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?

Scientists issue dire warning: Microplastic accumulation in human brains escalating

To look at trends over a longer time period, the researchers also analyzed brain tissue samples from the eastern United States, dating back as far as 1997. These older samples showed lower levels of microplastics, supporting the idea that plastic accumulation in the brain is increasing over time.

Another striking finding was that brain tissue from individuals who had been diagnosed with dementia contained significantly higher levels of microplastics – up to 10 times more – than brain tissue from people without dementia. While the study does not establish a direct causal link between plastic accumulation and neurodegenerative diseases, it raises important questions. The researchers speculate that microplastics could contribute to neurological conditions by obstructing blood flow, interfering with neural connections, or triggering inflammation in the brain.

She’s a Foot Soldier in America’s Losing War With Chronic Disease

About half of the county’s 22,000 residents were obese, a quarter of them smoked cigarettes and almost 20 percent were diabetic — numbers that had become increasingly typical in rural America, where working-age adults were dying at higher rates than they were 20 years earlier, according to data from the C.D.C. People in the country’s poorest places were now almost twice as likely to develop chronic disease as those who lived in wealthy, urban centers on the coasts, helping to create a political climate of resentment. Mingo County had been solidly Democratic for much of its history, but more than 85 percent of voters supported Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

When we have billion-dollar corporations focused solely on generating profit, each advertising directly to the people, what did we expect would happen?

When Google and Facebook — advertising companies, not social media companies — have direct control over the algorithms that show us what they want us to see, all in the service of giving Mars and Pepsi and ConAgra and Monsanto and every other enormously wealthy corporation the ability to advertise to us right on the computer in we keep in our pocket, what did we expect would happen?

In a society organized around the accumulation of money and wealth above all else — above morality, above compassion, above human life, above happiness — what did we expect would happen?

This crisis we Americans find ourselves in — can we agree we're in a crisis? — has been a long time coming. When Reagan deregulated in the 1980s and Republicans cheered "trickle-down economics," when Bush 1 negotiated NAFTA and Clinton signed it, what did we expect would happen? 

We Americans have prioritized access to cheap goods over the health of our economy and our citizenry.  Saving money is the only thing we care about, and in the process we sold out our rural towns and factory cities, we sold out our fellow citizens who might not have the ability to control their impulses. Perversely, this doesn't affect those of us who can, and certainly not most of us fortunate enough to have an education. (And thus tend to skew to the Left.) 

This country is grounded in a delusion that we are each in control of our lives. We call it individualism, and it's right there in the foundational document of America, the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. We tell ourselves this story that we're all equal to one another and thus we're all equally able to control our impulses, nevermind the science that says otherwise. 

We unleash these million- and billion-dollar profit-seeking corporations on the most vulnerable populations, all under the guise of 'liberty.' Let them buy whichever sugary drink they want! Let them pick which fast food restaurant they can afford for dinner! And if they don't buy healthy food, let's blame them for it — after all, we choose to (and can afford to) eat our vegetables, so they must just be stupid (or lazy).

We Americans are so thoroughly convinced of the delusion of individual liberty (ignoring neurology, genetics, and environmental circumstance) that we use it to blame the poor, uneducated, and unhealthy for their poverty, ignorance, and sickness.

It is unspeakably cruel.

The $100 Trillion Disruption: The Unforeseen Economic Earthquake

GLP-1 drugs are our air conditioner moment.

We're not just talking about weight loss. We're discussing the first medication that effectively regulates human impulse control. Think about that.

Our economy is built on impulses. These include midnight snacks, impulse purchases, extra drinks, and the "treat yourself" mentality driving trillion-dollar industries.

What happens when a weekly injection regulates those impulses?

What Are Microplastics and What Are They Doing to Our Bodies

Earlier this month, six years after that pivot, Campen published an alarming paper that made headlines around the world. The adult human brain, his research found, today contains about a disposable spoon’s worth of plastic — roughly 50 percent more than eight years ago. The rate of accumulation mirrors the rate that plastic is increasing in prevalence in our environment. “It’s frighteningly correlated,” he said when he announced his results. To illustrate his findings, Campen, who is sandy-haired with a youthful face and a wry sense of humor, held a disposable spoon next to his head. “My prop,” he called it. “I certainly don’t feel comfortable with this much plastic in my brain,” he said, “and I don’t need to wait around 30 more years to find out what happens if the concentrations quadruple.”

