If one thing was learned last term, it was that it’s impossible to staff your administration with competent people if you also expect them to blindly follow the whims and urges of a demented reality show host.
To think we went from Mattis to this guy…
The actual solution is that Trump must go. But America voted for this. Get RFK Jr removed, and Trump will put someone just as bad, or worse, there. And the cycle continues, until Trump and the Republican Party are finally dismantled.
But I don't see that happening for quite a few years yet. The economy hasn't crashed hard enough for that to happen.
Loyalty is the only test with Trump and his sychophants in Congress will confirm whoever he nominates.
Okay but surely we can agree that the appropriate response to "legitimate medical community"'s failings shouldn't be RFK, nor should opposition to RFK be conditional on "look in the mirror, reflect on how he happened ..."? I agree such reflection should happen, but the "but before that happens ..." wording is bizarre. It's like having some domestic terrorist kill a CEO, and then responding to that with "before we can stop domestic terrorism, corporate america must look in the mirror about how it failed rural white blue collar workers in appalachia or whatever"
> but the "but before that happens ..." wording is bizarre
Biden was very much a status quo president who didn't do much to fix underlying problems. The result was the protest vote winning again.
Building things takes time, destruction does not. The protest vote was in favor of destruction.
I don’t think Biden was status quo so much as he led a deliberate and traditional administration.
In my opinion, 2nd term Trump is at least 10x worse than the first term.
Agreed.
Furthermore, the CDC under both parties of capital interests has blood on their hands from the blatant COVID mishandling under multiple administrations, among other things:
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...
Until the root causes of this rot are targeted, symptoms like rotating-villain RFK Jrs are going to keep grabbing headlines while societal conditions continue to deteriorate.
This! The amount of clinicians I know who simply read the abstract of a case study, with no real statistical interpretation of results, is a non-zero number.
Whenever I see some hyped up popular press article about a scientific study, my immediate reaction is to go to the primary literature. First, I read the study design and analysis methods, then I determine if its even worth continuing to read the rest. Study pre-registration should be a must and papers need to be more explicit about being exploratory when the sample size dictates it.
Keep RFK in place until the entire health sector completes an excercise in introspection?
Yes and no. You might need specific causes if you want to solve this with a pill or at a 100% level. You could very well solve this for 90% of people with lifestyle changes. Just look at the Amish for obesity and type 2 diabetes. But being more active and eating less ultraprocessed stuff is too burdensome - we all want to eat our cake and have it too.
You realize the FDA has been gutted of personnel and expertise so we're either going to see no regulation or, more likely, rubber stamp regulation.
catigula•3h ago
For example, credible thinkers, including many people reading this, likely believe psilocybin and ketamine are credible treatments for mental illness when the evidence is incredibly thin and low quality and these are clearly dangerous substances in many regards.
The temptation to think there are suppressed secrets in the world (there are, in fact, suppressed secrets) is near infinite.
thinkingtoilet•3h ago
It's because human beings are messy! If you feed a person a peanut, they might think it's tasty. If you feed a different person a peanut that person may die, quickly. If a god damn peanut can illicit that range of responses in a healthy human being, imagine literally anything else. Of course there is corruption because so much money is on the line and humans in aggregate are a selfish bunch. One thing I always like to point out is that people who try to follow the science and the latest guidance aren't the ones speaking in absolutes. I'm aware the CDC or FDA have gotten things wrong in the past and will get things wrong in the future, but it's the best system we have. It's the anti-science people who speak in absolutes but then the second the cancer diagnosis comes in they come running back begging big pharma for treatment, they'll even bankrupt their entire family trying to get that treatment. It can't be both ways. This is why it's hard to take skeptics seriously. Not only do they throw a thousand things out there, and maybe one or two is right, they conveniently ignore the other 998 things they got way wrong, but when push comes to shove, they love big pharma and beg for it's treatments.
catigula•3h ago
I think this goes for many Americans.
brightball•3h ago
It doesn't mean I believe every skeptic over science, but it does mean that I'm willing to ask questions. In so many cases on the topics RFK Jr goes after, there are significant gaps in the questions that science has answered. People want those gaps filled and have for many, many years.
The answer is always more questions and therefore, more science.
Right now, there's an information vacuum and until that vacuum is filled people will continue to speculate. It's human nature, especially when somebody you care about has been affected and nobody can give you answers other than "this is life now".
alphabettsy•3h ago
brightball•3h ago
alphabettsy•2h ago
https://www.propublica.org/article/rfk-jr-autism-environment...
maxerickson•2h ago
archerx•3h ago
That’s so vague and disingenuous. Should you take psychedelics if you have schizophrenia or something similar? Absolutely not but there is hard science research proving that they do help with depression and other issues.
I lost all my faith in the medical industry when I went through it. I entered with a minor problem and left with a much worse chronic pain. The doctor who did it to me had the gall to say it was in my head. Fortunately I went to another doctor and the CT scan proved it was in fact not in my head but in my intestines. I’m dealing with this drama, but I learned a lot of doctors are actually really bad and just want to prescribe you stuff and get you out of the door. Ironically the stuff this so called specialist was only making me feel worse and when I told her that she didn’t believe me.
Thankfully I have found some good doctors after much efforts and many references but I lost a lot of respect for the medical industry and came to understand that it’s a business and they just want to see you as many medications as possible and don’t really care about solving your problem.
catigula•3h ago
Again, the research exists but is thin and low quality. I'm sorry you went through issues, I know this is common, which is why I addressed readers looking to self-diagnose but thumb their noses at people doing exactly what they're doing.
archerx•2h ago
My mother was also bullshitted by a doctor until she got angry and told him what specific test to do and a week later when the test came back surprise surprise, she was right.
My best friend had an intense pain on her side, she went to a doctor and he said it was in her head, she went to another doctor and surprise surprise she had a hernia.
Another friend had constant intestinal pain and digestive issues, the doctor refused to do a colonoscopy and just gave her medication for IBS, she went to another doctor and finally got a colonoscopy and surprise surprise she had a tumor, thankfully they were able to cut it out but it would have been better if they had found it sooner.
Also when I was young I broke my arm and the doctor set it wrong and now my angle of mobility in it is offset.
I have way more stories like this and barely any positive medical stories. If I could go back in time I would have never gone to the doctor and let my body deal with the issue itself. I would be in a lot less pain right now. I hate how righteously arrogant and head up the ass most of the medical industry seems to be.
The entire medical industry has problems, needs to be revamped and the incentives have to be changed.