Hello, darkness, my old friend: How to get your body's circadian rhythms back on the beat



A few weeks ago, I enjoined all of you men to do what the right-wing bodybuilders and broscientists of X do and sun your scrota, treating the testicles within to certain health-giving frequencies of light.

As silly as that might sound, red-light therapy is a pretty hot trend, and exposing your genitalia to it probably has testosterone-boosting effects. This week, I’m going to be counseling you avoid light — and not just for your nether regions.

A study from last year found a 'significant relationship between outdoor light pollution and Alzheimer’s disease prevalence.'

The fact is that we’re exposed to too much light, of the wrong kind and at the wrong times, and it’s seriously screwing with our bodies and minds.

Apeman

My attitude to health, in a nutshell, would be this: Try to live, as much as you can, in the manner of your ancestors. Why? Well, because we're the same as them, more or less. We Homo sapiens haven't changed much from our days as hunter-gatherers 200,000 years ago. We’re still running more or less the same firmware, with a few important updates here and there.

What is different, however, is the environment you inhabit. It really kicked off about 10,000-12,000 years ago, with the Agricultural Revolution in the Near East. Now there were these things called farms and cities, and there was commerce and administration and taxes, armies and wars.

Once agriculture started to spread, the pace of change really started to pick up. Fast-forward to about 200 years ago and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and it starts to get really crazy.

All of a sudden you’ve got people living in communities of millions and a mind-boggling complexity. You’ve got people working in factories, eating food made in factories, wearing synthetic clothing made in factories, illuminating their homes and communities with electric light 24/7, bombarding their bodies with electromagnetic radiation 24/7, dosing themselves with ever-increasing numbers of medications, inhaling and swallowing billions of tiny pieces of plastic invisible to the naked eye.

The modern age

I’m not going to list all the changes here. The truth is that our bodies simply can’t cope — not fully — with the vast transformation our way of life has undergone in recent centuries and especially in the last hundred years. Keep in mind that this "modern" way of life is but a blip in human time. Our genes haven’t caught up yet, and maybe they never will. So it pays to treat your body, as much as you can, in the manner of your ancestors — to eat like them, move like them, and do the things they did.

Of course, you can go too far in your pursuit of an ancestral lifestyle — just look at the sad, sad story of the Liver King, a true cautionary tale for the “primal” community.

And I’m not saying the modern world doesn’t have its beguiling or useful aspects. I rather like the fact that I’m here, in my centrally heated living room, writing this article on my swish little iPad with its touch screen and magnetic keyboard. That’s pretty cool and useful. Then again, I suppose I could get used to writing in the manner of, say, Cicero: reclining on a couch in a toga, dictating to a slave while another one feeds me grapes.

Who loves the sun

The changes that have taken place in terms of light in the last century or so — to how we use and relate to light, natural and artificial — have been no less drastic than the changes to any other aspect of our lives, including the way we eat.

For the vast majority of human history, we organized our lives consciously and unconsciously around the natural diurnal rhythms of the planet. We woke up with the sun, and we went to bed when it became dark. There were seasonal changes, but they repeated, year after year. The invention of artificial light — fire, candles — didn’t really affect any of that much.

It was only with electric light that it become possible to defy the natural rhythms of night and day and the seasons and become what we are today: beings in possession of perpetual suns we can use to illuminate ourselves and our surroundings as much as we want, whenever we want.

Night moves

Banishing the darkness has had dramatic effects on our health.

Light governs the body’s circadian rhythms, also known as the “body clock,” which play a key role in regulating the secretion of hormones and processes of growth and recovery.

The main frequencies of light emitted by screens and LED lighting are blue, and these seem to have particularly bad effects on our bodies. Some scientists have suggested that blue light should be considered an endocrine disruptor — something as prone to mess with our hormones as nasty plasticizing chemicals, herbicides and pesticides, and many of the additives we find in ultra-processed food.

A study in the journal Environmental Research associates blue-light exposure with increased rates of breast cancer among women who do night work and sleep disorders among teenagers.

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Photo by Bloomberg/Getty Images

Blue arrangements

In my piece on the boon of ball bronzing, I mentioned a study showing that chronic exposure to blue light could actually bring on early puberty in rats. This is a pretty worrying finding, especially since we know the age of puberty in the developed world has been decreasing for decades and children are being exposed to ever-greater quantities of blue light from the screens and electronic devices they play with all day long.

Large-scale studies clearly suggest exposure to artificial light could be having population-level effects. Research has linked nighttime light exposure to cognitive decline, for example. A study from last year compared rates of Alzheimer’s to satellite data for nighttime light levels across the U.S. The scientists found a “significant relationship between outdoor light pollution and Alzheimer’s disease prevalence. States and counties with higher levels of artificial light at night consistently had higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease.” Most worryingly of all, the association was strongest in the under-65s, a demographic that typically doesn’t suffer from this terrible disease.

So what can you do?

Doctor my eyes

In general terms, you should try to reduce your exposure to artificial light and do things that mimic the natural rise and fall of light levels. Go out and get sunlight early in the morning, or expose yourself to bright light with a SAD lamp. As afternoon draws into evening, begin to reduce levels of light in your home or workspace. Tell your body it’s getting closer to sleepy time. Turn off the main lights, turn on lamps, close the curtains — you could even light a few candles. I light my kitchen in the evening with candles, and it creates a wonderfully relaxing atmosphere. Begin to wind down your use of electronic devices that emit blue light.

If you have to spend your day or large portions of it staring at a screen, you can buy a pair of blue-light-blocking glasses. Ra Optics makes some very fetching blue-light blockers that don’t look at all silly. In fact, they’re basically indistinguishable from normal glasses or sunglasses. You could also buy one of Daylight’s very swanky tablets that has a blue-light-free backlight.

Alternatively, you can play with your device’s brightness settings or download a blue-light app like f.lux or Twilight. There’s also a built-in feature on Windows called “Night Light” that allows you to reduce levels of blue light in the evenings. You can even toggle it to come on automatically at set times.

Of course, you could just turn the bloody thing off. Imagine that. Our ancestors, fortunate creatures that they were, didn’t have to.

