Tom Bartlett

In the United States, polio is a memory, and a fading one at that. The last major outbreak here happened in 1952; the virus was declared eliminated in 1979. With all of that behind us, you can see how someone—say, Kirk Milhoan, the chair of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee—might wonder whether giving the polio vaccine to American kids still makes sense. “We need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now,” Milhoan said on the podcast Why Should I Trust You? last week.

Nearly a year ago, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged during his confirmation hearing to support the CDC’s childhood-vaccine schedule. Yesterday, he broke that promise. The Department of Health and Human Services has announced that the CDC will drop several vaccines from its recommendation list. With that move, Kennedy has shown that he can change the vaccine schedule by fiat.
Kennedy appears to have a clear road if he wants to do more.

If Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, did bother to ask CDC scientists about using their website to turn anti-vaccine talking points into agency guidance, it didn’t matter much. “My understanding is that none of the leadership were asked about it, or if they were asked about changing the website, they did not agree with the change,” Daniel Jernigan, the former director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told me.

Russell Brand had found his people, that much was clear. Last Saturday, in front of 800 fans in a hotel ballroom in Austin, the comedian doled out praise for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (whom he called “Great Brother Kennedy”), disdain for the medical establishment (“flat-out evil”), and gratitude for Jesus Christ (“Thank God we have a forgiving God that died for us”). He also told a bunch of dick jokes and, later, called me a Nazi.

It was a strange weekend for employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to say the least. On Friday, hundreds of workers at the agency, many of whom have been furloughed since the federal government shut down on October 1, found out they were being fired as part of widespread layoffs across federal agencies. Less than a day later, a curt follow-up email landed in many of their inboxes informing them that they weren’t being let go after all. No explanation, no apology.

At a press conference today, President Donald Trump dispensed one clear piece of medical advice to American parents in a rambling, repetitive monologue: Don’t. Take. Tylenol. He told pregnant women that they could help keep their children safe from autism by not taking the drug whenever they could avoid it (“fight like hell,” he instructed). He advised parents not to give Tylenol to their young children.

Three months into its tenure, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked vaccine advisory committee has taken down one of its easiest targets.
Today, its members voted to limit the national guidance for a childhood vaccine that has helped protect infants against some of the most dangerous and fast-spreading viral diseases in the United States.

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For nearly a decade, the immunologist and biochemist William Parker has tried, with little success, to persuade other scientists to take seriously his theory that acetaminophen—better known by the brand name Tylenol—is the primary cause of autism.

This spring, months before the recent dramatic departures from the CDC, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. battled with the agency’s scientists during the very first public-health crisis of his tenure as health secretary. As measles tore through a remote community in West Texas, Kennedy waffled on the vaccine and promoted alternative remedies, such as vitamin A. So the CDC pushed back.

In February 2010, Michelle Obama launched “Let’s Move!” with a wide-ranging plan to curb childhood obesity. The campaign took aim at processed foods, flagged concerns about sugary drinks, and called for children to spend more time playing outside and less time staring at screens. The campaign was roundly skewered by conservatives.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is coming undone. The White House announced last night that it had ousted the agency’s newly sworn-in director, Susan Monarez, whose lawyers insist that she still has her job because only President Donald Trump himself can fire her. (Yes, it’s a mess.) Four top officials resigned yesterday.

Last month, a small company in San Francisco announced that it had a plan to manufacture gold—not merely a flake or a nugget, but tons of the stuff. According to a paper written by one of Marathon Fusion’s co-founders (and not yet peer reviewed), the alchemist’s dream could be achieved not by mixing powders in a crucible but by tweaking atoms that were superheated during the process of nuclear fusion. The gold wouldn’t be the end game, more like a side hustle.

When Reddit rebranded itself as “the heart of the internet” a couple of years ago, the slogan was meant to evoke the site’s organic character. In an age of social media dominated by algorithms, Reddit took pride in being curated by a community that expressed its feelings in the form of upvotes and downvotes—in other words, being shaped by actual people.

Robert Malone—a medical doctor and an infectious-disease researcher—recently suggested that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines might actually make COVID-19 infections worse. He chuckled as he imagined Anthony Fauci announcing that the vaccination campaign was all a big mistake (“Oh darn, I was wrong!”) and would need to be abandoned.