Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. (RFK), the nephew of assassinated American President John F. Kennedy and former 2024 Presidential Candidate, is nominated by President Elect Trump to serve as the Director of Health and Human Services. Despite spending his entire life as a Democrat, opposition to this nomination is claiming that RFK is a “Vaccine Denier” and is “Anti-Science”. Much of this opposition stems from RFK’s recent appearance on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast. His over three hour appearance included massive allegations of government cover-ups, misinformation campaigns, and collusion amongst stakeholders in the vaccine industry.
In response to this appearance, Dr. Hotez, a Medical Doctor and proclaimed fighter against “anti-science” created a post on X (below) that kicked off a frenzy of activity where the who’s who of the Twitterverse responded.
This post was then responded to by Joe Rogan, offering Peter the opportunity to debate RFK on his podcast and included $100k to the charity of his choosing.
Rogan’s response caused others to pile on to the dollar amount including people like Andrew Tate, Patrick Bet-David, and others to the tune of over $2 Million. Elon Musk even chimed in once it became apparent that Dr. Hotez had no intention in engaging in a debate on RFK’s allegations.
These are the eight wildest allegations that Peter Hotez, a declared fighter of antiscience rhetoric and lifelong scientist, would turned down debating for millions of dollars for charity.
Allegation 1: Vaccine Manufacturers Don’t Face Liability, Which Incentivizes Them to Cut Corners and Place Profits Over Safety
RFK’s allegations begin by pointing out the passing of the Vaccine Act of 1986 which made vaccine makers immune from liability because they are “unavoidably unsafe”.
According to Google Generative AI: Unavoidably unsafe products are products that injure a certain percentage of those who use them competently. Businesses that produce these products can face liability lawsuits from injured parties.
In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that “vaccines are unavoidably unsafe”. This was shown by the increasing numbers of vaccine-related deaths and chronic illnesses. In 1986, vaccine manufacturers were deemed “liability free”.
Allegation 2: The 84% Drop in Deaths from Infectious Diseases in the 20th Century Are Not Attributable to Vaccines, but Technological Innovation.
RFK claims that the recognition vaccines receive for saving lives over the course of the 20th century is overestimated and that more lives were saved by things like refrigerators, which stored food safely for longer periods of time, increasing the capacity for people to access nutrition in their foods, or trucks, which enabled farmers to swiftly transport their harvests to provide the food people needed to maintain a healthy immune system.
Kennedy cites the Guyer Study from the Journal of Pediatrics, published in 2000. In the study, RFK claims the results demonstrate and support his allegation. He claims the study proves, that a preponderance of deaths in the 20th century attributed to infectious diseases, were more likely caused by malnutrition and ineffective immune systems.
“…it was the infectious disease that was kind of knocking them off at the end. The real cause of death was malnutrition and a collapsed immune system.” -RFK
In further defense of this allegation, Kennedy cites another study from 1977 by John and Sonja McKinlay titled “The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century” which can be downloaded here. He claims the study resolves that fewer than 1% of the decline in infectious mortality deaths could be attributable to vaccines.
Allegation 3: The Federal Government Does Not Have Proof That Recommended Vaccines Prevent More Harm Than They Cause.
Kennedy recollects a 2016 meeting with Dr. Anthony Fauci from the National Institutes of Health, where he asked for evidence of pre-licensing safety tests conducted which provide evidence to support the claim that vaccines are a net good. Fauci did not have the evidence on hand, then told Kennedy he would provide it upon return to his office, before eventually ghosting him. RFK says he then sued Health and Human Services for this evidence and was eventually told, after a year of stonewalling, “we don’t have any.”
“Nobody knows what the risk profiles for these products are.”
Allegation 4: Thimerosal, a Mercury Based Preservative in Vaccines, is Responsible for a Massive Epidemic in Autism and Neurological Disorders
Robert Kennedy claims that in June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered in secret, at the Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, GA, to cover up a study. RFK asserts that the study, conducted by Tom Verstraeten and including the cluster analysis of 100,000 children, showed thimerosal responsible for a massive increase in Autism and other neurological disorders like ADHD, Narcolepsy, Tourette Syndrome and others. He wrote about this meeting in a Rolling Stone article, a version of the text can be found here.
RFK, aged 69, claims that 1 in 10,000 people in his generation have Autism but the current generation has 1 in 34. He states that it cannot be due to better recognition of the disorder or doctors would also find Autism in older Americans.
“If it was really recognition, you would see it every age group, not just in children.”
Kennedy says he poured over thousands of studies and research papers on the topic and provided further details for the studies which demonstrate the links between vaccines and autism in his book, Vaccine Villains: What the American Public Should Know about the Industry.
He goes on further to admit that “It’s not just the vaccines, our kids are swimming around in a toxic soup.” and says that the cause for the increase must be due to toxic exposure, because DNA does not cause epidemics.