Trump administration claims link between autism and Tylenol, greenlights remedy



President Donald Trump noted in his order establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission that "autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s."

The MAHA Commission's chairman, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., subsequently indicated that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that the rate of autism among American children has gotten even worse.

"The autism epidemic is running rampant," Kennedy said. "One in 31 American children born in 2014 are disabled by autism. That's up significantly from two years earlier and nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started running autism surveys in children born in 1992. Prevalence for boys is an astounding 1 in 20, and in California it's 1 in 12.5."

'So taking Tylenol is not good.'

Kennedy promised during a Cabinet meeting in April that "by September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we'll be able to eliminate those exposures" — an ambition the Autism Society of America said was "harmful, misleading, and unrealistic."

Despite pre-emptive criticism by medical establishmentarians and the protest of the interim CEO of Tylenol maker Kenvue, Kennedy joined President Donald Trump and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz on Monday in formally identifying one of the alleged drivers behind the rise in American autism: the use of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, during pregnancy.

Kennedy, who indicated that his agency is also looking closely at the potential link between vaccines and autism, noted, "The FDA is responding to clinical and laboratory studies that suggest a potential association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and adverse neurological outcomes, including later diagnoses for ADHD and autism."

RELATED: Trump's health revolution: RFK Jr. takes aim at chemicals, junk food, and overmedication

IM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

The health secretary indicated that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration kicked off the process on Monday for a label change for acetaminophen to indicate that the use of the drug by pregnant women may be associated with an increased risk of neurological conditions like autism and ADHD in children.

The Department of Health and Human Services will also launch a nationwide public information campaign to alert parents and families to the possible risks of taking Tylenol during pregnancy, Kennedy said.

"The safety of acetaminophen against the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in young children has never been validated," Kennedy said. "Prudent medicine therefore suggests caution in acetaminophen use by young children, especially since strong evidence also has associated it with liver toxicity. Some studies have also found the use of acetaminophen in children can potentially prolong viral illnesses."

"So taking Tylenol is not good," Trump said. "I'll say it: It's not good."

White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement to Blaze News, "President Trump pledged to address America's rising rate of autism, and to do so with gold-standard science. Today's announcement will make historic progress on both commitments."

Ahead of the announcement, a spokesperson for Kenvue — whose company stock price took a nosedive on Monday — told Blaze News, "We believe independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism. We strongly disagree with any suggestion otherwise and are deeply concerned with the health risk this poses for expecting mothers."

The company spokesperson suggested further in the statement: "The facts are that over a decade of rigorous research, endorsed by leading medical professionals and global health regulators, confirms there is no credible evidence linking acetaminophen to autism."

Christopher Zahn, chief of clinical practice at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, similarly suggested in a statement to Blaze News prior to the Trump administration's announcement regarding autism that "there is no clear evidence that proves a direct relationship between the prudent use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and fetal developmental issues."

'Failure to implement change in medical practice currently constitutes disregard for the ample evidence of harm.'

While Kenvue, the ACOG, and other outfits have suggested that there is no causal link between acetaminophen use and autism, there is at the very least an apparent association.

In a National Institutes of Health-funded 2019 study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, researchers led by Dr. Xiaobin Wang of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health collected umbilical cord blood from 996 births and measured the amount of acetaminophen and two of its byproducts in each sample.

The researchers found that "cord biomarkers of fetal exposure to acetaminophen were associated with significantly increased risk of childhood ADHD and ASD in a dose-response fashion."

Acetaminophen, often sold under the brand Tylenol in the United States and Canada, is the most common over-the-counter pain and fever medication used during pregnancy and is reportedly used by well over 50% of pregnant women worldwide.

A 2023 scientific review published in the Swiss peer-reviewed journal Children concluded "without reasonable doubt and with no evidence to the contrary that exposure of susceptible babies and children to acetaminophen (paracetamol) induces many, if not most, cases of autism spectrum disorder."

The review, led by Dr. William Parker, CEO of WPLab and visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also concluded that "the very early postpartum period poses the greatest risk for acetaminophen-induced ASD, and that nearly ubiquitous use of acetaminophen during early development could conceivably be responsible for the induction in the vast majority, perhaps 90% or more, of all cases of ASD."

When asked about Kenvue's apparent denial of a causal link between acetaminophen and autism, Dr. Parker told Blaze News:

Technically, the company is correct. Acetaminophen alone absolutely does NOT cause autism. Susceptibility to injury is absolutely required for acetaminophen to induce autism. Without susceptibility, which is caused by a very complex mixture of genetics, epigenetics, and environment, acetaminophen cannot induce autism. Almost all scientists working in the field are aware to some extent of the complex mix of genetic and environmental factors involved in the induction of autism.

In his response, Dr. Parker also referenced a 2024 study that he worked on which was published in the journal Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics. The study noted that "careful examination reveals no valid objections to the conclusion that early exposure to acetaminophen causes neurodevelopmental injury in susceptible babies and children."

"Changes in medical practice should be implemented that effectively weigh the risks and benefits of neonatal and pediatric APAP use," the study reads. "Failure to implement change in medical practice currently constitutes disregard for the ample evidence of harm despite the absence of any valid rationale for the view that APAP might be safe for neurodevelopment."

On the matter of whether health officials should warn pregnant mothers about the increased risk of autism in their children associated with acetaminophen use, Dr. Parker noted that the "answer to this question is nuanced."

"Evidence indicates that heavy use of acetaminophen during pregnancy may lead to neurodevelopmental problems, including autism and ADHD," Dr. Parker said. "Heavy use is often associated with chronic pain management. Much less is known about the cost-to-benefit ratio of treating an occasional fever during pregnancy. Such treatments may have a net benefit for the fetus, although more work needs to be done to probe this topic."

Dr. Parker emphasized to Blaze News that "we are absolutely NOT blaming parents and physicians for this. It is not a mistake for us to do what we are told is best for our children. The science is all about preventing injury in the future, not blaming people who are blameless."

In an NIH-supported study published in August in the peer-reviewed medical journal Environmental Health, researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles' School of Public Health, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai systematically reviewed 46 "well-designed" studies incorporating data from over 100,000 participants regarding the relationship between neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and prenatal exposure to acetaminophen.

The researchers found that 27 of the studies reported "significant links" between acetaminophen exposure in the womb and NDDs and noted that "higher-quality studies were more likely to show positive associations."

"Overall, the majority of the studies reported positive associations of prenatal acetaminophen use with ADHD, ASD, or NDDs in offspring, with risk-of-bias and strength-of-evidence ratings informing the overall synthesis," the study reads.

When specifically evaluating the studies pertaining to Tylenol use and autism in children, the researchers found "strong evidence of a relationship between prenatal acetaminophen use and increased risk of ASD in children."

Dr. Andrea Baccarelli, a co-author of the study and a professor of environmental health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, noted in a statement obtained by Blaze News that he believes "caution about acetaminophen use during pregnancy — especially heavy or prolonged use — is warranted."

Dr. Baccarelli and his colleagues recommended a "balanced approach" regarding acetaminophen use during pregnancy — a recommendation now echoed by the Trump administration: "Patients who need fever or pain reduction during pregnancy should take the lowest effective dose of acetaminophen, for the shortest possible duration, after consultation with their physician about their individual risk-benefit calculation."

Zahn of the ACOG was among those who railed against Baccarelli's systematic review.

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Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

"Failing to treat medical conditions that warrant the use of acetaminophen is, at present, understood to be far more dangerous than theoretical concerns based on inconclusive reviews of conflicting science," Zahn said in a statement to Blaze News. "Maternal fever, diagnosis of severe pre-eclampsia, and appropriate pain control are all managed with the therapeutic use of acetaminophen and can create severe morbidity and mortality for maternal and child health if they are mismanaged based on improper clinical recommendations."

The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine also rushed to endorse Tylenol use during pregnancy following the publication of the damning review, noting that it "continues to advise physicians and patients that acetaminophen is an appropriate medication to treat pain and fever during pregnancy."

"Ideally, you don't take it at all," Trump said during the press conference on Monday. "If you can't tough it out or there's a problem, you're going to end up doing it."

In addition to calling out acetaminophen for its alleged role in the explosion of autism cases, Kennedy identified leucovorin, which is also known as folinic acid, as a viable autism treatment.

Leucovorin is already used to treat cerebral folate deficiency, which has been associated with autism.

The same year that a review in the Journal of Personalized Medicine noted that leucovorin "is associated with improvements in core and associated symptoms of ASD and appears safe and generally well-tolerated," a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was registered. The results of that trial, published last year in the European Journal of Pediatrics, were promising.

Researchers concluded that oral folinic acid supplementation "is effective and safe in improving ASD symptoms, with more pronounced benefits in children with high titers of folate receptor autoantibodies."

FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary indicated that his agency has initiated the approval of leucovorin calcium tablets for patients with cerebral folate deficiency.

"We have witnessed a tragic four-fold increase in autism over two decades," Makary said. "Children are suffering and deserve access to potential treatments that have shown promise. We are using gold standard science and common sense to deliver for the American people."

The biopharmaceutical company GSK promptly noted that it will submit a supplemental New Drug Application for leucovorin to update the label to reflect that it can be used to treat cerebral folate deficiency.

By addressing one of the alleged root causes of autism and mainstreaming a treatment might not only help American families tackle the disorder but spare them from what is, for many, a crushing burden.

Upwards of $60.9 billion are reportedly spent each year on children with ASD, and intensive behavioral interventions can cost anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000 per child annually.

Blaze News has reached out to the American Pediatric Society and to the HHS for comment.

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Sweat equity: The surprising health benefits of a hot bath



On the rare occasions I can face visiting London these days, I always make sure to stop in at Banya No.1 in Hoxton. From the outside, it’s unprepossessing — just another modern block with a buzzer door — but when you get inside and go downstairs, it’s like you’ve been transported beyond the new Iron Curtain to Moscow or St. Petersburg or Novgorod.

It’s a proper Russian spa — a banya — complete with sauna, huge wooden-barrel plunge pool, freezing showers, treatment rooms with tables, and even a little cafe where you can sit and gobble pelmeni (delicious little stuffed dumplings) or have a hearty bowl of borscht (beetroot stew with meat).

Sauna treatment has been used, with great success, to treat police officers suffering chronic health issues as a result of repeated exposure to methamphetamine, for example.

And, of course, there are the staff, all of whom are authentic Russki, from the charming girls on the desk to the sullen myrmidons who patrol the saunas and abuse you with various implements for an extra fee — although you get the feeling they’d happily abuse you without payment too.

It’s a shame, but also a blessing, that I don’t live close to London. I’d be at Banya No. 1 all the time. If money were no object, I’d recreate it at home. I’d have a fragrant cedar-clad sauna with a big brick oven in it, and I’d pay a couple of former goons from the vory v zakone called Andrei and Pavel to keep the wood burning and beat me with birch twigs and scour me with Siberian pine tar to my heart’s content. Heaven.

I’d do this not just because it’s fun and a potent way to reduce stress — and we could all do with a bit less of that right now — but also because going to the spa is good for you in other ways.

Toxic baste

You’ve probably heard talk of the detoxification benefits of sauna before. They’re very real, and as I try to impress on my readers as much as I can, we all need to be detoxing our bodies. We’re constantly exposed to harmful chemicals in our daily lives, and anything we can do to reduce the amounts that get into and accumulate in our bodies is a good thing.

Sweating is one of the principal routes for harmful chemicals to leave our bodies, as well as in our urine and feces and when we lose (or give) blood. Particular chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), a plasticizer with endocrine-disrupting effects, are generally found in greater quantities in our sweat than in our urine or blood, which is a clear sign that sweating is the main way our bodies dispose of them.

Sauna treatment has been used, with great success, to treat police officers suffering chronic health issues as a result of repeated exposure to methamphetamine, for example. It’s being trialed as a treatment for a range of other health conditions.

Fat chance

Sweating appears to be particularly effective for detoxification when combined with fasting or a calorie-restricted diet. Rodent studies show that being in a fasted or dieting state pushes harmful chemicals out of the body’s diminishing fat stores and toward the skin, where they can then be sweated off.

