Trump's MAHA pick for surgeon general has Big Pharma-backed lawmakers shook



President Donald Trump announced in May that he was nominating Dr. Casey Means to become surgeon general.

Trump said that Means, a tech entrepreneur and Stanford-educated doctor who has long criticized the exploitative nature of the health care system, has "impeccable 'MAHA' credentials" and would help Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "reverse the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and ensure Great Health, in the future, for ALL Americans."

It became painfully clear over the course of Means' nomination hearing on Wednesday that some lawmakers are anxious about her MAHA views on vaccines and other profitable pharmaceuticals.

'Devil's in the details.'

Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — whom Open Secrets indicated has raised over $1.3 million from the health professional industry and $712,000 from the pharmaceutical/health product industry in campaign contributions since 2019 — noted that "some [parents] have been scared to vaccinate their children because they've been told incorrectly that vaccines cause autism."

Cassidy asked Means whether she believes "vaccines, whether individually or collectively, contribute to autism."

Means, who told lawmakers that she thinks vaccines "save lives," responded, "The reality is that we have an autism crisis that's increasing, and this is devastating to many families, and we do not know as a medical community what causes autism."

Means noted that the Trump administration is investigating the matter and suggested that "until we have a clear understanding of why kids are developing this at higher rates, I think we should not leave any stones unturned."

Cassidy rushed to suggest "there's been a lot of evidence showing they're not implicated."

While Means accepted such alleged evidence exists, she emphasized that "science is never settled."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — who ranks in Open Secrets' "Top 20 Member Recipients of Money from Pharmaceuticals / Health Products, 1990-2024" — similarly pressed the issue, trying unsuccessfully to get Means to refute Kennedy's July 2023 assertion "that autism comes from vaccines."

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In her questioning, Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) focused on one vaccine in particular: the hepatitis B shot, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under previous administrations recommended for all American children but as of this year recommends only on an individual basis.

Means has suggested in years past that "hepatitis B vaccine at birth is a crime."

When Blunt Rochester generalized her concern and asked whether Means thought it was "unethical and dangerous" to hypothetically withhold life-saving vaccines from children, Means noted, "I don't believe that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya or the HHS would be interested in withholding" them and stressed that the "devil's in the details."

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who has received over $600,000 from the health professional industry since 2019, grilled Means over her past criticism of hormonal birth control and its overuse — which has been linked to increased risk of breast and cervical cancers and other medical issues.

After Murray concern-mongered over Means' suggestions that hormonal birth control is consumed "like candy" and poses "horrifying health risks" to women, Means said, "I'm curious if you're aware of what the side effects of hormonal contraception are."

Means suggested further that while such medication should be "accessible to all women," women should be having thorough conversations with their doctors to ascertain "whether they are higher risk for side effects when prescribed the medication."

Kennedy noted at the time of Means' nomination that she "will help me ensure American children will be less medicated and better fed — and significantly healthier — during the next four years. She will be the best Surgeon General in American history."

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'White supremacy dog-whistling': Democrat goes on unhinged rant — about milk



Oregon Rep. Maxine Dexter (D), a woke physician who downplayed the risks associated with COVID vaccines and has since championed so-called "gender-affirming care," recently raised eyebrows by characterizing an innocent Make America Healthy Again initiative as racist.

After repeatedly calling for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be "dismantled" during a town hall on Saturday, Dexter launched into an unhinged attack on the Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"RFK Jr. is one of the biggest threats to our community and to the health of this country," said Dexter.

"When you don't follow the science, and you just follow your vibes or your whatever it is that he's doing, it is absolutely the truth that you lose trust," continued the congresswoman. "I have every reason to believe that we'll be able to get that man at least delegitimized, hopefully fired."

'Drinking whole white milk has played a big role in racist and far-right thinking.'

Dexter characterized the government as a "fascist regime," advised doctors not to "do what they are telling us to do," and suggested that patients should "ask for the science-based regimens, not whatever RFK Jr. is getting kickbacks on or whatever whole milk, white supremacy dog-whistling that's happening."

The Republican National Committee's RNC Research account noted in response to Dexter's assertion, "Democrats' unhinged hatred for President Trump has broken their brains."

The Make America Healthy Again Commission released the Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy in September, identifying hundreds of initiatives that could help reverse "the failed policies that fueled America's childhood chronic disease epidemic."

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Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

The strategy noted that the HHS and other agencies would "remove restrictions on whole milk sales in schools, allowing districts to offer full-fat dairy options alongside reduced-fat alternatives."

The National School Lunch Program of the Department of Agriculture long required participating schools to provide milk that was consistent with the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which meant the milk offerings either had to be fat-free or low-fat.

Trump, helping the MAHA strategy along, ratified the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act last month, thereby modifying the NSLP requirements such that whole and reduced-fat milk would be added to the offerings at schools across the country.

The USDA and Kennedy have since shared a number of videos and pictures promoting whole milk, touting it as a "protein, strength, and a class choice that never goes out of style."

While whole milk and the government's campaign promoting it appear to be innocuous, Dexter presumed the worst — but she's apparently not alone.

For instance, Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, recently suggested that the consumption of the universally appreciated liquid food "is political. Drinking whole white milk has played a big role in racist and far-right thinking."

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MAHA allies rage over Trump's support for controversial weed-killing chemical



The Trump administration has delivered numerous wins on the "Make America Health Again" front. For example, it took steps to remove damaging fluoride drug products for children from the market; canceled mRNA vaccine development contracts; and took meaningful steps toward eliminating harmful synthetic dyes and other additives from the food supply.

Some of those in the MAHA movement accustomed to winning were shocked to learn this week that President Donald Trump is pushing for an increase in the production of controversial glyphosate-based herbicides.

Trump suggested in an executive order on Wednesday that "glyphosate-based herbicides are a cornerstone of this Nation’s agricultural productivity and rural economy" and that diminished access to such weed-killers would "result in economic losses for growers and make it untenable for them to meet growing food and feed demands."

'The Chemical Lobby is controlling Washington.'

Characterizing production of glyphosate-based herbicides as "central to American economic and national security," Trump invoked the Defense Production Act of 1950 and tasked Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins with "ensuring a continued and adequate supply."

The president's order also provides legal immunity to those American manufacturers ordered to produce glyphosate-related herbicides.

Glyphosate, first registered for use in America in 1974, is one of the most widely used pesticides in the country. Like various other official bodies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claims that "there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label" and that it "is unlikely to be a human carcinogen."

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Photo by: Bill Barksdale/Design Pics Editorial/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Many remain skeptical of the ubiquitous herbicide and its impact on human health, not least because of its classification by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as "probably carcinogenic to humans."

The report released in May by Trump's MAHA Commission noted that "a selection of research studies on a herbicide (glyphosate) have noted a range of possible health effects, ranging from reproductive and developmental disorders as well as [sic] cancers, live inflammation and metabolic disturbances."

A 2023 study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, which was referenced in the MAHA report, suggested that childhood exposure to glyphosate and its degradation product, aminomethylphosphonic acid, "may increase risk of liver and cardiometabolic disorders in early adulthood, which could lead to more serious diseases later in life."

A 2019 study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal BMJ found an association between the risk of autism spectrum disorder and prenatal exposure to glyphosate. The researchers noted that their findings "suggest that an offspring’s risk of autism spectrum disorder increases following prenatal exposure to ambient pesticides within 2000 m of their mother’s residence during pregnancy, compared with offspring of women from the same agricultural region without such exposure."

A long-term study published last year in the journal Environmental Health found that low doses of the herbicide caused various kinds of cancers in rats. The researchers noted that their findings not only "support the IARC conclusion that there is 'sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity [of glyphosate] in experimental animals," but are "consistent also with the epidemiological evidence showing increases in incidence of multiple malignancies in humans exposed to glyphosate and GBHs."

Zen Honeycutt, a MAHA activist who serves as executive director of Moms Across America, told the Defender, "The implications of this executive order are irreversible."

"Not only has Trump gone back on his word to go after pesticides, destroying the delicate trust that was being built by the MAHA movement with the government, but he paved the path for glyphosate to continue destroying farmland, fertility, and our families’ health for generations to come," added Honeycutt.

Toxicologist Alexandra Munoz tweeted, "The executive branch has just endorsed a carcinogen and enshrined it. This is outrageous and unacceptable."

Vani Hari, a critic of the food industry who founded Food Babe, wrote, "EVERY PRESIDENT since glyphosate was invented has increased the amount of glyphosate being sprayed on our farm land. The Chemical Lobby is controlling Washington, no matter who is in charge & this is why I hate politics."

Trump's executive order was issued the day after Bayer, the company that acquired the glyphosate-carrying product Roundup from Monsanto, announced a proposed $7.25 billion settlement to resolve thousands of American lawsuits alleging that the agrochemical giant neglected to warn people that Roundup could cause cancer.

Bayer noted that "the settlement agreements do not contain any admission of liability or wrongdoing."

Bill Anderson, CEO of Bayer, added in a statement: "The proposed class settlement agreement, together with the Supreme Court case, provides an essential path out of the litigation uncertainty and enables us to devote our full attention to furthering the innovations that lie at the core of our mission: Health for all, Hunger for none."

Bayer gave $1 million to Trump’s 2025 inauguration committee fund.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended Trump's glyphosate initiative, telling CNBC in a statement on Thursday, "Donald Trump’s executive order puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply."

"We must safeguard America’s national security first, because all of our priorities depend on it," continued Kennedy. "When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security. By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families."

Kennedy previously called glyphosate a "poison." He also helped Dewayne Johnson, a former school groundskeeper, in his legal battle against Monsanto. A jury found that Roundup caused Johnson's cancer and that Monsanto neglected to properly warn the public about the risks in its marketing.

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How ‘structural racism’ came to dominate medical research



President Trump's recent push to send federal health care dollars directly to individuals, rather than insurers, reflects a broader demand for transparency and effectiveness in how public funds are used. Government-funded medical research, which forms the foundation of much clinical care, also requires such scrutiny.

In recent years, academic medicine has advanced a nebulous theory of “structural racism” that echoes the 19th century “miasma” theory, which blamed disease on “bad air.” Despite scant evidence, studies attempting to validate this vague framework have multiplied, often funded by largely unaware taxpayers. Refocusing federal research dollars on rigorous science and evidence-based care is essential to correcting this trajectory.

The incentives were clear: Few researchers — early-career or established — would decline funding in an area where the NIH was investing heavily.

How did this happen? The construct of “structural racism” was virtually absent from medical literature until a decade ago. Since then, it has become the default explanation in academic medicine for differences in health outcomes across racial and ethnic groups. Its rise accelerated during the 2020 anti-racism craze, which swept through corporate boardrooms and university administrations while also becoming a core ideological pillar of Black Lives Matter and other political movements.

Academic medicine was no exception. This philosophy quickly gained favor in medical education, academic health centers, elite journals, and professional associations, eventually influencing federal agencies that distribute research funding.

The result: a surge of grant-funded studies built on the premise that racism causes health disparities. Of the nearly 2,300 articles indexed under the term “structural racism” in PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s database of leading biomedical and health journals, 95% were published after Jan. 1, 2020. In 2025 alone, PubMed lists 400 such papers — nearly four times the total published before 2020.

This proliferation has been supported by a tsunami of federal taxpayer dollars coming from the National Institutes of Health. From 2020 to 2025, an NIH database search found nearly 750 projects mentioning “structural racism” in their abstracts, totaling almost $533 million in funding. More than 70 of those projects were funded in 2025 at just under $40 million — significantly down from more than 220 projects in 2024 totaling $150 million, but still far above 2020, when only 12 projects received a little over $12 million in the aggregate. Before 2020, the NIH had funded just 10 such projects at a combined cost of $4 million.

Funding patterns across NIH’s 27 Institutes and Centers from 2020 to 2025 make clear that ideology, not medical science, drove much of this growth. The largest investments came from the National Institute on Drug Abuse ($147 million in total funding), National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities ($70 million), and National Institute on Aging ($57 million), each pouring substantial resources into “structural racism” research.

In 2025, for example, NIDA supported a project under the Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium that identified “structural racism” as a risk to babies before and after birth, alongside more recognizable factors like maternal health, toxic exposures, and child abuse — thereby conflating an abstract, ill-defined, and ideological social theory with measurable, scientific variables as a threat to child development.

Also in 2025, NIMHD funded the Clinical Research Scholars Training program, a “health-equity focused” initiative created in part due to NIH calls for research on “the impact of structural racism and discrimination on health disparities.” Eligibility for this program was limited to those deemed “underrepresented in biomedical research.” All others need not apply.

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And just last year, a NIA-funded project invoked “interrelated systems of structural racism” and “race-specific stress” as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline, diverting attention and resources away from well-established contributors such as genetics, medical conditions, lifestyle and environmental factors, and core biological mechanisms like amyloid plaques and tau tangles.

Unfortunately, a commitment to science gave way to ideology years ago. Under Francis Collins, the NIH “acknowledged and committed to ending structural racism,” without even defining the concept itself. “Structural racism” was accepted despite its questionable validity and lack of explanatory power.

With vague boundaries and mechanisms difficult to measure, claims of “structural racism” far exceeded the empirical evidence. Nevertheless, the idea was accepted wholesale and used to justify a wave of DEI initiatives, effectively recasting the NIH as an “anti-racist” institution in the Ibram X. Kendi mold. Objective science was no longer sufficient; the agency was expected to take an activist stance.

Proponents embraced this shift, seeing an opportunity to move health research from “individual-level risk, health behavior, and functioning” to “structural level concepts” with “structural racism” named specifically. Research dollars supported tools like the Structural Racism Effect Index to “guide policies and investments to advance health equity.”

The incentives were clear: Few researchers — early-career or established — would decline funding in an area where the NIH was investing heavily, especially when that support could provide a path to publication in top journals.

Yet the instruments used to quantify “structural racism” expose a basic flaw: They don’t measure racism.

The SREI’s nine dimensions, for example, largely track socioeconomic conditions — wealth, income, housing, employment. In practice, a high score identifies communities facing poverty. Even researchers linking SREI scores to hypertension, obesity, smoking, and low physical activity concede they “cannot make causal inferences.”

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These health risks may result from poverty, contribute to it, or arise from entirely different causes. Labeling them as products of “structural racism” adds no explanatory value, miscasts economic hardship as race-based, and downplays individual responsibility. It overshadows far more consequential drivers of outcome disparities, including access to care, personal choice, medical comorbidities, and genetics.

Nonetheless, no alternative explanation for health disparities has received anywhere near the same attention in leading medical journals — such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and JAMA — as “structural racism.” This concept has been treated as settled fact, with disparities alone offered as proof: If disparities exist, racism must be the cause. Likewise, many medical organizations have reinforced this view through policies and position papers that embed an anti-racism framework into scientific inquiry.

But change is in the air. The NIH’s recent miasma-like fixation on “structural racism” is finally clearing. Under Director Jay Bhattacharya, the agency is refocusing on its core mission of funding rigorous, evidence-based science rather than ideology-driven research. This shift will direct scarce taxpayer dollars toward work grounded in medical science and its practical application — research that can genuinely improve health rather than feed political currents.

