Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. kicked off a tour by way of southwestern states on Monday by calling on states to ban fluoride in ingesting water provides, a transfer that will reverse what some medical specialists take into account probably the most necessary public well being practices within the nation’s historical past.
The announcement got here at a information convention in Utah, the primary state to enact such a ban into legislation. The state’s new legislation is about to take impact in early Could, regardless of considerations from public well being specialists who take into account fluoridation of water core to stopping tooth decay.
“It is not sensible to have it in our water provide,” Mr. Kennedy stated, echoing a position he took during the 2024 presidential campaign. “I’m very, very happy with this state for being the primary state to ban it, and I hope many extra will come.”
The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, which Mr. Kennedy oversees as well being secretary, has listed fluoridation as one of many 10 nice public well being achievements of the twentieth century. After the information convention, Stefanie Spear, Mr. Kennedy’s principal deputy chief of employees, stated Mr. Kennedy would direct the C.D.C.’s group preventative providers job drive to check fluoride and make a brand new advice.
Mr. Kennedy appeared on the information convention alongside the administrator of the Environmental Safety Company, Lee Zeldin, who introduced that the E.P.A. would re-examine analysis on potential well being dangers of fluoride in water.
The present commonplace “was most just lately reviewed July of 2024, however rather a lot has occurred since July of 2024,” Mr. Zeldin stated. The evaluate of security knowledge “wouldn’t be occurring, if not for Secretary Kennedy,” he added.
The fluoridation debate stretches again to the Nineteen Fifties, when conspiracy theories swirled round whether or not the observe was a Communist plot to trigger mind injury. Some research counsel that extra publicity to fluoride — at ranges twice the quantity really useful by the federal authorities — may hurt infants.
The American Dental Association has said that water fluoridation reduces dental decay by no less than 25 p.c in kids and adults.
The Make America Wholesome Once more tour, which is able to take Mr. Kennedy by way of components of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, was supposed to attract consideration to a few of the secretary’s common-ground pursuits, spotlighting initiatives that emphasize vitamin and way of life decisions as instruments for combating illness. On the information convention, Mr. Kennedy additionally lauded Utah’s current laws to ban ultra-processed meals in class meals and to limit folks from utilizing federal meals help advantages to buy sweet and soda. He announced late final month that the Trump administration would start permitting states to bar members of the Supplemental Vitamin Help Program, or SNAP, from utilizing the cash to pay for soda.
Mr. Kennedy’s first cease on the tour was the Osher Middle for Integrative Well being on the College of Utah, which prides itself in taking a “whole-person” approach to affected person care, together with an emphasis on sleep, train and even group connection.
The Osher Middle, set in opposition to the backdrop of the Wasatch Mountains, is supplied with a “meals pharmacy” for continual illness sufferers and a “instructing kitchen” to coach medical college students on vitamin.
With campus law enforcement officials stationed across the perimeter, Mr. Kennedy boarded the Wellness Bus, a 40-foot automobile that provides group well being screenings for blood strain, blood glucose and ldl cholesterol. He additionally climbed into the again of the cell meals pharmacy, the place sufferers with continual well being circumstances deliver prescriptions for elements like brown rice, zucchini, almond milk and canned pears.
Mr. Kennedy visited the middle’s check kitchen — a contemporary house with expansive home windows and indoor shrubbery — the place medical college students and dietitians led him by way of wholesome snack preparations.
In between Mr. Kennedy’s occasions on the campus, about two dozen protesters appeared alongside the driveway to the middle, chanting and waving posters with messages corresponding to “Baby Killer” and, in a nod to the Trump administration’s termination of quite a few medical analysis grants, “Analysis Saves Lives.”
Mr. Kennedy has confronted harsh criticism for his dealing with of the federal authorities’s response to a measles outbreak in West Texas, which has contaminated practically 500 folks there and has unfold to different states.
On Sunday, Mr. Kennedy attended the funeral of an unvaccinated 8-year-old lady — the second confirmed fatality from measles in a decade in the USA — and met together with her household earlier than persevering with to Utah.
Throughout his first months in workplace, Mr. Kennedy’s insurance policies have been unfurled with nice brouhaha, however the secretary himself has stored a comparatively low profile, significantly for an official along with his diploma of fame. The White Home has inspired Mr. Kennedy to take a extra public-facing strategy to his function, however the timing of his first main push out within the nation would require toeing a cautious line round probably the most conspicuous subject on the desk: vaccines.
Public well being specialists say the outbreak is pushed by low vaccination charges. Mr. Kennedy, who’s famously skeptical of vaccine security, shifted his rhetoric after the little lady’s funeral, posting on X: “The simplest option to stop the unfold of measles is the MMR vaccine.”
It was probably the most definitive assertion he has made endorsing vaccines as a preventive software, however some public well being specialists had been dismayed that he didn’t explicitly advocate that oldsters vaccinate their kids and didn’t say the vaccines had been protected. And a number of other hours later he posted on X again, praising two medical doctors who’re utilizing unproven remedies to look after tons of of youngsters with measles.
For months, Mr. Kennedy has emphasised that vaccination is a matter of parental selection and has inspired folks to think about unproven regimens like vitamin A, which may lead to toxicity, and steered that poor lifestyle choices had been at play amongst victims.
Weight loss plan and vitamin “don’t supply any profit to forestall an infection with measles in anyway,” stated Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist who has studied measles.
Wholesome meals and train can “assist restrict the results of many infections, together with measles, however is not going to stop them,” he added. “Prevention is by far one of the best medication.”
About The Author
