Can RFK. Jr Make America Healthy Again? @RobertKennedyJr/Twitter
Little did I know when I started on my health regime of Flintstones vitamins, a chewable C and two daily doses of Sancerre that I was partaking in a nearly half-trillion-dollar global market, the tentacles of which have now lured Trump-adjacent grifters into its grasp. Turns out the world’s appetite for meat, gasoline and YouTube is nothing compared to its desire for dandelion, milk thistle, and shark cartilage, among other vitamins, supplements, and neutraceuticals.
The President of the United States was himself an early adopter of the vitamins and supplement boondoggle. In 2009, he began selling personalised vitamins through The Trump Network. One deal included a plastic cup with a yellow screw top — the hitch being that prospective buyers of secret elixirs had to submit some urine, a little blood (rather generously, the kit included a bandaid), and a loogi of spittle in order for the analysis to proceed, all for a mere $139.95. Other early Trump vitamin “Essentials” included “Snazzle Snaxxs” for kids and “Supreme Greens”, which unfortunately ended up in a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit for its false claim of curing cancer.
Over the years, grifters of all shapes and sizes have jumped on the vitamin and supplement bandwagon, leveraging a plethora of falsified data to sell tablets, capsules, and powders that are for the most part nothing but gelatin, glucose syrup, and corn starch. It was only natural for MAGA to join the fray. A great many staff in the incoming Trump Administration, and those adjacent, are now hawking vitamins, including Dr Janette Nesheiwat (Trump’s pick for surgeon general), Kash Patel (his pick to lead the FBI), and of course the infamous Dr Oz, (the former talk show host Trump has nominated to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) who has advocated “nooptropics” on his Instagram feed — the so-called “smart drugs” that maximise brain power. Not to mention Oz’s long history of foisting raspberry ketones, forskolin, and saffron extract on the American public.
All this seems to be keeping alt-Right influencers in pocket. The alt-Goop industry has funded the likes of election-denier Kari Lake, 9-11 truther Laura Loomer, and Beauty Myth author turned anti-vaxxer Naomi Wolf. Longstanding Trump ally Dr Ben Carson has been delivering speeches and receiving tens of thousands of dollars for hocking “the most powerful supplement you can take for your health!” And the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has given his imprimatur to “Super Male Vitality Drops” and “Lung Cleanse Plus Spray”. Then there’s the MAGA influencer Dan Bongino, the ex-cop and frequent Infowars and Fox News guest branded by The New York Times a “misinformation superspreader”. His self-avowed purpose of “owning the libs” has impelled him to market “Dream Powder”, available in sea salt, peanut butter, pumpkin spice, and blueberry crumble flavours on his “Shopbeam” website, a product that upon further examination appears to be hot chocolate.
We have met their kind before. Clark Stanley, the self-proclaimed “Rattlesnake King” of America’s Wild West, was humbled when his infamous Snake Oil supplement, supposedly derived from a secret recipe of a Hopi medicine man, turned out to consist of chilli peppers, turpentine, and no viper extract whatsoever.
Lying below the surface is a form of male hysteria. Trump’s administration has come to look like a contest for the manliest man, the clear frontrunner of which is the ubiquitously shirtless nominee to oversee the $1.8 trillion budget of the Department of Health and Human Services. RFK Jr typifies the suspicion of the expert that permeates the MAGA world. Not only has he sworn to Make America Healthy Again by sending people addicted to antidepressants to Government “Wellness Farms”, but he is a great believer in the health benefits of raw milk and testosterone.
