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He is vaccinated and all of his children are as well. What specifically of his statements do you consider “anti-vax”?

9dev 2y ago
Maybe the fact that he wants to let people choose whether to get vaccinated. That isn’t how we eradicated polio. It’s irresponsible.
- aphantastic 2y ago
  So not “anti-vax” but rather “pro-choice”.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    "anti-vaccinating people at the scale required to yield good public health outcomes" is sufficient to qualify for the label, IMO.
    - noworriesnate 2y ago
      To be fair, vaccinating all humans, dogs, cats and other animals that can carry COVID-19 was never going to happen before the virus mutated, so you could also apply the label to reality itself.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        To be fair, that’s not required to yield extremely strong public health outcomes, as evidenced by the extremely strong public health outcomes we saw in reality. (If you’re about to go on some statistically illiterate sidebar about how the COVID vaccines weren’t actually that effective, you can save your breath)
dekhn 2y ago
Not sure if you're "playing dumb" (sometimes people do that on chat boards). Kennedy isn't just "pro-choice on vaccines", he's repeatedly amplified nonscientific views about vaccine safety. For example, as recently as 2023, "Autism comes from vaccines". Then he pivots to a more useful comment, that vaccines are exempt from the normal requirements on drugs to go through full clinical trials. If you want to claim "autism comes from vaccines" you really have to put up some sort of evidence that supports the claim, and the reality is that there is no reliable evidence for the claim. Also, which vaccine? They use a wide range of technologies? Is it thimerosol... which isn't in any of the major vaccines used in the US today (and was unlikely to be a cause of autism in the first place, and is also still used in many contexts). Ultimately, what RFK Jr is doing is sowing doubt in established science. I think he's doing it because he thinks the established science is corrupt, but I fail to see how he could possibly correct that while also casting doubt. If he ends up in a public health leadership position, he's going to find very quickly just how poorly his approach to public health works.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  > he's repeatedly amplified nonscientific views about vaccine safety. For example, as recently as 2023, "Autism comes from vaccines". I've heard this said in the NYT and elsewhere, but have yet to read any actual quotes of his __in context__. > RFK Jr is doing is sowing doubt in established science. the first rule of science is that it is never "established". This is especially true in health sciences, where thing that we were pretty sure were one way turn out not to be that way, or are much more nuanced than we thought. So challenging established thought is what scientists should be doing. Now if RFK is a public health official then that is probably counter-productive and not really the place to be doing that. But he hasn't been a public health official to my knowledge so far. I don't know that much about RFK but one thing I do like about him is that he's speaking out against the unhealthy processed food industry, which I don't hear hardly anyone else doing. (Lots of people say "eat healthy" but there's not that many people saying "these large multinationals are feeding you garbage for profit".
  - dekhn 2y ago
    He said it on Fox. You can go view the video here: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6330950198112 https://www.foxnews.com/video/6330950198112 When you say that science is never "Established", that's horse pockey. Established means we have a high level of confidence (not absolute). Yes, things get updated, for example we now don't go around saying that "stress causes ulcers". And when it comes to vaccines, multiple high quality studies have failed to find a relationship between vaccines and autism, while the original work has been discredited (shown to be false) and retracted. Yet the news cycle about that caused large numbers of people in the US to not get their kids vaccinated for many different things (and also blame the vaccines for their children's autism). (to be realistic, vaccines do have side effects and there is an entire program detected to detecting those problems). As for whether he's been a public health official: no, but he has worked on environmental and public health problems before (I don't recall if this is before or after he ate so much fish he got mercury poisoning). I don't think many people are complaining about him speaking against processed food, but again, the policy he promotes should be thoughtful, not knee-jerk.

9dev 2y ago

Maybe the fact that he wants to let people choose whether to get vaccinated. That isn’t how we eradicated polio. It’s irresponsible.

aphantastic 2y ago
So not “anti-vax” but rather “pro-choice”.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  "anti-vaccinating people at the scale required to yield good public health outcomes" is sufficient to qualify for the label, IMO.
  - noworriesnate 2y ago
    To be fair, vaccinating all humans, dogs, cats and other animals that can carry COVID-19 was never going to happen before the virus mutated, so you could also apply the label to reality itself.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      To be fair, that’s not required to yield extremely strong public health outcomes, as evidenced by the extremely strong public health outcomes we saw in reality. (If you’re about to go on some statistically illiterate sidebar about how the COVID vaccines weren’t actually that effective, you can save your breath)

dekhn 2y ago

Not sure if you're "playing dumb" (sometimes people do that on chat boards). Kennedy isn't just "pro-choice on vaccines", he's repeatedly amplified nonscientific views about vaccine safety. For example, as recently as 2023, "Autism comes from vaccines". Then he pivots to a more useful comment, that vaccines are exempt from the normal requirements on drugs to go through full clinical trials. If you want to claim "autism comes from vaccines" you really have to put up some sort of evidence that supports the claim, and the reality is that there is no reliable evidence for the claim. Also, which vaccine? They use a wide range of technologies? Is it thimerosol... which isn't in any of the major vaccines used in the US today (and was unlikely to be a cause of autism in the first place, and is also still used in many contexts). Ultimately, what RFK Jr is doing is sowing doubt in established science. I think he's doing it because he thinks the established science is corrupt, but I fail to see how he could possibly correct that while also casting doubt. If he ends up in a public health leadership position, he's going to find very quickly just how poorly his approach to public health works.

insane_dreamer 2y ago
> he's repeatedly amplified nonscientific views about vaccine safety. For example, as recently as 2023, "Autism comes from vaccines". I've heard this said in the NYT and elsewhere, but have yet to read any actual quotes of his __in context__. > RFK Jr is doing is sowing doubt in established science. the first rule of science is that it is never "established". This is especially true in health sciences, where thing that we were pretty sure were one way turn out not to be that way, or are much more nuanced than we thought. So challenging established thought is what scientists should be doing. Now if RFK is a public health official then that is probably counter-productive and not really the place to be doing that. But he hasn't been a public health official to my knowledge so far. I don't know that much about RFK but one thing I do like about him is that he's speaking out against the unhealthy processed food industry, which I don't hear hardly anyone else doing. (Lots of people say "eat healthy" but there's not that many people saying "these large multinationals are feeding you garbage for profit".
- dekhn 2y ago
  He said it on Fox. You can go view the video here: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6330950198112 https://www.foxnews.com/video/6330950198112 When you say that science is never "Established", that's horse pockey. Established means we have a high level of confidence (not absolute). Yes, things get updated, for example we now don't go around saying that "stress causes ulcers". And when it comes to vaccines, multiple high quality studies have failed to find a relationship between vaccines and autism, while the original work has been discredited (shown to be false) and retracted. Yet the news cycle about that caused large numbers of people in the US to not get their kids vaccinated for many different things (and also blame the vaccines for their children's autism). (to be realistic, vaccines do have side effects and there is an entire program detected to detecting those problems). As for whether he's been a public health official: no, but he has worked on environmental and public health problems before (I don't recall if this is before or after he ate so much fish he got mercury poisoning). I don't think many people are complaining about him speaking against processed food, but again, the policy he promotes should be thoughtful, not knee-jerk.