Allegation 5: WiFi Radiation, from Things Like Cell Phones, Causes Cancer and Opens Up The Blood Brain Barrier
In what is probably the wildest claim made during the podcast, RFK says there are “tens of thousands of studies” which conclude that WIFI from cell phones causes cancer and is dangerous. He further declares that he is representing hundreds of cancer patients whose glioblastoma tumors always seem to appear behind the ear they use when talking on their cell phones.
He was unsure about exactly how WiFi opens the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) but stated that he won a lawsuit against the FCC and FDA on this very issue. He continued that Russia has developed advanced weaponry utilizing WiFi radiation and that they allowable radiation from WiFi in Russia, is much smaller than in the United States.
During the interview, Jamie, the audio and video technician that supports the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, pulled up this article from the Environmental Health Trust Organization. The article references a 2009 study conducted by Henrietta Nittby in the Journal of Pathophysiology. An excerpt from this study states:
“The present findings are in agreement with our earlier studies where we have seen increased BBB permeability immediately and 14 days after exposure.”
Furthermore, RFK claims that WiFi Radiation degrades your mitochondria, the organelles in cells responsible for converting food to energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate or ATP.
Allegation 6: The Spanish Flu Was Not a Virus, but Bacterial Pneumonia and Dr. Fauci Admitted It in 2008.
The allegation here is basically saying that vaccines were not the savior from the Spanish Flu that everyone thinks they were. RFK mentions an article, published by Dr. Anthony Fauci and others. The results indicated that “The postmortem samples we examined from people who died of influenza during 1918 –1919 uniformly exhibited severe changes indicative of bacterial pneumonia.” The full article co-authored by Dr. Fauci is here.
Allegation 7: The Efficacy of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine Against COVID-19 was Purposely and Wrongfully Discredited
RFK mentions a World Health Organization commissioned and Bill Gates funded study that was halted. The presidential candidate claims that subjects of the study on chloroquine, closely linked to hydroxychloroquine, were provided known lethal doses of the drug.
According to a New York Times Article on the matter:
Roughly half of the study participants were given a low dose of chloroquine (450 milligrams of chloroquine for five days, with two doses on the first day), while the rest were prescribed a high dose (600 milligrams twice daily for 10 days). Within three days, researchers started noticing heart arrhythmias in patients taking the higher dose. By the sixth day of treatment, 11 patients had died, leading to an immediate end to the high-dose segment of the trial.
RFK claims that studies like this are designed to fail in order to pursue new vaccines and circumvent federal regulations. Regulations prevent federal funding of new drugs if generic drugs are already available. He claims that chloroquine didn’t kill anyone in the study that was given the recommended prescribed dosage. Further he says Bill Gates was fully aware of the recommended dosage because his foundation gives it to millions of people every year in Africa, to combat malaria.
Allegation 8: Remdesivir Was Pulled From a Trial Because It Killed Ebola Patients, Then It Was Offered as a Remedy for COVID.
In 2019, Dr. Fauci was testing Remdesevir to combat Ebola in Africa. Kennedy states that the Institutional Review Board had to step in and stop the study because while Ebola kills 53% of infected patients, a larger number of Remdesivir patients were dying. RFK’s general question here is: Why would you pull it from a failed Ebola trial to give to COVID patients when COVID only has an infection mortality rate of 1%?
Nick’s Thoughts
After two years of COVID hysteria, I only walk away with one thing that I know for certain. The authors of the the United States Constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they placed freedom of speech in the First Amendment. I’ll give a pass to government, media, and scientific experts early on, we had no clue what was happening so any response at that time seemed ok. Then time moved on. We learned more. The more we learned the more it became clear the way we were responding to the virus was ineffective, over burdensome, and resulted in uncalled for net losses for children, businesses, and most of all, Science.
“The Science” looks absolutely absurd right now. “The Science” was used as the coronavirus response cudgel to urge people to act in the way some government and media personalities thought was appropriate, reality be damned. TV scientists like Dr. Hotez made regular appearances urging the use of masks, vaccines, boosters, and more boosters!
People don’t trust “The Science” because they just witnessed how a distorted media apparatus and government will pick, choose, and twist it to suite their personal agenda of control and domination. These are the people who do not believe you should have the freedom to make your own choices regarding your health, your children’s education, your speech, your religion, your school or your job. They know what’s best for you, they have the “The Science” after all.
This entire debacle regarding Peter Hotez is a symptom of a unhealthy ecosystem of free debate. Why doesn’t he want to appear on the world’s most popular podcast to do exactly what he claims he is here to do, defend SCIENCE, not “The Science” but SCIENCE, the real thing, the one where we make hypothesis and test our theories over and over and over until we reveal what is TRUE. That SCIENCE which has led to incredible innovation, safety, and human prosperity over the last century. That SCIENCE deserves a champion who can look at allegations, such as the ones presented above, and provide evidenced backed facts that inform the public and help rebuild SCIENCE in the wake of a “The Science” catastrophe.
Perhaps more importantly than the Autism claim, If vaccines aren’t the cause of this massive increase of neurological disorders over the last few decades, shouldn’t we figure out what is? I think this is probably how most reasonable people think. We’re willing to have our viewpoints changed if evidence and reason win with day.