The lies of the supplement industry do however rest upon a scrim of historical fact. The father of vitamin therapy was Casimir Funk, who understood that beri-beri, scurvy, rickets, and pellagra were “deficiency disorders” that could be cured by supplements. He took the word “vita” (meaning life) and prefixed it to “amine” (a nitrogen product essential for life) and there was the neologism: vitamin, accepted by the scientific community since 1912. The idea of health in a pill transfixed the Dutch physiologist, Christiaan Eijkman, who won a Nobel Prize for his discovery of a substance in the husk of rice — thereafter known as vitamin B1. Not to be outdone, the chemist Linus Pauling won the Nobel Prize twice before becoming the first vitamin fanatic, insisting on daily doses of vitamin C. And that was just the start, as Pauling declared that ascorbic acid might prolong the lives of cancer patients and help with HIV.
In time, this scientific revolution would be hijacked by quack doctors, sea-moss-gel addicted yogis, and hippy-dippy acupuncturists. The supplement industry was unleashed in all its herbal glory in 1994 thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which saw the FDA at long last bend to the will of supplement manufacturers, trade associations, politicians, and the public at large. From then on, supplements were regulated not as drugs, but as foods. The FDA would no longer be required to check the safety and effectiveness of dietary supplements before they hit the market. Since then, the number of products available has expanded twenty-fold.
In America, the world’s most gut-centric country, where food fads, food taboos, and food fetishes have mesmerised the population ever since the first malnourished Pilgrims clambered off the Mayflower, got down on their knees, and rejoiced that at long last they might detox from the fleshpots of Europe, the horror of unbalanced digestive circulations has been perceived as the greatest threat to our vaunted self-reliance. No wonder, then, that the key to American puissance has long been considered a probiotics of the body politic. As 19th-century philosopher Henry David Thoreau noted in his conclusion to Life Without Principle: “Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia… Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning?”
A belief in miracle vitamins and supplements may then be the ultimate expression of American optimism, which explains the vast political appeal of eupepsia, no matter what the cost. It is understandable that we pop pills. The majority of Americans do it, every day.
That said, take care when choosing your panacea. The next time you contemplate a hit of collagen-spiked youth serum, it might be wise to recall the tale of those 19th-century Jesuit missionaries who made their way through the verdant passes of the Himalayas in order to bring Christ to the pagan natives. Their destination came to an end when they discovered a cornucopia of multicoloured powders and hand-fashioned pills in local markets — clearly the secret to health and happiness immortalised in novels such as Lost Horizon. The Mongols consumed these strange supplements as sacred snuff, still others as a rare condiment sprinkled over the barbecued yak, and the missionaries were all in until one of them happened to discover the source: the dried and pulverised excreta of the Grand Lama.
Frederick Kaufman is a contributing editor at Harper’s magazine and a professor of English and Journalism at the College of Staten Island. His next project is a book about the world’s first political reactionary.
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SubscribeI highly recommend Sowell’s erudite and well-argued book, and I’m (usually) on the left on most issues. What Sowell convincingly demonstrates is that many moral and political problems remain stubbornly intractable because the Enlightenment got in wrong in assuming that people’s moral visions are based on reason, so that evidence and argument can change minds.
But the reality, as Hume knew, is that you can’t derive an “ought” from an “is” without appealing to another “ought”, i.e.: value statements are ultimately founded on other value statements. Our reason is handmaid to our beliefs, not Plato’s charioteer guiding the will and passions.
This does not bode well for democracy when both sides are based on single-value theories of justice. The conflict between freedom and rights will remain intractable unless people of good will can reach a compromise. That position is the essence of classical liberalism. It is, alas, under assault from both the extremists of left and right. Unless we begin to stand up to the feminist narrative of oppression on one hand, and the alt-right racist demogogory on the other, we will all be torn apart.
Possibly, but it seems to me the assault has been mainly from the left in the cultural, educational and moral sphere (and I say that as one who is generally a social liberal).
On the subject, I think Rose McGowan’s (or is it McGovern?) tweet yesterday is a massive cultural moment. For a very high profile actress and #MeToo advocated, and a Democrat from birth, to announce that she has woken up to the corruption and double standards of the Dems is huge.