Many harmful chemicals are lipophilic, and as a result, when they get into our bodies, they end up in our fat stores. That’s actually one of the many important functions of fat — as a kind of vault for harmful chemicals, to seal them away and keep them out of other tissues — and it’s probably why a reliable effect of regular exposure to harmful chemicals is to put on fat. It’s a protection mechanism.

(This is also probably one of the reasons why celebrities who go on drugs like Ozempic end up looking so terrible, even when they lose loads of weight — search for before-and-after pictures of podcaster Ethan Klein if you don’t want to sleep tonight. Because of their terrible diets and lifestyles, fat people have enormous stores of toxic chemicals in their bodies, and if they suddenly lose weight with Ozempic or Mounjaro or whatever, their tissues are flooded with them. This could actually be quite dangerous, and it’s one of the many reasons you should prefer traditional methods of weight loss — exercise and changes to diet — over these new drugs when possible.)

Hot air

If you want to sauna regularly, you have various options. Of course, you can join a gym or health club with a sauna. That’s easy enough. If you want to sauna at home and you’ve got space in your garden, you can get a wooden barrel sauna for a few thousand dollars or convert a shed or outbuilding. You’ll find plenty of good guides online for building your own sauna.

If you don’t want to build a permanent structure, you could go the Native American route and build a little sweat lodge in your garden with a tent and some rocks. Dig a hole, put a tent (preferably canvas) over it, fill the tent with hot rocks heated on a fire, sit inside the tent, and pour water on the rocks. Voila: steam in a confined space. A sauna. Again, you’ll find helpful tutorials all over the internet.

There are also infrared sauna kits that can be used indoors and folded away and stored easily if you don’t have a great deal of space. They’re pretty reasonable.

But there may also be an even simpler and cheaper option. Just have a hot bath.

Tub-thumping

Yes: A hot bath probably confers all the benefits of a sauna. In fact, it may even be more effective at boosting your health than a sauna, according to a new study I wrote about recently on my Substack. It’s worth noting that the study didn’t compare the detoxification effects of baths and saunas due to sweating, but if you’ve ever sat in a hot bath, you’ll know you sweat plenty. Sweating takes place underwater, too, but you just don’t feel it.

What the new study does show is that hot baths offer superior metabolic, cardiac, and immune benefits to saunas, in large part because the heating effect of being immersed in hot water is much, much greater than sitting in a heated enclosure. Water conducts heat 24 times more efficiently than air, and your whole body — or most of it — is in direct contact with the water the entire time.

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Jason Connolly/Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

Save our swimmers

I have one caution about hot baths, though, and it’s for my male readers. Protect the family jewels. Boiling them is even worse than toasting them (see my note about testicular tanning in a previous installment).

Why? Heating the testicles is associated with reduced fertility, whether as a result of working in a furnace or as a welder, or through taking regular hot baths or saunas. The effects can be long-lasting, even after just a single session.

One study from the 1960s showed that it takes between 10 and 12 weeks for sperm counts to return to normal after just 30 minutes of intense scrotal heating. If you’re going to take regular hot baths as a man, I’d recommend keeping your testicles out of the water, however you see fit. You can arch your back a little bit, or you can put some ice on your balls in a flannel or use a proper ice pack.

MAHA agenda scores major win with announcement from food giant



Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s efforts to Make America Healthy Again have consistently been paying off in the steep uphill battle against Big Pharma and Big Food. This week, a large food manufacturer joined the ranks of corporations making big changes to their ingredients in the furtherance of the MAHA agenda.

On Monday, Tyson Foods announced that it will be removing some junk ingredients from several of its brands.

'Our decision to remove high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients reflects our ongoing commitment to feeding the world like family.'

The press release states that it plans to remove high fructose corn syrup, sucralose, butylated hydroxyanisole/butylated hydroxytoluene, and titanium oxide by the end of 2025.

“We continuously review and assess our product portfolio to ensure the highest quality products that meet the needs of consumers,” said Donnie King, president and CEO of Tyson Foods. “Our decision to remove high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients reflects our ongoing commitment to feeding the world like family, while preserving the taste, value, and integrity that define our iconic brands.”

RELATED: It's been a year since Kennedy and Trump joined forces. Here are MAHA's top 3 wins.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

While the press release insists that all of these ingredients are FDA-approved and safe to use, critics have raised concerns over their safety in higher doses and extended periods of time. In particular, scientists have questioned the toxicity levels of BHA and BHT.

Titanium dioxide, according to the Industrial Plating Company's website, "is a hard and dense ceramic coating. It is used for a variety of coating applications, including wear resistance and electrically conductive coatings." When it is not being used for industrial-grade ceramic coatings, food companies have used it as an additive to increase the whiteness or opacity of food.

Among the brands that will see changes to their ingredients are Tyson, Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Wright, State Fair, Aidells, and ibp, according to the press release.

Earlier this year, Tyson Foods announced that it would remove "petroleum-based synthetic dyes from its domestic-branded products."

Tyson Foods did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

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How MAHA can really save American lives



Thirty-seven years ago, an executive at Monsanto named Harold Corbett delivered a speech titled “Chemical risk: Living up to public expectations.” The 1988 speech called out an industry that delivered miracles and devastating mistakes.

Corbett described two chemical industries. One was responsible for safe drinking water, higher crop yields, medicines, and a better standard of living. The other was responsible for contamination, waste, and health crises: “The public doesn’t care how far we’ve come. They care how far we still have to go.”

MAHA is about returning to a Republican Party that answers to voters, not corporate boards, and that means telling the truth about the harm caused when Big Health dictates our policies.

It still rings true today. Harold Corbett was my grandfather.

Lost trust

To turn a profit, pharmaceutical companies suppress unfavorable data and mislead consumers with predatory advertising. Food manufacturers sell metabolic dysfunction; hospital systems consolidate care; and chemical conglomerates litigate instead of innovate.

Now, a growing number of Americans are speaking out decisively against the quartet of Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Food, and Big Health. This coalition of “Make America Healthy Again” voters is targeting a crisis of institutional credibility and a growing unease with an industry that is no longer trusted and seems more focused on profits than on people’s health.

As a psychiatric nurse practitioner, I see these problems firsthand. With the MAHA coalition powering Republican victories up and down the ballot, we as Republicans have a generational opportunity to take back our health system. We can make changes and save American lives, but we need to agree on the problems to start.

More than two-thirds of all Missouri adults are overweight. Synthetic opioid overdoses claimed nearly 850 lives last year, with local St. Louis and St. Charles Counties ranking at or near the worst in the state. And should we forget the COVID mandates that caused overdoses to spike, caused childhood anxiety and depression to rise, and kept healthy toddlers in masks? Such measures stunted their development for years, as dissenting scientists and members of the public were told to “trust the experts” and shut up.

Dismissing people is the quickest way to continue to diminish what little trust remains. In my practice, I encounter this lack of trust in our medical establishment every day with my patients. After years of being told to trust “the science” — meaning “don’t question us” — many people no longer trust anything the medical establishment has to say.

A prescription for healing

This is where the MAHA movement can help heal our nation. The Trump administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have been making significant strides to regain public trust, both through the MAHA Commission and through medical reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Trump signed in July.

Republicans need to get on board, and Congress needs to act, to do much more on this crucial issue.

On food transparency and clean labels, Americans deserve full disclosure of the chemicals, additives, and pesticides that are going into our foods, particularly those banned in Europe and Canada. This includes food dyes and glyphosate, a pesticide and carcinogen that is found throughout our food system.

RELATED: It's been a year since Kennedy and Trump joined forces. Here are MAHA’s top 3 wins.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

On preventive care and lowering costs, we have made great strides by prioritizing direct primary care in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We should work to expand choice even more so that individuals and families have direct access outside our bloated and opaque insurance system.

Finally, our country needs a national plan for longevity and health: a real approach to wellness beyond relief for chronic symptoms, focusing instead on treatment of root causes. This must include protecting our kids from harmful food additives, encouraging beneficial physical and social activities, and stopping the grasp of powerful social media companies that are harming their health.

Until the scientific community admits past failures and entanglements, trust won’t return. Our public officials must lead as well, instead of following whatever Big Pharma and special interest groups have to say. Liberty thrives when truth is public and trust is earned.

Making health care thrive again

The same problems facing Americans are the problems facing our government. We keep swapping out treatments — new politicians, new leaders, new promises — but the patient keeps getting worse. The solution is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but to improve the system so that it works for regular people. That is how we restore faith in our institutions and return to responsible, trusted capitalism.

I don’t want to dismantle the health care industry. We need it to thrive. MAHA is about returning to a Republican Party that answers to voters, not corporate boards, and that means telling the truth about the harm caused when Big Health dictates our policies.

This movement can and will win broadly if we deliver on these promises.

In his speech, my grandfather quoted Mark Twain: “When in doubt, tell the truth.” To that, I would add: When the truth is clear, act. The restoration of trust and survival of these industries, our government, and our people depend on it.

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

Trump’s health revolution: RFK Jr. takes aim at chemicals, junk food, and overmedication



President Donald Trump, determined to guide the nation into a new golden age, has gone to war with the private-public consensus that has sickened generations of American children and threatens future greatness.

The president's battle strategy has finally come into full view.

'I am so grateful that I work for a president that is willing to run through walls to stop this and to heal our kids.'

Trump's Make America Healthy Again Commission, chaired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., released on Tuesday its long-awaited directives and strategies for tackling chronic disease, protecting children from toxic exposure, and helping American families flourish.

This report sets the stage for a shake-up that is sure to cause a great deal of consternation among medical establishmentarians, pharmaceutical reps, chemical magnates, and ultra-processed food manufacturers.

"We are now the sickest country in the world. We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world, and yet we spend more on health care than any country in the world," Kennedy said during the public MAHA Commission meeting on Tuesday. "This is an existential crisis for our country."

Kennedy added, "I am so grateful that I work for a president that is willing to run through walls to stop this and to heal our kids."

RELATED: Trump establishes Make America Healthy Again Commission. Here's what it will do.

Quick background

In his Feb. 13 executive order creating the MAHA Commission, President Donald Trump noted, "To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must redirect our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease."

Three months later, Trump's commission released an assessment report identifying four potential drivers of the rise in childhood chronic disease: poor diet largely tied to ultra-processed foods; aggregation of environmental chemicals including microplastics, fluoride, phthalates, bisphenols, and crop protection tools; lack of physical activity and chronic stress; and overmedicalization.

The report suggested that the situation was rather bleak, noting:

  • Over 40% of the roughly 73 million kids in the U.S. have at least one chronic health condition;
  • 1 in 5 kids over the age of 6 is obese;
  • 1 in 31 kids is impacted by autism spectrum disorder by the age of 8;
  • Childhood cancer incidence has skyrocketed by over 40% since 1975;
  • Pesticides, microplastics, and dioxins "are commonly found in the blood and urine of American children and pregnant women — some at alarming levels";
  • Nearly 70% of an American child's calories come from ultra-processed foods; and
  • Stimulant prescriptions for ADHD, antidepressant prescription rates, and antipsychotic prescriptions for teens and/or children have exploded in recent decades.

RELATED: The fruit of the US pesticide industry is poison

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told Blaze News earlier this year that the May assessment was a "diagnosis," and the next step was to "develop policy recommendations, grounded in gold-standard science and common sense."

Next steps

In the newly released "Make Our Children Healthy Again" report, the MAHA Commission broke its strategic plan into four pillars: advancing research, realigning incentives, fostering private sector collaboration, and increasing public awareness.

Deeper dives

The first pillar tasks various federal agencies with pursuing "rigorous, gold-standard scientific research to help ensure informed decisions that promote health outcomes for American children and families, as well as drive innovative solutions."

For instance, the Department of Health and Human Services will — through the National Institutes of Health and in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — study the root causes of autism.

The HHS, again working with the NIH, will also kick off a new vaccine injury program, investigating vaccine injuries "with improved data collection and analysis." Although this program will initially be housed at the NIH Clinical Center, the report indicated it could expand to centers around the country.