This course correction is timely, and while sustained effort in 2026 will be needed to fully restore the NIH to its rightful mission, taxpayers can take comfort: America’s leading biomedical and medical science research institute will once again prioritize their dollars and their health.

Editor's note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

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Ultra-processed food manufacturers ran the Big Tobacco playbook to addict consumers: Study



A study published Monday in the Milbank Quarterly, an esteemed peer-reviewed health policy journal, indicated that ultra-processed foods "share key engineering strategies adopted from the tobacco industry, such as dose optimization and hedonic manipulation."

While the overlap in approach and fallout is striking, it's also unsurprising given the industries' entanglements. After all, tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris acquired food companies such as Kraft, General Foods, and Nabisco in decades past.

'Not simply natural products but highly engineered delivery systems.'

UPFs are defined by the NOVA food classification system as "industrial formulations made entirely or mostly from substances extracted from foods (oils, fats, sugar, starch, and proteins), derived from food constituents (hydrogenated fats and modified starch), or synthesized in laboratories from food substrates or other organic sources (flavor enhancers, colors, and several food additives used to make the product hyper-palatable)."

Grocery stores are replete with UPFs, which include store-bought biscuits; frozen desserts, chocolate, and candies; soda and other carbonated soft drinks; prepackaged meat and vegetables; frozen pizzas; fish sticks and chicken nuggets; packaged breads; instant noodles; chocolate milk; breakfast cereals; and sweetened juices.

Numerous studies have linked UPFs to serious health conditions.

A massive peer-reviewed 2024 study published in the BMJ, the British Medical Association's esteemed journal, for instance, found evidence pointing to "direct associations between greater exposure to ultra-processed foods and higher risks of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease-related mortality, common mental disorder outcomes, overweight and obesity, and type 2 diabetes."

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Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images

In the new study published this week, researchers from Harvard University, Duke University, and the University of Michigan noted that like cigarettes, UPFS "are not simply natural products but highly engineered delivery systems designed specifically to maximize biological and psychological reinforcement and habitual overuse."

The researchers identified a number of commonalities between ultra-processed foods and beverages, which apparently now dominate the supply across much of the globe, and ultra-processed cigarettes.

The primary reinforcer in ultra-processed cigarettes is nicotine, which is optimized for rapid delivery. UPFs also have primary reinforcers optimized for rapid delivery, namely refined carbohydrates and added fats.

Just as the nicotine dose in ultra-processed cigarettes is standardized — 1% to 2% by weight — "to balance reward and aversion," the researchers noted that refined carbohydrates and fats are precisely calibrated in UPFs to "maximize hedonic impact."

"On a biological level, carbohydrates and fats activate separate gut-brain reward pathways. Refined carbohydrates stimulate dopamine release via the vagus nerve, whereas fats do so through intestinal lipid sensing and cholecystokinin signaling," said the study. "When consumed together, their effects are supra-additive: the mesolimbic dopamine response can rise to 300% above baseline, compared with 120% to 150% for fat alone."

"This makes UPFs with high levels of refined carbohydrates and added fats some of the most potently rewarding substances in the modern diet," added the study.

In both ultra-processed cigarettes and food, the reinforcers are reportedly rapidly absorbed or digested; the reward is short-lived, leading to a desire for more; flavorants and sweeteners are added to processed ingredient bases to amplify appeal; risks of use abound.

The researchers noted further that both the tobacco and food industries have also worked diligently in their marketing to "create the illusion of reduced harm while preserving their core addictive properties."

"Many UPFs share more characteristics with cigarettes than with minimally processed fruits or vegetables and therefore warrant regulation commensurate with the significant public-health risks they pose," said the paper.

The researchers indicated that their analysis demonstrates "how UPFs meet established addiction-science benchmarks, particularly when viewed through parallels with tobacco."

The apparent aim of such scholarship is to provide the "basis for policies that constrain manufacturers, restrict marketing, and prioritize structural interventions."

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