“Alternate theory.” Oh dear god, it’s miasma, isn’t it.
Ok… he was aiming for miasma, but missed. We’re doomed.
He wrote an entire section on it in his 2021 book vilifying Fauci, titled The Real Anthony Fauci. The section is titled “Miasma vs. Germ Theory,” in the chapter “The White Man’s Burden.” […] Kennedy contrasts his erroneous take on miasma theory with germ theory, which he derides as a tool of the pharmaceutical industry and pushy scientists to justify selling modern medicines. The abandonment of miasma theory, Kennedy bemoans, realigned health and medical institutions to “the pharmaceutical paradigm that emphasized targeting particular germs with specific drugs rather than fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition.”
Edit: Apparently “The White Man’s Burden” is a racist poem by Rudyard Kipling from 1899 about how the US should colonize the Philippines… the “half devil, half child” people of the Philippines… Curious what that has to do with antiquated ideas about illness, but I’m afraid reading his book might give me brain worms. That’s how contagions work, right…?
The white man’s burden is also used referentially to call out people who do things like travel to poor countries to build houses even though they have far less building experience than locals and the money they paid to get there would have gone much further, had it simply been donated in the form of building materials.
I don’t know how RFK Jr. is using it, but it almost certainly makes no sense.
Edit: oh, voluntourism! I knew there was a term for it
Ah yes, that makes sense. I pointed out this problem when I was a church kid on a mission trip to build shitty houses. I was told “it’s ok, it’s not really about the money spent now on flying you all here and feeding and housing you for two weeks, it’s that people who went on missions as teens are 500% more likely to donate to missions later.” It was the beginning of the end for me in the religious world.
Honestly, good for you for realizing young. I was around 20 when a coworker got annoyed about a company that sends a pair of shoes to people in need for every pair purchased and a lightbulb went off in my head.
Ah, yes. The “Put local makers out of business and then abandon the area” model. :: chef’s kiss ::
The
silverquicksilver lining is that plague doctor masks might be making a comeback, at least?
In science a theory is not enforced, it’s proven. If he believes whatever his worm is thinking to be true, go to a lab and get evidences for it. It’s not the European middle age anymore.
go to a lab and get evidence
They’re here to dismantle our society, they don’t care.
Not yet…
The rest of the world will be fine like when mao had the birds shot or when USSR relied on Lysenko instead of Vavilov. The US…people are going to have to get ok with shitty living real fast. Ironically, this giant reduction in the ability to consume will likely be great for the average carbon footprint.
I’m so glad there’s an ocean between us for when the shooting starts… Not that the collapse of the US won’t have enormous geopolitical ramifications, most of them bad.
inb4 American refugees on mobility scooters are roaming our European streets and complaining about the lack of parking spots
Now we’re at the core of it. These morons never believed in germ theory at all. Nevermind the fact that at this point you can actually look at germs in a microscope.
They don’t believe in things they don’t understand, and they don’t understand things they can’t see with their own caveman senses.
We crawled out of 30,000 years of trying and failing to start a civilization, we almost went extinct, we lost countless billions of lives to war, murder, famine, disease and hardships of a natural world that doesn’t want us to live. Just to get to this point where a handful of coked-up, mentally handicapped rich fucks can decide all those countless sacrifices were for nothing.
It genuinely boggles me that Americans are at all accepting of this. Where the FUCK are my countrymen who see how stupid and dangerous this is? We should all be storming HHS and dragging RFK and his unqualified goon squad out to the lawn. Seriously. I am not kidding. Modern medical knowledge is too valuable to let some unelected clown who has zero knowledge or training to just decide to roll the entire thing back because his other clowns sowed distrust among our stupidest.
If we don’t rise up and do something, I strongly feel you all deserve what the consequences will be.
Where was this kind of talk when your country destroyed countless democracies around the world? I never heard a peep from Americans regarding dismantling democracy in South America or in the Middle East or in Asia or in Eastern Europe.
The USA has always been a terrorist organization to the world that is not in their club, and now that the chickens have come home to roost, you are pickachu face surprised?
Nazies paraded in the streets of New York in the 1920s, ffs, this is not a new thing.
Okay, America bad, got it, very fresh take adds so much to the present conversation and context of current events. Point taken, nobody here will ever say anything again. We’re all bad and so very evil. You win.
Your people can’t even come to terms with slavery. How can you even talk about the current situation without facing the fact that your country was founded on the enslavement of Africans and genocide of indigenous?
There is no fresh take. The fact that you claim there is one is on you.
Hitler modeled laws based on American jurisprudence, and you want to talk about the present?
Until American exceptionalism is no longer, the world isn’t safe from You.
As expected, you believe this is a competition and you need a winner and a loser. Sarcasm doesn’t work as a defense.
You want to fix things? Face the past as a nation and heal with those you oppress in your own country. After that, maybe the world will trust you again. How you get there is on you. As I see it, your country won’t last another 100 days of this, let alone a whole term.
