MAHA vs. the Medical Journals
The anti-science bullies are back, trying to push away facts that hurt profits
Yesterday, biohacker Gary Brecka released an interview with RFK Jr., where the two sat down to discuss MAHA, vitamins, and various other topics of interest — or, as Brecka described it, “America’s health crisis.” The interview appears to have been recorded in early April, when there was a UFC fight in Miami President Trump and these two attended.
Around 30 minutes in, the two got down to attacking medical journals, specifically NEJM, the Lancet, and JAMA. I’ve isolated the section in the video below, so you can watch it if you want.
The attacks boil down to the usual baseless claims, trolling, “flood the zone with shit” Bannonesque techniques, and ignoramuses on ’roids flexes you expect from this bunch of coconuts. RFK Jr. says “preprints” when he means “reprints,” and that the NIH will start its own in-house journals despite the administration shutting down various scientific communication vehicles in the past.
- STATNews does a nice job covering this. I’m quoted by a very patient reporter who had to put up with me telling him waaaaay more than he needed.
RFK Jr. states, “We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they’re all corrupt.” He comes across as an out-of-touch codger, name-checking Marcia Angell as the head of NEJM “for 20 years” despite the fact that she was an interim Editor-in-Chief in 1999-2000, which amounted to less than a year, before Jeffrey Drazen took over. He then claims both NEJM and the Lancet have stated they are no longer science journals but “vessels for pharmaceutical propaganda.”
I must have missed a meeting . . .
- This is actually a misleading reference to statements Angell and Horton made about having to worry about pharma’s influence in studies, something everyone knows is a concern which requires diligence.
Not only has no boycott materialized since April, it’s like the cauldron calling the kettle black because in the supplements and nutriceuticals world, anything goes, and Brecka and his MAHA ilk have been hard at it for years. I covered some of this yesterday.
In a way, this all feels like the unregulated supplements market trying to dislodge the highly-regulated pharmaceuticals market, with scientific validity at the crux of the matter.
Brecka has been rubbing elbows with Kennedy for a good amount of time, always in the most subtle and tasteful of ways: