The president officially approved Trump’s MAHA plan after receiving the support of Robert F. F., the current health and human services minister. Kennedy Jr. has grown in popularity since last year. The Center for Excellence in Polling conducted a survey last month that revealed overwhelmingly supportive of the movement’s fundamental tenets, including 96 % support for labeling foods with high chemical levels, and 93 % require bureaucrats and politicians to disclose ties to food manufacturers or pharmaceutical companies.
Jordan Crofton and Dr. Jordan Crofton, both a New York-based nurse practitioner and functional medicine provider, are both from New York. Dua Hassan, a pediatrician and clinical instructor at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, criticized the report for failing to outline a coherent strategy to address the systemic problems outlined within its pages, even though both providers said they largely agreed with the report’s actual findings.
Crofton, who previously worked for a pharmaceutical company, studied under Kennedy’s long-time collaborator Dr. Mark Hyman, who later founded Collective Medicine in 2023, told the Washington Examiner that she was actively unsatisfied with the state’s current level of politicization of health policy but has “cautious optimism ” that Trump’s MAHA push will help address the “root causes ” of the “escalating chronic disease in the country. ”
The overall picture is accurate, she said in an interview,” I do think the big picture here is accurate.” In that perspective, particularly in relation to systemic issues like maternal health inequities in under-resourced communities, I also believe there were some significant points that were overlooked. These are pretty big ones, and I think if we want to reverse this chronic disease epidemic and really improve public health in a meaningful way, we have to consider all these upstream drivers. My concern is that, even though we finally identify these issues, there are still instances where there hasn’t been any real structural change in either policy or practice. ”
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”Banning Red Dye [ No. ] 40 and other food dyes, it ’s certainly a step in the right direction, ” Crofton continued. Don’t get me wrong, please. It’s a long overdue acknowledgement of the harm our food can cause, but it’s a drop in the bucket in the context of these massive, systemic issues at hand when I see what I see and the work I do. I just have real concerns over what the actual action plan is. I appreciate that some of these issues are being brought up again, but I quickly lose faith in the reality behind this claim. ”
Hassan similarly said she was surprised to find that the MAHA report reads “as if it were ghostwritten by a liberal think tank ” but that she had problems with the administration ’s apparent inability to embrace its conclusions.
In an op-ed published by Slate, Hassan suggested that the MAHA Commission had accidentally written a groundbreaking conservative admission that the free market doesn’t work in health care: that allowing corporations to operate unregulated corrupts institutions and harms children’s well-being. Surprisingly, the report pivots to blame ‘the overmedicalization of our kids.’ rather than accept the obvious solution its data demand. ’ That is, it claims that doctors like me and our health care system at large are too focused on treating illness and not on preventing it in the first place. ”
The commission’s logic completely deviates from this point on, she continued. “It has spent dozens of pages documenting how corporate greed harms children, from selling them ultra-processed foods to exposing them to chemical toxins, creating an environment that leads to obesity, asthma, and other chronic illnesses.
The group then suggests resolving this problem by giving those same interests more authority while offering to pay the bills to the doctors who are trying to treat the resulting illnesses in a system that prioritizes profit over well-being. ”
Multiple seasoned medical professors, who were given anonymity to speak out about the situation without risking reprisals against their respective universities by the Trump administration, offered a much more somber assessment of the movement: MAHA is going to kill people.
“Let’s call this what it is. One professor criticized the megalomaniac for adopting the crackpot platform of a nepo-baby, heroin-addicted conspiracy theorist simply because it looked good on a bumper sticker. They already buy into this crap because the majority of this country loves that megalomaniac. Yes, there are problems with the healthcare system in this country, but you don’t solve it by pushing people toward skipping seeking out trusted, science-backed medical care. ”
A second professor agreed that MAHA will “lead to a loosening of medical regulations and distrust of medical professionals, ” both of which will “naturally ” lead to a rise in preventable deaths. That person additionally claimed that the Trump administration ’s targeted deregulation of environmental protections “shows that these aren’t serious proposals. ”
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“If you really cared about improving the health of children across the country, why is this administration making it easier to pollute our air or our waters? That person questioned.