Other research initiatives include:

  • Closer looks at water contamination, including an Environmental Protection Agency review of new scientific information on the potential health risks of fluoride;
  • A concerted effort by the HHS, NIH, and EPA to complete an evaluation of the risks and exposures of microplastics and synthetics;
  • An HHS evaluation of the therapeutic harms and benefits of "current diagnostic thresholds, overprescription trends, and evidence-based solutions"; and
  • The formation of a mental health diagnosis and prescription work group at the HHS tasked with evaluating "prescription patterns for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and other relevant drugs for children."

Blowing up the status quo

The realignment pillar of the MAHA Commission's strategy is by far the biggest and potentially the most consequential in the report.

The report indicated that the HHS will continue its current work of eliminating harmful synthetic dyes and other additives from the food supply, addressing possible conflicts of interest at health-related federal agencies — such as those that prompted Kennedy's purge of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June — and protecting "public health from corporate influence."

The administration apparently also has a slew of regulatory and deregulatory initiatives in the works.

Among the changes on the deregulatory front that Americans might soon see the fruits of is the elimination of mandatory reduced-fat requirements in federal nutrition programs; the elimination of barriers to small dairy operations selling their own milk products; and the FDA's abandonment of animal testing requirements.

On the regulatory front and as foreshadowed in a Kennedy op-ed last year, the HHS will be pushing for greater accountability where direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising is concerned.

The HHS will work with the FDA, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission to "increase oversight and enforcement under current authorities for violations of DTC prescription drug advertising laws."

In a similar vein, the HHS and FTC will also explore potential industry guidelines to limit advertisements of unhealthy foods that target children.

RELATED: RFK Jr. did what GOP cowards won’t

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

While the FDA will, on the one hand, update nutrient requirements for infant formula and ramp up screening for contaminants, it will also encourage companies to roll out new infant formulas. Meanwhile, the USDA and HHS will work to increase breastfeeding rates.

The commission appears especially keen on ensuring that foods are accurately labeled; dietary guidelines are reflective of the current nutritional science; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are used for healthy food; and the legal loophole that apparently enables the food industry to add potentially unsafe substances to the food supply without government oversight is closed for good.

The report indicated further that the CDC will update recommendations regarding fluoride — which has a retarding effect on children — and forever chemicals in the American water supply.

Besides regulatory changes, the commission indicated that the HHS is set to undergo a "comprehensive reorganization" to create the Administration for a Healthy America, an outfit that will lead the federal government's response to the chronic disease crisis through "integrated prevention-focused programs."

Blasting facts and shaking hands

The other two pillars in the MAHA strategy report concerning the promotion of public awareness and MAHA collaboration with elements of the private sector are both afforded relatively little real estate. Nevertheless, they contain a handful of proposals that could prove transformative.

The planned efforts to raise awareness about the potential harms posed by exposure to pesticides, fluoride, sedentary lifestyles, drug abuse, and too much screen time may, for instance, end up yielding more immediate effects than some of the corresponding regulatory initiatives, which are sure to face legal challenges.

RELATED: Study warns of possible link between world's most popular painkiller and autism

Photo by Jennifer Polixenni Brankin/Getty Images

The section on fostering private-sector collaboration, the most diminutive section in the document, contains two plans that stand out. The first involves an education campaign aimed at improving health and fertility in men and women who are seeking to start families.

In the interest of helping American families grow and remedying America's abysmal fertility rate, which hit an all-time low last year, the HHS is initiating the "Root Causes of Infertility Award Challenge Competition," which "seeks to identify new and existing solutions to prevent, diagnose, and treat root causes of infertility, including chronic reproductive health conditions, and provide answers to families, improve health outcomes, and ensure a brighter future for parents and infants across the U.S."

The HHS will also develop an Infertility Training Center to help Title X clinics identify and treat for the underlying causes of infertility.

The second plan that stands out in the private-sector collaboration section concerns working with the agricultural industry on new approaches and technologies that could reduce the amount of pesticides needed. This appears to be a consolation prize for those who wanted certain harmful pesticides banned outright.

"A lot of these 128 recommendations are things that I've been dreaming about my whole life," Kennedy said. "We have accomplished more already than any health secretary in history, and the accomplishments we're going to have by the end of the year are going to be historic and unprecedented."

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PHOTOS of MAHA infiltrator caught with mRNA lobbyists



A deep-state actor has been attempting to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from his position as director of Health and Human Services — and BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler has the receipts.

“We have an untold story about what’s happened over the course of the past week at the CDC. We all know the publicly reported stories of what happened — that Susan Monarez, who was the previous head of the CDC, was asked by HHS Secretary Bobby Kennedy to fire some people who were not in line, not in alignment with the MAHA agenda,” Wheeler begins.

Wheeler calls Monarez “a bad apple” and a “militant pro-vaxxer” who is not ideologically aligned with the MAHA movement and even defended mRNA vaccines and the COVID vaccine during her confirmation hearing.

“The question, of course, was why was she nominated in the first place as CDC director?” Wheeler asks, before calling the answer a man named Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator from Louisiana.

According to Wheeler, Cassidy is a “MAHA infiltrator."


“He doesn’t seem like someone who’s propagating evil. But let me tell you about what happened over the weekend at the CDC when then-CDC Director Susan Monarez was asked by Bobby Kennedy, HHS secretary, to fire individuals at the CDC who were opposed to Bobby’s MAHA agenda,” Wheeler explains.

“Susan Monarez said ‘no.’ She refused to do the directive of her boss,” she continues, noting that this resulted in her being asked to resign — which she also refused to do and instead hired a lawyer.

“So Bobby Kennedy called President Trump, the White House — HHS communicated with the White House, I should say, to be precise. And President Trump said, ‘Actually, the CDC director, because you’re now a Senate-confirmed official, serves at the pleasure of the president, and it is now my pleasure that you not serve as the CDC director,’” Wheeler says.

“Now, that’s what’s known. You read that,” she adds.

What’s not known is that the first phone call Monarez made after being asked to resign was to Senator Bill Cassidy, who has been instrumental in torpedoing other MAHA efforts.

This is where a lobbying group called “Alliance for mRNA Medicines” comes in, which Wheeler says is “exactly what it sounds like.”

“It is a group dedicated to lobbying, pressuring, capturing members of the federal government and advocating for mRNA vaccines. They call them medicines because they don’t want vaccines in the title,” Wheeler explains.

