https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr.#Anti-vac...
Instead he has the cojones to take on the big issues, and fight them. That shows bravery and a willingness to engage on the hard stuff.
I'm not saying he's a good man or would make a great prez, but you can't dismiss it as "nutcasery"
He has a few books on the subject. Seems scholarly and scientific in conversation with Joe Rogan and others.
That alone is sufficient to consider him a nutter. And given the size of his platform he is a wildly dangerous one causing immense harm.
This feels like an extreme position to me. Just because you have one or 10 nutty beliefs, that doesn’t make you a nutter. I don’t know where the threshold lie, but as an example, didn’t Newton believe in alchemy?
That's a lot less nutty, relatively speaking, than believing in something like adrenochrome harvesting or Jewish space lasers or flat earth or reptilians today. Or even alchemy.
I mean "Jewish space lasers" hahah where are you even getting this? Hahahah great material by the way. Can you upload a YT vid, I want to see your comedy bit! :) hahaah
Plenty can be said about Newton, but his belief in alchemy given the time was far more reasonable than RFKjr's insistence on continuing to do harm by pushing those false claims.
Your willingness to paint something you dislike as "dangerous" "harm", and your reduction to binary opposites with no discussion of nuance speaks to an authoritarian, "Witch hunt" mindset.
This suggests you are uniquely incapable of dealing with the issues in a scientific or rational way, making you equally unqualified to judge anybody.
I think the attitude displayed in your comment, is what's dangerous. I'm not saying JFK is "not dangerous", but not in the way you think, perhaps. And I'm not going to reduce people, or issues, to simplistic moral fables. Such a flawed model can never represent reality, so anyone wielding it can neither be said to be in touch with reality, nor capable of deciding anything that matters.
But the willingness to hate, is a dangerous thing. Think on it! Hahaha :)
It _does_.
> I don’t know where the threshold lie, but as an example, didn’t Newton believe in alchemy?
Yes; particularly in his later years, Newton was a nutter, though not in a particularly harmful way. (It was a lot more _forgivable_ back then; pretty much everyone was.)
Essentially appointing yourself chief inquisitor and decide who the heretics are. Sure, we all love power, but actually owning up to that in a bad way and trying to implement that with a partition into "nut" and "non nut", over complex nuanced topics, speaks to a kind of mind control, a disrespect of other people's views, an unwillingness to engage on the real issues, an awareness perhaps that you have to silence the opposition as you know your own views do not withstand scrutiny, but basically, an: authoritarian simplistic reduction of the complexity of the world to "good" v "bad", making you or that attitude, uniquely incapable of dealing with the said issues. Hahaah! :)
JFK engaging with the science and advocating for safety, and nuance in the face of a clear interest by big pharma to suppress that, is not dangerous. But you spreading your simplistic reductions is dangerous. Can you not see that your simplistic reductions and emotional judgements, are doing the very thing that you are accusing others of doing?
I think you need to think about that! Hahahaha! :)
Look into the indirect connection between vaccines causing gastro-intestinal problems, and autists with gut/biome problems.
You can not scientifically state "there is no connection between autism and vaccines". Not even legally (look at vaccine court cases). Only from a "public health" and big pharma perspective is such a statement defensible.
> Overall, microbiome differences in ASD may reflect dietary preferences that relate to diagnostic features, and we caution against claims that the microbiome has a driving role in ASD.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34767757/
A casual skim of the research literature indicates the opposite correlation - ASD itself may influence the gut biome. If you have specific literature indicating otherwise I'd love to see it but arguing that ASD is caused by the gut microbiome bears the burden of proof.
In the wider topic regarding RFK, claims about the cause of autism is absolutely flooded with bad research and has a tendency to be related with acceptance of really bad research.
> You can not scientifically state "there is no connection between autism and vaccines".
I absolutely can. There is no high quality, widely accepted research that indicates that indicates causation of autism by vaccines. The original research was deeply fraudulent and has not been superceded by good research. If you disagree then shoot over a link to a study on pubmed.
ASD being caused by gut inflammation or damage is called the leaky gut theory. Leaky gut is theorized to worsen or speed up symptoms of both ADHD and autism.
How do you yourself see a causal pathway from ASD to influenced gut biome?
Both MMR vaccine and Covid experimental treatments have (rare) side effects of affecting gut biome. Both leaky gut and vaccine side effects are studied, without explicitly stating the causal chain and having one's reputation destroyed, but it becomes apparent when combining both types of research: vaccine leads to bowel inflammation. Bowel inflammation affect neural pathways. Affected neural pathways worsen or speed up onset and symptoms of autism.
RFK did not cite research as much as desperate parents coming to him with their stories. Research on connection between autism and vaccines is bad, not "bad" as in bad quality, but "bad" as in taboo and damaging to public health (which cares about vaccination rates more than individual health).
You can not state there is no connection, just that research indicates no causation, correct. The original research was not deeply fraudulent, nor had bad motives, but was legit scientific inquiry. There were some problems though with the ethics and methodology, but finding these was required to blackball the entire research. Wakefield's book is interesting for another perspective.
