RFK’s MAHA Report Slams Food, Drug Industries While Painting Bleak Picture of Children’s Health

The Make America Healthy Again Commission blames a host of issues, from environmental toxins to pharmaceuticals, for a rise in chronic illnesses among children in a much-anticipated report unveiled Thursday.The authors of the 68-page report promise to transform the government and suggest a number of research initiatives, many of which conform to the controversial views of the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Among them are reassessing childhood vaccine schedules, putting in new systems for monitoring pediatric drugs, and studying possible environmental causes of childhood chronic diseases.“This is just the beginning,” President Trump said at a White House event Thursday afternoon, formally unveiling the report. “There is something wrong and we will not stop until we defeat the chronic disease epidemic in America. We’re going to get it done.”While the report touches on Mr. Kennedy’s controversial views on autism, it does not mention the disproven link between vaccinations and autism. Instead, it notes “concerns” among many parents. Mr. Kennedy has previously claimed that environmental factors are leading to large increases in cases. The report puts much of the blame for chronic illness among children on the pharmaceutical industry and also questions the use of pesticides in farming, suggesting further studies are needed.Major agriculture groups and some Republicans from farm states had raised concerns ahead of the report’s release and questioned the need for further study on weedkillers that are part of the backbone of modern farming. “This report will stir unjustified fear and confusion among American consumers who live in the country with the safest and most abundant food supply,” the CEO, Alexandra Dunn, of a trade group representing the pesticide industry, CropLife America, says in response to the report.Another of Mr. Kennedy’s targets, ultra-processed foods, are criticized and the American food system is blamed for the poor diet and health of American children.The report also finds depression rates in teenagers nearly doubling between 2009 and 2019, and notes that there has been a 1,400 percent increase in children’s prescriptions for antidepressants between 1987 and 2014. The report claims the drugs did not “improve outcomes long-term.”The costs of the report’s recommendations are a big unknown. “There is no budget,” Mr. Kennedy acknowledged after the study’s release. He claims the commission will have more concrete policy recommendations in the next 100 days.

RFK’s MAHA Report Slams Food, Drug Industries While Painting Bleak Picture of Children’s Health

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