But trump just allowed segregation again and is saving affricaners, so there is that. Tic Toc Tic Toc
Where is the Boston tea party of old? Where is the crossing of the Potomac? Where is John Brown? Where is the underground railroad? Where is the moon landing? Where is Iwo Jima?
All gone and replaced with a nation of mindless consumers wanting a quick fix to shelter them from the reality they have created onto themselves from years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of others.
The Empire is dead, long live the Empire.
You can also just expose someone to a pathogen and predict the outcome based on the pathogen. Like the doctor who proved that Helicobacter pylori causes stomach ulcers and cancer by taking a shot of broth laced with the bacteria and, predictably, got stomach ulcers, which he successfully treated with antibiotics.
I’m not surprised. Carl Sagan saw this coming in 1995
I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
That is scarily accurate
Chuck D made a song:
Reject germ theory, embrace worm theory
Oooohhhh, when they said “the good old days” they meant 1400s. That makes so much more sense.
I am at a loss as to how we could have regressed like this. At a complete and absolute loss.
As a 90s kid I remember the zeitgeist of the time (and even in the early 2000s) that the world was ever in a forward march and we will never stop going forward…
Holy shit they were not just wrong, but how wrong was scary. I will also never forget how on the internet shortly after 9/11 (albeit those view points predate 9/11) made the whole clash of civilization between the rational and intelligent and scientific west and the barbaric Muslim world that is stuck in the 12th century or something.
They made the then scientific lead of the west a result of a core, rock solid trait of the west that was reached purely through discussion and debate and based only on facts. Meaning it cannot be done away with that quickly.
But barely in the past 15 years (maybe even less) view points that would be seen as an absolute joke became mainstream, and not only that, the same loonies are the ones in charge now. Ironically in the early covid-19 time many were acting all shocked that Muslim countries not only had lock downs and that there was no resistance to them… as if Muslims are in such denial of modern anything that they think they cannot be barred from being sick or something.
And then they claimed that the Muslims morons who DID defy lockdowns and became super spreaders were purely unique to the Islamic world. Never mind the fact that religious people of all stripes (Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians… my god the Christians! Christians Koreans were singlehandedly responsible for making covid-19 a problem in Korea!) Fucked up, they still acted like it was purely a Muslim problem.
I wonder how many of them now even realise just how fucking FAST the entire world order they claim is a deep intrinsic trait is falling apart.
I blame the rise of social media - especially the video version - for giving a voice to the idiots and letting their sheer high quantity distort facts with clickbaity and rage inducing headlines
I think you will enjoy this recent episode of the This Machine Kills podcast.
We discuss Quinn’s analysis of “new fusionism” or a mutant strain of neoliberalism that crystallized in the 1990s, which sought to ground and defend neoliberal policies through their own bastardization of biological sciences — cognitive, behavioral, evolutionary, genetic, and so on. They then used scientism to justify and propagate political ideas and economic models based on hardwired human nature and hierarchical differences between races, cultures, and intelligence. The fringes of the 1990s have now become the mainstream of the 2020s.
Fuck me. Except now they are anything BUT scientific. And if I remember correctly (and i have to rely on 20+ years old memories since none of those old forums were archived anywhere) many of the people posting probably had no idea where their own ideas came from, which would explain a lot.
deleted by creator
Sounds like we’re going back to the “four humors:”
The “four humors” are a classical theory, developed by ancient Greek physicians like Hippocrates, that suggests human personality and health are determined by the balance of four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. An excess or deficiency of these humors was believed to influence both temperament and susceptibility to illness.
This theory was influential in ancient and medieval medicine, influencing how people understood and treated illness and even personality. While no longer considered a scientifically valid theory of human health, it’s a significant part of the history of medicine and offers a glimpse into ancient philosophical and medical thinking.
Except now we are actually using a contemporary version of it to rule our health care system.
I’m sorry, where did this guy get his relevant PhD(s) again?
He probably thinks PhD means Pretty huge Dick. Which he does not have either.
You know what they call “alternative medicine” that works?
Medicine.
Thank you Tim!
Thank you God, for curing the cataracts of Sam’s mom!
He’s doesn’t wash his hands after using the toilet.
Or after eating roadkill.
Jesus. A guy keeps roadkill in his fridge 365 times and it’s all he’s remembered for!
The brain worm commands it
I don’t think I ever knew he was also diagnosed with Mercury poisoning. Pretty sure that has cognitive impact
pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, pricks, potions, and poisons
Look, I’m not here to defend the pharmaceutical industry, but at least they’re fucking REGULATED.
Unlike, say, the supplement industry which he so loves… That’ll tell you: take these 50 expensive potions and you’ll get better, not the thing that has been rigorously tested & proven over generations.
The rest of the world should forbid all travels in and out of the US. And bring back lazarettos for those that must travel there.
wow he is really going all out to sell his supplements huh
RFK JR is really into roids and methylene blue right now.
