Donald Trump's appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has raised questions about the legalization of many alternative remedies scarcely being tested by researchers.
The Guardian reported Monday that the vaccine skeptic's distrust of pharmaceuticals prompted him to oppose the "suppression of psychedelics," meaning things like "magic mushrooms," which contain psilocybin or cannabis.
It's a concern among public health experts beyond his lack of experience in public health. Like other Trump cabinet picks, Kennedy "has expressed a conspiratorial mistrust for the agency he has been tapped to run," the report said.
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Reshma Ramachandran, a physician, and director of the Yale Collaboration for Regulatory Rigor, Integrity, and Transparency, said Kennedy mixes conspiracy theories with the truth.
Like Kennedy, she is worried about corporate influence at federal agencies and how that might unduly affect regulatory decision-making.
The report noted that while some evidence supports Kennedy's concerns about processed foods and diet's impact on health, the same cannot be said for his claims that a better diet would solve an array of physical and mental health issues.
He's also infamous for his conspiracy theories around the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.
“Having a healthy skeptic [as HHS secretary] is totally fine,” said Ramachandran, “but that skepticism needs to come with at least some humility.”
Kennedy has also attacked selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, like Prozac, Zoloft,Viibryd and Lexapro or ADHD drugs like Adderall. While running for president, he said that he would legalize cannabis nationally and then use tax revenues to create “wellness farms” where “we’re going to repair people” with addiction, including those who use “psychiatric drugs” such as “Adderall."
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The Guardian reported that those who "rely on Adderall and SSRIs are worried Kennedy might criminalize their medications."
Typically, the Department of Health and Human Services defers to the Food and Drug Administration, which researches and tests drugs before it gives them the seal of approval. Kennedy wanted to change that, saying, “There may be instances where they have the authority to override agencies.”
Kennedy called the United States “the sickest country in the world," during one of his podcast episodes. He also attacks the healthcare system as a whole for “the pills and the potions and the powders rather than on actually getting people healthy, building their immune systems."
The Guardian pointed out that even the conservative-owned New York Post wrote in an editorial board opinion that Kennedy’s leadership at HHS would be catastrophic for public health. They cite an interview last year when Kennedy “told us with full conviction that all America’s chronic health problems began in one year in the 1980s.”
Neşe Devenot, a bioethics researcher affiliated with Johns Hopkins University said that while she understands people's hope that psychedelics could be a “miracle solution” for mental health problems — many of which seemingly have no cure — and that all that must be done is for the government to get out of the way, the reality is "a lot more complicated."
“It’s a very reductive way of looking at mental health,” Devenot told The Guardian.