In a highlight reel the group posted on social media, where they bragged about “what they accomplished during their trip to Washington, D.C.,” they show a meeting with none other than a smiling Cassidy.

“This man, Senator Bill Cassidy, is in the pocket of Big Pharma … but it’s worse than that. Senator Bill Cassidy is not only in the pocket of Big Pharma, he’s in the pocket of the mRNA vaccine lobby,” Wheeler says.

In 2023-2024, Cassidy was the second-highest Republican Senate recipient of Big Pharma cash. In one year alone, he received $290,000 from Big Pharma employees and lobbying groups — which is from just the easily trackable direct donations.

“And funny how the moment he became the ranking member of the Senate Health Committee, he suddenly received an influx of donations not just from pharma employees, but from pharma executives,” she explains, noting that one of those executives is the CEO of Pfizer.

“There’s an infiltrator who’s standing in the way of the MAHA-MAGA alliance,” Wheeler continues, adding, “Senator Bill Cassidy is captured not just by Big Pharma money but by the mRNA vaccine lobby, and there’s photographs to prove it.”

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It's been a year since Kennedy and Trump joined forces. Here are MAHA's top 3 wins.



Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted in August 2024 that a major factor behind his decision to endorse President Donald Trump was the opportunity to help "Make America Healthy Again" in a future Trump administration.

"Don't you want healthy children?" Kennedy said in a speech. "And don't you want the chemicals out of our food? And don't you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption? And that's what President Trump told me that he wanted."

Since his hotly contested confirmation as Trump's Health and Human Services secretary in February, Kennedy has worked ardently to deliver on the promise of MAHA.

Already, HHS under his tutelage has secured numerous victories on the health front, including the:

  • cancellation of mRNA vaccine development contracts;
  • elimination of the Biden-era vaccine-reporting requirement and corresponding incentive system for hospitals;
  • termination of thousands of bureaucrats along with senior establishmentarians such as Christine Grady, the wife of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci;
  • removal of retarding fluoride drug products for children from the market;
  • requirement that Pfizer and Moderna add new safety warnings to their COVID-19 vaccines; and
  • removal of the COVID vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended vaccine schedule for healthy pregnant women and children.

Although the Trump administration has delivered many MAHA wins, three in particular stand out as particularly consequential.

Fresh start at the ACIP

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is the federal panel whose vaccine recommendations become official policy at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and apply to the entire American population once adopted by the agency's director — a position which, at the time of writing, was vacant thanks to Susan Monarez's firing on Wednesday.

RELATED: Big shake-up at CDC: Director gets the boot; gay vax chief resigns, attacks RFK Jr. on way out

Photographer: Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Kennedy fired all 17 members of the ACIP in June.

While every member of the ACIP was a Biden administration appointee, the health secretary's principle concern was not the panelists' politics but rather their cozy relationships with some of the organizations they were tasked with scrutinizing.

For instance, data provided on OpenPaymentData.CMS.gov, a site managed by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, indicated that Edwin Jose Asturias, one of the ACIP members whom Kennedy fired, collected around $54,000 from pharmaceutical companies, including $20,705 in what appear to be consulting fees.

Blaze News previously reported that among the companies that paid Asturias what appear to have been consulting fees were Pfizer and Merck Sharpe & Dohme LLC, a bio-pharmaceutical subsidiary of the company whose pneumococcal vaccine Capvaxive the committee voted to recommend in October. Asturias also apparently netted millions in research support from Big Pharma, including over $3.1 million from Pfizer and over $730,000 from the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline LLC.

Like Asturias, Kennedy noted "most of ACIP's members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines."

Kennedy indicated that the individuals he appointed to the newly cleared panel were "highly credentialed physicians and scientists who will make extremely consequential public health determinations by applying evidence-based decision-making with objectivity and common sense" and had "each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations."

Nuking gender ideology

Pursuant to President Donald Trump's Executive Order 14168, the HHS has taken a wrecking ball to gender ideology.

For starters, the department released guidance to the U.S. government, to the public, and to external partners that sex is an immutable biological classification and that there are only two sexes, male and female.

The department has applied this standard to civil rights enforcement, health care policy, and sports eligibility; launched federal civil rights investigations into whether various states violated Title IX by allowing men in women's sports; canceled funding for related programs and activities; and scrubbed its websites of messaging, guidance, and language that advanced gender ideology.

The HHS has also conditioned federal funding for states' Personal Responsibility Education Program grants on the removal of all references to gender ideology.

California learned the hard way and had its PREP grant terminated on Aug. 21. The HHS' Administration for Children and Families noted in a release that the agency would not tolerate funding "curricula that could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals, 'altering their body ... through hormone therapy,' 'adding or removing breast tissue,' and 'changing their name.'"

Axing artificial food coloring

The HHS outlined a plan in April to phase out all petroleum-based synthetic dyes from America's food supply.

Vani Hari, a critic of the food industry who founded Food Babe, told Blaze News in November that the brighter artificial colors, which are helpful with sales and attractive to children, are harmful to their health.

"The science shows that these dyes cause hyperactivity in children, can disrupt the immune system, and are contaminated with carcinogens," said Hari.

Red dye 40, for instance, has been linked in some studies to hyperactivity disorders in children, and, according to the Cleveland Clinic, has various potential side effects, including depression, irritability, and migraines.

A 2021 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Nutrition noted that blue dye 1 has been found to cause chromosomal aberrations and "was found to inhibit neurite growth and act synergistically with L-glutamic acid in vitro, suggesting the potential for neurotoxicity."

In short order, the U.S Food and Drug Administration kicked off the process of revoking authorization for Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B in the short term and to eliminate another six synthetic dyes — FD&C Green No. 3, FD&C Red No. 40, FD&C Yellow No. 5, FD&C Yellow No. 6, FD&C Blue No. 1, and FD&C Blue No. 2 — by the end of next year.

RELATED: RFK Jr. torches vaccine panel to make consequences count again

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The FDA also requested that companies move up their timelines for the removal of FD&C Red No. 3.

"These poisonous compounds offer no nutritional benefit and pose real, measurable dangers to our children’s health and development," Kennedy said in a statement. "That era is coming to an end. We're restoring gold-standard science, applying common sense, and beginning to earn back the public's trust."

Numerous food manufacturers and fast-food chains have fallen in line or taken big steps in the right direction, including General Mills; Kraft Heinz; Starbucks; PepsiCo; Danone North America; TreeHouse Foods; Tyson Foods; and In-N-Out Burger.

In addition to tackling synthetic dyes, the HHS has paved the way for the use of food coloring from natural sources. In May, the FDA granted new color additive petitions for galdieria extract blue, butterfly pea flower extract, and calcium phosphate.

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The dark secret: Why Big Pharma WANTS you sick



The stark economic reality of the health care system in America is that every single institution that touches our health — from hospitals to pharma to insurance companies — will make more money if you are sick and less money if you are healthy.

“So, chronic diseases … the system profits off treating those as separate things that you do things to for long periods of time. Chronic disease management. So not actually healing it, but managing it,” Dr. Casey Means tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.”

“And so, because that's built into the deep finances of the largest and fast-growing industry in the United States, which is the health care industry, there is no incentive for people to back up and look at all of the things going on and say, ‘Wait a minute, maybe we’re looking at this wrong,’” she continues.

This is why Means regards the health care system with very little trust.


“As we’ve started medicalizing these chronic diseases which are primarily based in diet and lifestyle, and many of which didn’t even exist 75 years ago, at the same time we’ve been asked to ‘trust the science,’” Means says.

“These diseases have exploded in their rates and are going up every single year as we spend more money on them,” she adds.

What our health care system has done well, Means says, are “acute issues.”

“Things that are immediately going to kill you, like an infection or a trauma surgery or something like that that you need to have,” she says.

“But what the health care system has done — has asked us to take our trust on its success in acute issues and apply it to chronic issues, issues that last for a long time that need to be treated for life,” she explains.

“And so essentially, the system is asking us to not ask questions and to trust blindly,” she says, adding, “because of the trust they engendered from acute issues.”

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Doctors sue CDC over childhood vax schedule, demanding proof it does more good than harm



Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. indicated during a congressional hearing in June that kids "get 69 to 92 jabs" by the time they are 18 years old. Now, two doctors are working to change the burden of proof from on the patients who are subjected to them, to on the government agencies that effectively demand them.

Tony Lyons, president of MAHA Action, told Blaze News that the "vaccines have never been properly tested, either individually, in groupings, or as the full schedule, so no one can honestly say that they are not linked to the chronic disease epidemic."

Two doctors backed by the advocacy group Stand for Health Freedom have filed a lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention challenging the agency's recommended childhood immunization schedule.

Dr. Paul Thomas and Dr. Kenneth Stoller, both of whom had their medical licenses suspended and revoked in recent years for standing up against the vaccination regime, want to flip the burden of proof on the matter.

Their complaint, filed on Aug. 15 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, notes that "America administers more vaccines than any nation on earth while producing the sickest children in the developed world. Yet CDC demands proof of harm while refusing to conduct the studies that could provide it."

"They who recommend dozens of medical interventions for millions of children must first prove that these interventions taken together result in more good than harm," the complaint says.

RELATED: 'It's immoral': RFK Jr. axes Biden vax reporting requirement, targets doctors' 'hidden incentives'

Photo illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty

In their lawsuit, the doctors accuse the CDC of violating:

  • the Administrative Procedure Act by issuing de facto "binding national mandates" without required rulemaking and "by failing to consider the important aspect of cumulative vaccine safety";
  • the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause "by compelling medical interventions without scientific basis while punishing those who seek evidence of safety";
  • the Fifth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause by allegedly denying the medical vulnerability of certain children, treating all children as medically identical, and treating "each vaccine as if administered in a biological vacuum, ignoring cross-reactivity and cumulative burden on vulnerable immune systems"; and
  • the First Amendment by suppressing, through its contraindication framework, "medical and scientific dissent through coordinated professional retaliation."

In addition to requesting that the court affirm these accusations, the doctors seek an injunction against the CDC from maintaining any Category A recommendations for childhood vaccines.

The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices is the federal panel that makes the vaccine recommendations that become official policy at the CDC and apply to the entire American population once adopted by the agency's director.

The panel, which was purged in June by Kennedy of all of its Biden administration appointees, organizes its vaccine recommendations into two categories: A and B.

Category A recommendations are made for all persons in an age- or a risk-factor-based group. Category B recommendations are made for individual clinical decision-making.

RELATED: Pandemic fallout: Study finds parents are increasingly taking a stand on vaccines

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Thomas and Stoller figure that until the CDC can demonstrate through "scientifically rigorous" studies that the cumulative schedule is safe, all the vaccines should be shifted into the second category.

While the ACIP's recommendations are technically advisory, they are effectively enforced as mandatory standards in most jurisdictions in the country.

'High vaccination rates don't require coercion.'

"Medical boards revoke licenses for deviation. Schools exclude children. Insurance coverage depends on compliance," the lawsuit says.

Lyons told Blaze News, "It's a mandate when children in every state can't go to school without following the schedule. It's disingenuous to claim that it's just a recommended schedule. Everyone knows that isn't true."

Reclassifying the vaccine recommendations as Category B could serve to neutralize such mandates.

Richard Jaffe, attorney for the plaintiffs, indicated that this lawsuit differs from other challenges to the CDC's vaccination schedule because rather than focus on state mandates or exemptions, it is taking the agency to task on administrative and constitutional grounds.

"We're not asking to ban vaccines," Jaffe wrote. "High vaccination rates don't require coercion. Parents make responsible choices when given honest information and medical freedom."

When pressed for comment, a representative for the CDC told Blaze News that the agency "does not discuss pending litigations."

Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy researcher at the University of California Law, San Francisco, told Politico, "This lawsuit does not raise valid legal claims, is by plaintiffs who do not have direct injury from the schedule as a whole — the doctors lost their license for other things — and its factual basis is untrue."

"It seems more performative than anything else," added Reiss, who previously complained about the HHS scrapping its recommendation that pregnant women and kids get the COVID-19 vaccines.

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