Wow! That’s the first time I’ve ever seen Sowell mentioned and in the British media and it is very welcome, albeit years overdue. He’s an amazing person and, to my mind, pretty much right about everything. I think Peter Hurst is right to refer to his thinking with regard to this particular debate.
If you don’t know Sowell, I would highly recommend that you look for some of his interviews and lectures etc on YouTube.
Agreed. Despite studying politics and economics at university in the UK in the late 1990s and keeping a keen eye on both matters, I can’t recall seeing or hearing him mentioned. Thanks to Peter for the introduction!
Sowell frames this dichotomy really well. I think it is crucial to understanding the current state of affairs, in the West at least.
Yes, but is it too late? The unconstrained vision has ruled for 30 years, from Clinton and Blair through to Obama, Merkel, Trudeau and everyone at the EU. The disastrous consequences can be seen from Afghanistan to Anglesey, from Bradford to Baltimore.
Interestingly, it seems to me that Macron contains elements of both visions. Let’s see what happens there.
Interesting article. Hard to say which camp I fall into. I do think this country seriously needs radical economic change, but am otherwise risk-averse. I’m quite security-minded, but also care about civil liberties, so I’d say that I am myself conflicted ethically.
I know Sowell would agree with the Swedish model of an acceptance that there is no perfect solution but only the reality of trade offs.
I remind readers Ferguson predicted over 65000 deaths from swine flu and less than 500 was the final result. He is unfortunately from the Neo-marxist doomsday cult.
“…retired American philosopher Thomas Sowell” ?? How can one “retire” from being a philosopher? Once you have become a philosopher, you are one for the rest of your life. Moreover, Sowell has merely retired as a syndicated newspaper columnist; he is still on the staff of the Hoover Institution. More careful checking is needed here.
Good points, but Thomas Sowell himself said he retired last year to devote more time to photography, his favorite hobby. There are lots of his writings and photographs on his website https://www.tsowell.com/
A more useful response to Freddie’s question comes from looking at the context in which the two epidemiologists are situated. Sweden and the UK could hardly be more different in their political culture. The UK is highly polarised, with an adversarial political culture. Sweden is famously more consensual, with a more inclusive political culture. The implications of this are quite striking. The Swedish response to the epidemic is to treat it as a problem to be solved, a challenge that society can adapt to and mitigate its more severe impacts, without alarmism. This is a measured response, very much in keeping with the Swedish temperament and culture. The British response is simply alarmist (as it is in most countries derived from the British adversarial polity). It’s response is not to adapt to the presence of the virus; it must be conquered, and then banished, and the state must lead the way. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. Pick which side you are on. The fact that it might not be possible to banish the virus or eradicate it at all, does not loom very large in the British public response. This fact in Sweden sits at the centre of the response. It’s a matter of science in Sweden. It’s moral panic in Britain.
Sowell always makes sense, but this sounds slightly over-dualistic. Like many dichotomies, this one goes within us as well as between us. I tend towards the constrained vision, but sometimes aspire to unconstrained visions. There’s a balance to be struck. Let’s recognise the existence of constraints but remember to challenge them at times.
Whatever the merits of Sowell’s book, the divergence between Ferguson and Giesecke is not fundamentally philosophical. I think the author is simply attempting to shift the debate into an arena in which he feels more comfortable.
Giesecke thinks that the IFR of COVID19 is around 0.1% and Ferguson thinks it is around 0.7%. That is the fundamental driver of the different views on policy.
It is also impossible to pretend from any fair reading of Ferguson’s writing and interviews that he is not acutely aware of the constraints and compromises involved in any policy decision.
Both numbers are small, but look big when multiplied by a population. Both numbers are wrong and the answer will be in the middle. The real difference in the views it what should be done given those small numbers. Should we view all deaths as equal tragedies or accept that death is always sad but inevitable and what really matters is how well we live our lives rather than the precise quantity of it we get, given nobody knows what that quantity will be.