Some older research: prevalence of chronic gastrointestinal symptoms in children with autism and autistic spectrum disorders. Combine with literature study on modern research and vaccine side-effect research (preferably before Covid, since that made vaccine side-effect research similarly taboo).
Thanks for engaging. It is more common to be completely dismissive and not entertain perceived fools or quacks.
I can state categorically that no evidence has been provided linking the MMR vaccine with autism, despite RFKjrs claims otherwise, and that the total amount of claims of harms of all types from the MMR vaccine makes it a wildly extraordinary claim to suggest there such a link and that even if there were, given the amount of reported claim it'd even them be morally reprehensible and massively harmful to stir up fear about it.
Anyone parroting his claims really ought to look at the rates of claims made vs. deaths pre-vaccines and consider the morality of amplifying his bullshit.
> even if there were, ... be morally reprehensible and massively harmful to stir up fear about it.
Exactly. This is why "no evidence has been found" is a weak substitute. An unbiased look at gathering evidence could mean the end of your carreer and reputation. It is not science, but closer to politics, sociology, and PR for public health. Also why Wakefield was attacked so hard: the science itself was not so bad or harmful, but the interpretation and fears of the general public were.
If there are answers that can not be questioned, then science and scientific integrity is in danger. Attacking research for "amplifying bullshit" or "stoking fears", not by merit, that is immoral. Not giving a voice to desperate parents who come to you to share their story that no medical authority will accept, that is immoral.
As for parroting: try to find unbiased interpretations or objective word-for-word claims by RFK on vaccine harms. Incredibly hard. Consider the morality of supressing or strawmanning anecdotes or research.
These are complex issues, yet your language speaks of authoritative dismissal, and a reductive binary stance. Such oversimplification is hard to argue as credible.
The "appeal to harm" could equally be made in the opposite direction, but the speed at which you go to it only compounds the "without merit" signaling of your reductive simplifications.
I doubt that's a hard thing to achieve for someone used to speaking in public. Joe Rogan is not known for challenging his guests intellectually.
You suggest that you can't tell whether he's rational in conversation with Rogan because Rogan doesn't challenge, but you don't need another to challenge, you merely need to listen to him talk and decide yourself.
Rogan is merely helpfully providing a platform where the guy is talking. Hahaha! :)
Yikes.
Yikes. Micro-comment.
So you're suggesting that a conversation with Rogan is something you should be afraid of? Or not trusted?
You do realize that Rogan doesn't affect the truth of falsity of what he's saying, right? Hahahaha! :)
He's into a wide variety of nonsense, though he's certainly best-known for anti vax nonsense (he was into it since before it was cool; on the whole MMR conspiracy theory train and so on).
Hahahah! :) I think you're making my point for me.
Edit: I take it back. His request seems pretty reasonable given the context
His pandering to his family legacy is annoying here but whatever
If I had a nickel for every time someone around me said something “nutter” that later turned out to have something to it… I’d have a lot of nickels.
Imagine if just 3 years ago I said anything of the following. “Nutter!”
- Russia will invade Ukraine. Sanctions and stupidity be darned.
- Silicon Valley Bank will go insolvent from overexposure to one of the safest investments on earth.
- There is a real, but small, connection between myocarditis and vaccination in young men.
Etc.
Safety data (from final trial) only available in 2024, so we can just guess and track adversarial reactions.
These vaccines are only safe and effective from a collective public health perspective, which necessitated emergency release.
Imagine if we had found the people who had found the truth “nutters” in these and other cases. I’d prefer “extreme disagreement” over that.
Ultimately, it comes down to humility over the claim “we’ve got it right this time, for sure, and you can’t question it now!” There are no shortage of scientist quotes saying that in the 90s. And 80s. And 70s. And 60s. And 50s. And 1850s. And 1840s. And 1740s. And so on.
Like, it's not even just one weird belief; he has a wide selection.
“Small, but real” is true for an infinitely large number of things for various magnitudes of “small”.
For example, the polling criteria would argue against him (though I think he's been close): "Whether, during and within an active and competitive major party primary, the most recent average of established national polls, as reflected by the Real Clear Politics National Average or similar mechanism, the candidate is polling at 15% or more for 30 consecutive days."
Based on the video, I think he would argue his strongest case is based on the threat assessment criteria: "A threat assessment conducted by the Secret Service of general or specific threats directed towards the candidate (for these purposes, “threats” should be defined as explicit threats of bodily harm to the candidate or indications of inappropriate behavior towards the candidate suggesting potential bodily harm)."
Either way, a nutter who hopefully falls off the charts early in the primaries.
[0] https://www.secretservice.gov/protection/leaders/campaign-20...
One could also say that you can't have a functioning democracy when elections aren't secure. And yes, that's technically true, but the implication hidden in that statement is that elections aren't safe.
RFKJr is trying to imply he is not safe without directly saying so.