Goddamn.

Other studies have looked at the way the chemical compounds in these particles might harm the body. Some of the most common additives in plastics, like bisphenols and phthalates — which make products more flexible, durable, or flame resistant — have been extensively studied for decades. These additives are known to be endocrine disrupters, meaning they can wreak havoc on our hormones; this can be particularly dangerous for the developing bodies of infants and children. Once lodged in our tissues, microplastics may leach these chemical compounds continually into our bodies. They are “what we call sustained-release vehicles,” Don Ingber, a professor at Harvard’s medical and engineering schools, told the Harvard Gazette. “They’re just sitting there, and every day they’re releasing a little bit for the rest of the lifetime of those cells in your gut or other organs.”

I think microplastics will turn out to be the cause of many of our modern ailments: autism, dementia, many of the neurological disorders we're discovering in older generations, low fertility rates, etc. They're everywhere, and there's nothing we as individuals can do to avoid them. It's terrifying, yet feels so obvious in hindsight, no? Of course plastics do this to us… 

What was that famous DuPont slogan? "Better Living…through Chemistry." 

Plastic chemical phthalate causes DNA breakage and chromosome defects in sex cells, new study finds

Benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP) is a chemical that makes plastic more flexible and durable, and is found in many consumer products, including food packaging, personal care products and children’s toys. Previous studies have shown that BBP interferes with the body’s hormones and affects human reproduction and development, but the details of how it impacts reproduction have been unclear.

In the new study, researchers tested a range of doses of BBP on the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and looked for abnormal changes in egg cells. They saw that at levels similar to those detected in humans, BBP interferes with how newly copied chromosomes are distributed into the sex cells. Specifically, BBP causes oxidative stress and breaks in the DNA strands, which lead to cell death and egg cells with the wrong number of chromosomes.

Based on these findings, the researchers propose that BBP exposure alters gene expression in ways that cause significant damage to the DNA, ultimately leading to lower quality egg cells with abnormal chromosomes. The study also showed that C. elegans metabolizes BBP in the same way as mammals, and is impacted at similar BBP levels that occur in humans, suggesting that C. elegans is an effective model for studying the impacts on people. Overall, the study underscores the toxic nature of this very common plastic ingredient and the damage it causes to animal reproduction.

If I had to theorize, I would suspect that plastic is behind many of the things we find so perplexing about our modern times: plummeting fertility rates, increased rates of autism, shockingly high cancer rates in ever-younger populations, unexplainable neurological disorders in the Boomer generation.

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™

Protein biomarkers predict dementia 15 years before diagnosis

Of 1,463 proteins analysed, aided by with a type of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, 11 proteins were identified and combined as a protein panel, which the researchers have shown to be highly accurate at predicting future dementia. Further incorporation of conventional risk factors of age, sex, education level and genetics, showed for the first time the high accuracy of the predictive model, measured at over 90%*, indicating its potential future use in community-based dementia screening programs.

Annual Reminder: 23andMe Is a Dangerous Christmas Gift That Could Have Unforeseen Impacts on Your Entire Family, Your Children, Etc.

Getting your DNA or your loved ones’ DNA sequenced means you are potentially putting people who are related to those people at risk in ways that are easily predictable, but also in ways we cannot yet predict because these databases are still relatively new. I am writing this article right now because of the hack, but my stance on this issue has been the same for years, for reasons outside of the hack.

Saying Hello Linked to Higher Wellbeing, but With Limits

Adults in the U.S. who regularly say hello to multiple people in their neighborhood have higher wellbeing than those who greet fewer or no neighbors. Americans’ wellbeing score increases steadily by the number of neighbors greeted, from 51.5 among those saying hello to zero neighbors to 64.1 for those greeting six neighbors.

I can attest to this. I was in a dark place the winter of 2022 when I decided to make a conscious effort to say hello to my neighbors. Changed my mindset completely.

Espresso Coffee Mitigates the Aggregation and Condensation of Alzheimer′s Associated Tau Protein

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.

Widely used chemical strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease