Dispatches from the Empire

Washington Bends to RFK Jr.’s ‘MAHA’ Agenda on Measles, Baby Formula and French Fries

Yet so long as he is not talking about vaccines, Mr. Kennedy’s ideas are winning cautious support in some surprising places. Dr. Willett said he agrees with Mr. Kennedy that the National Institutes of Health should rebalance its research portfolio to spend more studying ways to prevent disease. Dr. Nestle praised him for taking on the food industry.

“When President Trump announced on Twitter that he was appointing R.F.K. Jr., he used the words industrial food complex,” she said. “I couldn’t believe that. It sounded just like me, and R.F.K. sounds just like me.”

Let me put on my editor hat and quarrel with the language around the vaccine issue: the term "vaccine skeptic" is patently condescending. People, by and large, should be skeptical of what they put in their bodies. If anything, Americans are not skeptical enough of what they put in their bodies — corn syrup, food dyes, seed oils, sugar, et cetera.

But in vast swaths of the American Left and major media outlets, the term "vaccine skeptic" is shorthand for someone too stupid to understand what's good for them. No matter how you feel about vaccines, you have to recognize that calling someone stupid is the least effective way to get them to change their behavior, yeah?

Just what is vaccine skepticism? It's skepticism of something you're putting in your body, of something you're being told by the government to put in your body.

To all my friends on the political Left that can't possibly imagine why anyone wouldn't take a vaccine, how do you feel now that the government in many states can tell a woman what to do with her body? Do you trust the government to make the best decision for your body? 

Do you trust the government?

That is the question at the heart of the vaccine issue. And on both sides of the political spectrum, I think there's good reason not to.

I've long been a liberal (but not a Democrat!) that trusts government. I largely trust in the vast swaths of bureaucrats that wake up every day and do arcane, mundane jobs that make my life better. They study how to increase the yield of a corn crop, research the efficacy of mRNA vaccines, study weather patterns across the Great Plains. These little things add up in a hundred thousand little ways that make my life better. I can largely trust that the food I'm buying at the store is safe to consume and matches the nutritional label on the packaging, saving me from the need to research and test my own food before I consume it — something I as an individual could never do. The government helps us in so many ways — it subsidizes the production of gasoline so that I might drive long distances across the country, it regulates radio frequencies so that I can receive stream music on my iPhone, it maintains roads I travel on every single day.

But has the government kept us healthy? Obesity rates are through the roof and chronic disease has never been more prevalent. Rates of autism and cancer and a slew of neurological diseases have never been higher. So I'll ask again: has the government kept us healthy?

Has the government protected us from the corporations that stand to profit off of our sickness? Health insurance companies, big food science companies, chemical and plastics companies — does the government prevent them from denying you coverage or from injecting dangerous chemicals into your food? How much plastic is accumulating in your brain?

Are we better off now than we were fifty years ago? By some metrics, yes, but by others, no. We're fatter and sicker than we've ever been, we die from preventable diseases, we're beholden to corporations that pump unspeakable amounts of money into our political system in order to influence our elections. We the people have such little control over our system of governance — as I've said before, do you think a vote for Kamala would have changed the role of corporate money in our politics any more than a vote for Trump? Democrats, Republicans…it makes no difference. They're each beholden to corporate money.

So why should anyone trust the government?

A few days ago, I was driving across Wyoming and listening to the latest episode of Club Random, an interivew with Andrew Schulz.

Though I've never quite been a fan of Schulz's particular brand of bro comedy, I respect his insistence of having conversations with people from across the political spectrum. In this interview, Bill asks Andrew, in the context of his opinion on Israel, would he be willing to live anywhere in the Islamic world and, well, just watch for two minutes.

Andrew: "If you don't agree with me, you're dumb" is why Trump is elected. And this is what Democrats do...

Bill: Yeah, but sometimes dumb is dumb.

Andrew: Yeah, but people are dumb! So deal with that shit. You know what I mean? Stop acting like everybody's smart. Like, this is the problem, you have all these people that go to Ivy League schools and they're like "we know better than everyone else and we'll just tell you what to do and you guys are all stupid and I know you feel like you want this, but you don't really want this and if you disagree with me you're an idiot." And then all of a sudden, [people] go "fuck you guys, I'm voting for [Trump]. And it's very simple.

