In a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) directly confronted anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his rejection of germ theory—the unquestionable scientific idea that specific pathogenic microbes cause specific diseases. After Kennedy defended his fringe view, Senator Bill Cassidy fact-checked and debunked Kennedy’s denialist arguments in real time.
The exchanges mark a rare instance in which Kennedy’s dismissal of germ theory has been raised in such a high-profile public setting, in this case, a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Kennedy, who has no background in science, medicine, or public health, is well known as an ardent anti-vaccine activist and peddler of conspiracy theories. But his startling rejection of a cornerstone theory in biomedical science has mostly been underreported.
As Ars Technica reported last year, Kennedy wrote about his germ theory denialism explicitly in his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci. In it, Kennedy maligns germ theory as a tool of pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and doctors to promote the use of modern medicines. Instead of accepting germ theory, Kennedy promotes a concept akin to the discarded terrain theory, in which diseases stem not from germs, but from imbalances in the body’s inner “terrain.” Those imbalances are claimed to be caused by poor nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins and stressors. (In his book, Kennedy erroneously labels this as “miasma theory,” but that is a different theory that suggests diseases derive from breathing bad air, vapors, or mists from decaying or corrupting matter. The idea was supplanted by germ theory, while terrain theory was never widely accepted.)
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Very frustrating that the efforts of millions with cold evidence would be ignored and dismissed by one infamous charlatan.
one shortsighted charlatan
Way more than just one
- Trump could fire RFK today.
- Republicans in Congress could fire Trump today, for not firing RFK.
- Republican voters could threaten to not re-elect Republicans in the next election, if they do not get rid of Trump and RFK.
They are all complicit by their actions (in a moral sense, inaction is an action just like any other action).
Next year, he’ll probably outlaw sneeze-guards at the buffet.
yikes, dude is gonna be draining the four humors.
And not the funny ones.
Who’s the barber here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ
What was only recently satire is an actual position.
They will kill you and your kids.
Hopefully not me, I follow medical science, although obviously herd wide health practices will suffer which may result in higher mortality for everyone, even those who follow medical science.
This is all an attempt by the rich to reduce numbers of poor people. They need more people dying, so they’re going to pull out all the safety features we’ve built into our society to prolong life.
This contradicts their insistence that children should have children to stop population decline
Not really. What they want is for the older generation that has greater disability and likely hood to be drawing on services or retirement accounts to die off. Getting younger people to pop out more worker bees is how they keep the tax revenue flowing into social security etc and never have to pay out if they can kill off the infirm/ unprofitable.
Average life expectancy is dropping in the us while retirement age has increased by a decade. The two numbers are only something like 5 years separated now, maybe 7. Idk Im not looking it up right now.
Right-wing politics has always been an incoherent ragbag of convenient positions insincerely held.
Less “reduce the number,” and more “make the poor more tractable.” The rich still need human carpet to walk on, they just need it to be uneducated, fecund, and desperate to get under their feet.
Also divided. A divided proletariat (class of wage earners) can make less of a fist against the elite.
Is that why they’re trying to restrict birth control and sex education while saying people need to have more kids, so there will be fewer poor people?
They need people to produce more babies to fuel the wars that they keep starting to keep the population in check.
Checkmate, liberal! /s
They’re trying to increase the number of white babies born, and reduce the numbers of _everyone else. _
Which is short sighted as a healthy populace is what lead to the US economic growth in industry prior to it being redefined as being based entirely on stock market gambling vibes. A strong and healthy populace was a big part of the post WWII boom.
That’s not what Putin told him. You gotta do what the boss says.
Short-sightedness is like their chief feature
To reduce the number of non-working poor people. Or “useless eaters” as the psychotic, billionaire class calls them.
Or “useless eaters” as the psychotic, billionaire class calls them.
More projection, I see
I bet he doesn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom. Also, does he not visit the dentist? He should stop getting his teeth cleaned/checked if he thinks germs don’t cause disease.
Pete Hegseth bragged on TV that he had not washed his hands in 10 years, because “germs are not a real thing.” These are stupid people.
These people are just layers of scourges.
Wowwww, somehow that honestly surprises me that even one of these magats could be this blindingly moronic
These are stupid people.
And yet they were able to fully take over the United States government. Really says something about the movements and institutions opposing them.
That they are complicit, yeah.
The rules mistakenly assumed that politicians would always be intelligent people with the interests of the nation in mind.
They didn’t account for people voting for moronic crooks who openly intended to pillage and rape the nation for their own profit.
Says more about the fragility of democracies. For other countries, the warning should be clear: do not fucking defund public education, do not restrict education.
Unfortunately, we keep electing people who defund education, because it’s expensive, and then cry that people vote for morons who waste away tens or hundreds of billions of dollars…
These are people that believe that if you say something with enough arrogance, it makes it true.
To be fair, when he was young his parents put his swing too close to the wall.
Fuckin Typhoid Mary. Can’t we exile him to an island for the rest of his life, too?
His hygienist specializes in miasmas.
The Horseman known as Pestilence.
There’s also already a horseman for War. Who would be Death and Famine I wonder?
Famine is Brooke Rollins, secretary of department of agriculture.
Famine, whoever is in charge of cutting funds for humanitarian projects the USA were supporting and threatening millions of lives.
A kind of Terry Pratchett, Good Omens version, absolutely. “We don’t actually have to make new plagues, we just convince enough people that the natural plagues they’ve already got don’t exist, or the causes aren’t what they’ve been told, or that the treatments do greater harm than the disease. In fact, we don’t even have to deceive that many. A handful of posts to alternative medicine, conspiracy, and mom’s net forums, and human nature will do the rest.”
I need to read that one. Terry was a goddamn genius who got taken from us too soon.
These kinds of things are available to watch and honestly, with this current adminstration, they’re incredibly interesting imo. If you care to watch the whole thing:
If you just want Bernie Sander’s question it’s the second star at about 24:00
It was interesting for me decades ago before i realized these politicians just make shit up all the time and it’s boring now. Yes trump admin is definitely the dumbest one ever but idk it just bores me now, this was all stuff us teenagers were crying about under bush and now it’s just work.
You whats wierd. I was born into a first world country. Kinda. Barely really. Just keeps on droppin.
Don’t hold your hand (or god forbid, elbow) in front of your mouth when you sneeze, it’s actually racoon penis slime coming out and that is totally fine.
It’s extremely poor hygiene to sneeze into your hand fyi
It’s better than just letting it fly. You can at least wash your hands after (and you obviously should).
Is it? Like it seems like it could be worse than just sneezing down towards tje floor or something, people sneeze into their hands and then touch things everyone else will touch like doorknobs and table surfaces.
“sneezing down toward the floor” allows trillions of fine mist particles to go airborne, rather than get washed off your hand. Soap and water work.
I have never in my life seen someone cough into their hands, and not just carry on immediately touching everything as usual.
Okay you’re right. All people are like the people you’ve seen. I’m just lying, I definitely don’t wash my hands immediately if that happens. Because you know, it makes total sense for me to respond and lie here. Typical moronic Internet response, Jesus Christ.
This. Because we all know you’re going right back to touching everything and getting your sneeze germs everywhere.
“You cover your mouth with the inner part of your elbow—it’s called the vampire cough!”
“Oh-no!”
“No, it’s all right—there’s no real vampires!”
(From The Office, I forget which episode.)
Didn’t ancient china have something similiar to the terrain theory?
Source: some Manhua i didn’t like.
So how do scientists reliably give lab rats diseases we want to study?
Clearly, scientists are witches and must be burned.
Those imbalances are claimed to be caused by poor nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins and stressors.
So, like swimming in streams polluted with sewage?
like inhaling Trumps dookie stank
Or having brain worms?
Or getting whale carcass juice on you?
Or handling a dead bear?
Or cutting off a dead raccoon’s dick?
This guy is trying so hard to be patient zero in the next plague, and he’s not even trying to hide it.
Lead
It is insane to think that he is endorsing a theory that was widely rejected even by Miasma guys in the 19th century.
The miasma advocates were wrong, but they still did many things that were beneficial. The first water treatment plants that provided the first safe drinking water were advocated for by miasma advocates, and the London sewer system, one that is still being used today was also built by them.
Terrain theory? They did jack shit. Just a bunch of crazy nuts who rejected both miasma and germ theory in the late 19th century.
To be fair, miasma theory made sense and was completely logical, before microscopes.
They knew about actual lethal gases, and ones that had different effects on the body. They knew there were gases they couldn’t yet detect, as they were still discovering new ones. They knew rotting stuff produced all kind of gases and stenchs.
Hell, the theory is still pretty much valid for radon, though for reasons they couldn’t have possibly imagined.
And at the same time, the idea that animals could get small enough to be invisible, and to invade the human body, was absurd.
It came as quite a surprise when the microscope was invented and every single drop of water turned out to be a whole ecosystem teeming with life, and we turned out to be precariously balanced colonies of microscopic cells, also inhabited by a whole bacterial ecosystem teeming with both friends and foes.
And then came viruses, which are downright absurd to the point that we’re still figuring out where they fit in the tree of life, and whether they’re alive or not.
And prions, which are the stuff of horror science fiction yet completely logical when you think about how proteins works, and how they might sometimes not.
Miasma theory wasn’t correct, sure, but it was definitely simpler, and made much more sense.
You mean environmental toxins like germs?
When he dies, I hope they do an autopsy of his body to see how many parasites and infections he had.
I think he’ll explode into bugs like the oogie-boogie man.