A third professor remarked,” What we are seeing is politics driving policy.” “There’s been a gradually growing distrust of science in this country, and the coronavirus pandemic supercharged that. In my opinion, American healthcare presents a choice issue in general. Patients have too few options for treatment, and they are all too expensive. But pretending that this is a zero-sum game , exposing the entire medical field of corruption or using doubting methods and technologies supported by decades and decades of reliable research and practical application , is at least as deadly as maintaining the system’s current state. ”
It is nearly impossible to separate Kennedy himself from MAHA and its significance in the second Trump term. The former Democratic-turned-independent candidate for president had a talent for representing environmental causes, but his steady development over the past 20 years as one of the country’s most well-known anti-vaccine activists, known for supporting his claims with misinterpreted or falsified medical research, obviously gives academics pause.
Hassan told the Washington Examiner that, while she does think MAHA has accurately identified that “in many corners of medicine we have become too dogmatic, ” Kennedy ’s overall approach to medicine is strictly anti-science.
The problem is RFK Jr. does not approach medicine scientifically, Hassan said. “His approach is that of a lawyer — his actual professional background. He has a point in mind when he says, for instance, that doctors should not treat patients improperly or that they should treat patients improperly. He then challenges this conclusion and makes a different argument for supporting evidence. So, RFK would say, ‘ I already know vaccines are unsafe. What studies are available to support this conclusion? “”
“This was the major issue with the MAHA report, ” she added. They used scientific evidence to support their ideological conclusions, they claimed. As I pointed out in the Slate piece, it is because the document is inherently illogical from an epistemological standpoint. This is why ‘traditional’ medicine and the MAHA movement are at odds: The MAHA movement is inherently anti-science. ”
Hassan said she understands how, despite his vile past, the COVID-19 response sparked support for Kennedy’s movement.
“As physicians and scientists, we should always be questioning our assumptions, ” she said. For scientific discovery, there are conditions for skeptical thinking, heterodox thinking, and thinking outside the box. Medicine ceases to be a science once we stop questioning it and turns into a religion. Personally, I think this was a major shortcoming of the medical community’s COVID response. The medical establishment should have encouraged open discussion rather than censoring dissenting voices, especially when they came from trustworthy sources like practicing physicians. ”
Both White House and HHS officials declined to comment for this story.
The brand’s entire financial investment further complicates the MAHA debate.
Kennedy signed a trademark for “Make America Healthy Again” in December of this year, and according to his government financial disclosure documents, Kennedy was able to get$ 100,000 in licensing fees for the use of the “MAHA brand marks” on unspecified goods. And now, more than five months into the president ’s term, both Trump and Kennedy ’s political outfits continue to hawk MAHA-branded merchandise. Smaller, independent businesses and right-leaning political parties are also jumping on the merch train, selling mugs, shirts, and other merchandise all decorated with the word “MAHA.” ”
Crofton told the Washington Examiner that MAHA’s rise has not necessarily resulted in an upswing in business for her practice and that she is concerned about any companies or individuals looking to drive sales by slapping MAHA on a variety of junk products.
She said,” I have friends and colleagues whose work I really respect that have been on the MAHA front lines.” Outside of that, I believe the monetization of it is just an unfortunate result of any time there is any movement or trickle-down effect. I definitely do not support using that as a way to take advantage of people in any way, and I think, too, that we definitely can’t overlook the fact that there is some privilege to this movement as a whole. ”
The monetization in general is actually a slippery and dangerous slope, and that worries me, Crofton said. “That absolutely does concern me. At the end of the day, some of these fancy tools and longevity hacks that are currently being combined with this larger MAHA movement seem to lose sight of the bigger picture of what I believe we are trying to accomplish here. A business trying to advertise a red light under the moniker MAHA is absolutely insane. ”
Hassan also raised concerns about how MAHA “wellness brand influencers” are encouraged to promote goods on social media, but she did point out that there is a beneficial role they can play in community health.
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“The more social media engagement, books, and products they can sell, the more money they make, ” Hassan said. I have never received compensation for recommending a particular vaccine or medication to a patient, nor have any pediatricians I know. However, the number of books she sells directly supports Casey Means, Trump’s surgeon general nominee. Many of these wellness gurus are also paid by specific products for endorsements, which are often not made public. ”
However, I also believe that ‘wellness brand medicine ’ has an important component because it effectively fulfills the role of a witch doctor, Hassan said. “They can be a resource for community knowledge and unconventional practices, giving individuals hope beyond evidence-based medicine. When they attempt to undermine well-established treatment methods, it becomes a problem. If health experts were willing to put their ideas through the rigorous scientific method, I would be more than happy to collaborate with one of them on a study. ”
