Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (R) and Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Martin Makary on the White Home in Could, when Kennedy launched a Make America Wholesome Once more Fee report that blamed the rise in persistent sicknesses on ultraprocessed meals, chemical exposures, life-style components and extreme use of prescribed drugs.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Photographs North America
cover caption
toggle caption
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Photographs North America
Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has upended medical analysis and public well being within the U.S. in some ways. One of many concepts that might be influencing his overhaul of federal well being companies dates again to historic Greece.
The miasma idea is among the first concepts that civilization hatched to attempt to clarify why folks get sick.
“It goes again to Hippocrates,” says Dr. Howard Markel, an emeritus professor of medical historical past from the College of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “He wrote in a ebook referred to as Epidemics, that epidemics got here from some sort of air pollution – some air pollution of the environment, of the air that we breathe. And therefore we obtained horrible infectious ailments.”
This concept that, in essence, unhealthy air brought on sickness was later championed by many others, together with Florence Nightingale. It additionally led to some issues that did assist struggle ailments, like cleansing up sewage.
However then got here the germ idea — certainly one of humanity’s huge eureka moments. Scientists like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch found it wasn’t some mysterious stench within the air from rotting rubbish that unfold ailments. As a substitute, it was dwelling microscopic entities.
“They found what we all know as germs – microbes,” says Melanie Kiechle, a historian at Virginia Tech. “Micro organism and viruses and different microscopic supplies had been truly what brought on sickness and likewise defined the unfold of sickness from one particular person to a different. So miasma idea is debunked, primarily.”
The invention of germs led to breakthroughs like antibiotics and vaccines.
However in a ebook Kennedy printed about 4 years in the past, The Actual Anthony Fauci: Invoice Gates, Massive Pharma, and the World Conflict on Democracy and Public Well being, the now- well being secretary harkens again to the miasma idea.
“Miasma idea emphasizes stopping illness by fortifying the immune system via vitamin and decreasing exposures to environmental toxins and stresses,” Kennedy writes.
However specialists say one downside is how Kennedy defines miasma idea.
“I’ll categorically say that miasma idea, as historians of drugs and science perceive it, shouldn’t be what he’s saying it’s, interval,” says Nancy Tomes, a historian of germ idea at Stony Brook College, who wrote The Gospel of Germs: Males, Ladies and the Microbe in American Life.
However Kennedy’s take might assist clarify a few of his insurance policies, particularly about vaccines.
“The miasma idea is the notion that there are environmental poisons, not essentially rotting natural matter,” says Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine skilled on the College of Pennsylvania. “For him, these environmental poisons are electromagnetic radiation, pesticides, vaccines. Vaccines are, for him, a modern-day miasma.”
And that is harmful, many specialists say.
“Can stress, air air pollution, different issues, make infections worse? Sure. However the reason for infections is a microorganism,” says Dr. Tina Tan, who heads the Infectious Illness Society of America. “It is the microorganisms which are making folks sick.”
And vaccines have clearly been proven to soundly and successfully shield folks in opposition to harmful microorganisms, Tan and others say.
“He is attempting to present this false veneer of intellectualism by saying, ‘Oh, the miasma idea,'” says Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg College of Public Well being Middle for Well being Safety. “This all simply obfuscation to assist his concept that vaccines will not be invaluable.”
However another observers argue that Kennedy’s concepts in regards to the miasma and germ theories aren’t essentially mutually unique.
“The true debate right here is whether or not we will remedy public well being issues by growing therapies like vaccines, antibiotics, or different medicine? Or whether or not we’ll remedy these issues by strengthening folks’s immune programs via more healthy habits?” says Gregg Girvan, a resident fellow on the Basis for Analysis on Equal Alternative, a Washington assume tank. “And my response is, ‘Why can we not acknowledge that there’s fact in each positions?'”
Kennedy’s workplace didn’t reply to NPR’s request for extra details about his views in regards to the miasma and germ theories.