Bill: Yeah, that's true, too.

Andrew: So we can't speak down to people if we know they're going to react emotionally. 

This might not strike you as particularly insightful, but it hit me like a bolt of lightning.

I'm guilty of that very thing. When someone presents me with information that is objectively wrong, my first instinct is to correct them. I'm more interested in the facts than I am in that person's experience and feelings.

And is this not the root of so many of our problems? Instead of trying to correct people when they are wrong, why don't we try to understand why they feel the way that they do? 

I'm reminded of a foundational principle of Buddhism, Taoism, and other eastern philosophies: the more we try to control, the less control we have. Or to quote Princess Leia on the bridge of the Death Star, "the more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

I hate to frame the issue of vaccines (or any other issue) as one of "educated vs. uneducated" since the latter has such an undue, unfair, and elitist stigma attached to it, but that's exactly what this is: a significant portion of the citizenry is simply not educated on how vaccines work, and the portion that is educated is far too pompous, condescending, and certain about what they know — so certain that they become unwilling or unable to admit when they're wrong.

Let me be pointedly clear: education does not make someone better than anyone else, and neither does intelligence. (Intelligence and education are two very different things, despite what educated people will insist.) Education does not equate worth.

One more time for good measure: education does not equate worth.

People simply cannot be blamed for what they don't know, just as they can't be blamed if they weren't born with a capacity for intelligence. (That statement feels obvious, though I will no doubt be pilloried by some for writing it.)

As I've said before, not only is it cruel to blame people for things beyond their control, it's also not an effective political tactic. (My god, Democrats, why is that so hard to understand?) If anything, it is a failure of the education system in this country that basic biology (and virology) are not commonly-understood topics. But here we are, and it does no good to blame the people that don't know what they don't know. Ya know?

More Evidence Links Ultraprocessed Foods to Dementia

People who regularly eat processed red meat, like hot dogs, bacon, sausage, salami and bologna, have a greater risk of developing dementia later in life. That was the conclusion of preliminary research presented this week at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

The vast majority of processed meats are classified as “ultraprocessed foods” — products made with ingredients that you wouldn’t find in a home kitchen, like soy protein isolate, high fructose corn syrup, modified starches, flavorings or color additives. Many of these foods also have high levels of sugar, fat or sodium, which have long been known to adversely affect health.

A dispatch from the empire if there ever was one.

The New Science on What Ultra-Processed Food Does to Your Brain

Scientists were surprised to find that people who had been eating the high-fat, high-sugar snack also had changes in how their brains learned.

While participants were having their brains scanned, the researchers had them do a basic learning task, requiring them to push a button associated with a picture when they heard certain tones. When people who had been eating the high-fat, high-sugar snack didn’t get the picture they expected, their brains showed greater activity in parts involved in evaluating situations. 

This high-sugar, high-fat diet “is changing something really basic about how we learn,” DiFeliceantonio said. 

In a different study, four days of having a breakfast high in saturated fat and added sugar was linked to reductions in performance on some learning and memory tests, according to researchers in Australia. People who had a healthier breakfast didn’t have the performance changes.

Chlorpyrifos: pesticide tied to brain damage in children

Population based case-control study found that, “Prenatal or infant exposure to a priori selected pesticides—including glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and permethrin—were associated with increased odds of developing autism spectrum disorder.”

Better Living Through Chemistry™

Stop eating sugar

Listen to what your body says after you eat something. That cheesecake probably feels like a good idea before rather than after eating it. Whereas, a good steak in your stomach (avocado or nuts for vegetarians?) gives you a healthy feeling of satisfaction that lasts.

The secret push to bury a weedkiller’s link to Parkinson’s disease

In another example of a company tactic, an outside lawyer hired by Syngenta to work with its scientists was asked to review and suggest edits on internal meeting minutes regarding paraquat safety. The lawyer pushed scientists to alter “problematic language” and scientific conclusions deemed “unhelpful” to the corporate defense of paraquat.

Syngenta’s decision to involve lawyers in the editing of its scientific reports and other communications in ways that downplayed concerning findings potentially related to public health is unacceptable, said Wendy Wagner, a law professor at the University of Texas who has served on several National Academies of Science committees. “Clearly the lawyers are involved in order to limit liability,” she said.

America. Where everything is for sale. Even you.