Understanding RFK Jr.
If you want to know why RFK Jr. believes so many weird things, just read his book, The Real Anthony Fauci. Four pages explain everything.
Paul Offit
Feb 11
RFK Jr. believes many weird things about the causes, treatment, and prevention of infectious diseases. These false beliefs might seem disparate and unrelated, but they're not. They're all rooted in a single belief described on pages 285-288 of his book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. In short, RFK Jr. doesn't believe in the germ theory. He believes in something called the miasma theory.
The miasma theory is a long-abandoned medical theory that holds that diseases are caused by poisonous vapors (i.e., miasmata) that are generated by rotting organic matter, such as trash sitting out on the street. According to the miasmists, diseases aren't passed from one person to another; rather, they are the product of poor hygiene and sanitation.
In 1876, Robert Koch proved that a specific bacterium (Bacillus anthracis) caused anthrax. The germ theory was born. Understanding that specific bacteria and viruses caused specific diseases led to treatments like antibiotics and preventives like vaccines, which has caused us to live 40 years longer than we did in the late-1800s.
Nonetheless, in a section in his book titled "Miasma vs. Germ Theory," RFK Jr. continues to embrace the miasma theory, writing the following statements:
"The ubiquity of pasteurization and vaccinations are only two of the many indicators of the dominating ascendancy of germ theory as the cornerstone of contemporary public health policy. A $1 trillion pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, *****s, potions, and poisons and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology…The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune responses." If you want to avoid infection, according to RFK Jr., all you need to do is maintain a healthy immune system. This explains why he has said that no vaccine is beneficial, that the polio vaccine killed more people than it saved, that young parents shouldn't vaccinate their children, that HIV does not cause AIDS, that HIV is not spread from one person to another, and that the anti-AIDS drug AZT was an example of "mass murder".
It also explains why he drinks raw, unpasteurized milk.
"Anthony Fauci [said that] vaccines have already saved millions and millions of lives. Most Americans accept the claim as dogma. It will therefore come as a surprise to learn that it is simply untrue." This explains why RFK Jr. has claimed that improvements in sanitation, as promoted by miasmists, not vaccines, have accounted for a decrease in infections. In the late 1970s, when I was a pediatric resident, every year a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type b (HiB) accounted for about 25,000 cases of bloodstream infections, pneumonia, meningitis, epiglottitis, and cellulitis in young children. A vaccine to prevent HiB, which was introduced in 1987, has virtually eliminated the disease in the United States. Hib wasn't eliminated because of a dramatic improvement in sanitation. It was eliminated because of the Hib vaccine.
"When a starving African child succumbs to measles, the miasmist attributes the death to malnutrition; germ theory proponents (aka virologists) blame the virus." This explains why, when RFK Jr. visited Samoa, which was in the midst of a measles outbreak that caused 5,600 cases and 83 deaths, primarily in young children, he urged vitamin A treatments, not a measles vaccine. Indeed, he said that the outbreak wasn't caused by measles virus, which would have meant he would have had to embrace the germ theory. He made this claim well after a wild-type measles virus strain had been identified as the cause of the outbreak.
"Imperialist ideologues find natural affinity with the germ theory." This explains why he has said that scientists who promote vaccines, like Anthony Fauci, should be put in jail.
This is not a man who should be leading the largest public health agency in the United States.
If you want to know why RFK Jr. believes so many weird things, just read his book, The Real Anthony Fauci. Four pages explain everything.
Paul Offit
Feb 11
RFK Jr. believes many weird things about the causes, treatment, and prevention of infectious diseases. These false beliefs might seem disparate and unrelated, but they're not. They're all rooted in a single belief described on pages 285-288 of his book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. In short, RFK Jr. doesn't believe in the germ theory. He believes in something called the miasma theory.
The miasma theory is a long-abandoned medical theory that holds that diseases are caused by poisonous vapors (i.e., miasmata) that are generated by rotting organic matter, such as trash sitting out on the street. According to the miasmists, diseases aren't passed from one person to another; rather, they are the product of poor hygiene and sanitation.
In 1876, Robert Koch proved that a specific bacterium (Bacillus anthracis) caused anthrax. The germ theory was born. Understanding that specific bacteria and viruses caused specific diseases led to treatments like antibiotics and preventives like vaccines, which has caused us to live 40 years longer than we did in the late-1800s.
Nonetheless, in a section in his book titled "Miasma vs. Germ Theory," RFK Jr. continues to embrace the miasma theory, writing the following statements:
"The ubiquity of pasteurization and vaccinations are only two of the many indicators of the dominating ascendancy of germ theory as the cornerstone of contemporary public health policy. A $1 trillion pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, *****s, potions, and poisons and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology…The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune responses." If you want to avoid infection, according to RFK Jr., all you need to do is maintain a healthy immune system. This explains why he has said that no vaccine is beneficial, that the polio vaccine killed more people than it saved, that young parents shouldn't vaccinate their children, that HIV does not cause AIDS, that HIV is not spread from one person to another, and that the anti-AIDS drug AZT was an example of "mass murder".
It also explains why he drinks raw, unpasteurized milk.
"Anthony Fauci [said that] vaccines have already saved millions and millions of lives. Most Americans accept the claim as dogma. It will therefore come as a surprise to learn that it is simply untrue." This explains why RFK Jr. has claimed that improvements in sanitation, as promoted by miasmists, not vaccines, have accounted for a decrease in infections. In the late 1970s, when I was a pediatric resident, every year a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type b (HiB) accounted for about 25,000 cases of bloodstream infections, pneumonia, meningitis, epiglottitis, and cellulitis in young children. A vaccine to prevent HiB, which was introduced in 1987, has virtually eliminated the disease in the United States. Hib wasn't eliminated because of a dramatic improvement in sanitation. It was eliminated because of the Hib vaccine.
"When a starving African child succumbs to measles, the miasmist attributes the death to malnutrition; germ theory proponents (aka virologists) blame the virus." This explains why, when RFK Jr. visited Samoa, which was in the midst of a measles outbreak that caused 5,600 cases and 83 deaths, primarily in young children, he urged vitamin A treatments, not a measles vaccine. Indeed, he said that the outbreak wasn't caused by measles virus, which would have meant he would have had to embrace the germ theory. He made this claim well after a wild-type measles virus strain had been identified as the cause of the outbreak.
"Imperialist ideologues find natural affinity with the germ theory." This explains why he has said that scientists who promote vaccines, like Anthony Fauci, should be put in jail.
This is not a man who should be leading the largest public health agency in the United States.