine: he says fluoride in drinking water is bad for you — wrong; raw milk is safe — wrong; that stem cell clinics are useful — nope; that anti-depressants cause mass shootings — they don’t, and his cruel headliner: that immunisations are connected to autism, which has been disproven again and again. A walking conspiracy meme will have the keys to the US health system if he is confirmed. We will need to quadruple down on education to resist the dangerous tide of emboldened rubbish about to be inflicted on the entire world. Vaccines have saved more lives than any other invention in history, but now we could well see outbreaks of diseases hardly seen in our lifetimes. Kennedy wrote a whole book in 2021, claiming public health leader Professor Anthony Fauci was homicidal, and reprising the ridiculous idea that HIV does not cause AIDS. He has reportedly expressed the racist fantasy that COVID-19 is a bioweapon targeted against Caucasians, while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people — which is debunked by any cursory knowledge of epidemiology and biology. Just when you think things can’t get any weirder, Kennedy’s claim that worms ate part of his brain then died in there, causing neurological problems, is probably true. Neurocysticercosis is the medical term for tapeworm larva seeding inside the brain from the blood stream. As your mum said, don’t eat under-done pork - it might affect your thinking. All of this could be faintly amusing, were it not for the real people that are likely to suffer as a result of conspiracy-fuelled decision-making. Access to childhood immunisations, and all medications, should not be at the whim of people who spout dark fairytales. We have our disagreements with Australian public health authorities. They should be allowing COVID-19 immunisation for kids, and they are woefully impotent in preventing airborne spread, but they have never sponsored conspiracy theories. We should not have to be grateful for that, but here we are in Trump-world again. God help us all.