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Posted

Decimating the public health system will surely be an effective strategy for combatting bird flu, measles, fentanyl addiction, and the myriad maladies causing illness in Americans. Make food poisoning great again!

The FDA & CDC are expected to lose roughly 20 percent of their staff from the latest cuts alone.

  • CDC will lose about 2,400 employees with cuts to its mission
  • FDA will see 3,500 jobs cut
  • National Institutes of Health will lose 1,200 staff
  • The agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid is expected to lose 300

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/us/politics/health-department-job-layoffs-rfk-jr.html

Quote

 

The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it was laying off 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department as part of a broad reorganization that reflects the priorities of the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the White House’s drive to shrink the government.

The layoffs are a drastic reduction in personnel for the health department, which had employed about 82,000 people and touches the lives of every American through its oversight of medical care, food and drugs.

The layoffs and reorganization will cut especially deep at two agencies within the department that have been in Mr. Kennedy’s sights: the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those agencies are expected to lose roughly 20 percent of their staff members from the latest cuts alone.

Together with previous buyouts and early retirements spurred by Trump administration policies, the move will bring the health department down to about 62,000 employees, the agency said.

The restructuring is intended to bring communications and other functions directly under Mr. Kennedy. And it includes creating a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America.

“We’re going to do more with less,” Mr. Kennedy said, even as he acknowledged that it would be “a painful period for H.H.S.”

Mr. Kennedy said rates of chronic disease rose under the Biden administration even as the government grew. He pitched the changes as a way to refocus the agency on Americans’ health, but did not outline any specifics on how he would reduce rates of diabetes, heart disease or any other conditions.

Inside the affected agencies, stunned employees struggled to absorb the news. Democrats and outside experts said the move would decimate agencies charged with protecting the health and safety of the American public, depriving them of the scientific expertise necessary to respond to current and future biological threats.

“In the middle of worsening nationwide outbreaks of bird flu and measles, not to mention a fentanyl epidemic, Trump is wrecking vital health agencies with the precision of a bull in a china shop,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who has been a leader on health issues in Congress.

She called Mr. Kennedy’s comments about doing more with less an “absurd suggestion” that “defies common sense.” Her sentiments were echoed by several agency employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

They said they worried not for themselves, but for the country, expressing concern about what the layoffs would mean for public health and whether putting safety at risk was really what Americans want.

Under the plan, the C.D.C., which handles a wide range of health issues including H.I.V./AIDS, tobacco control, maternal health and the distribution of vaccines for children, would return to its “core mission” of infectious disease.

“Converting C.D.C. to an agency solely focused on infectious diseases takes us back to 1948 without realizing that in 2025, the leading causes of death are noncommunicable disease,” said Dr. Anand Parekh, who served in the health department during the Obama administration and is now the chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

The C.D.C. will have its work force cut by about 2,400 employees, and will narrow its focus to “preparing for and responding to epidemics and outbreaks,” an H.H.S. fact sheet said. But it will also absorb the health department’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which has 1,000 employees and was elevated to its own separate agency under the Biden administration during the coronavirus pandemic.

The reorganization will cut 3,500 jobs from the F.D.A., which approves and oversees the safety of a vast swath of the medications and food people eat and rely on for well-being, the fact sheet said. The cuts are said to be administrative, but some of the roles support research and monitoring of the safety and purity of food and drugs, as well as travel planning for inspectors who investigate overseas food and drug facilities.

The National Institutes of Health will lose 1,200 staff members, and the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid is expected to lose 300.

All of those agencies tend to operate under their own authority, and Mr. Kennedy has been at odds with all of them. Mr. Kennedy assailed them, and other parts of the department, in a YouTube video.

“When I arrived, I found that over half of our employees don’t even come to work,” he claimed. “H.H.S. has more than 100 communications offices and more than 40 I.T. departments and dozens of procurement offices and nine H.R. departments. In many cases, they don’t even talk to each other. They’re mainly operating in silos.”

The 28 divisions of the Health and Human Services Department will be consolidated into 15 new divisions, according to a statement issued by the department. Mr. Kennedy announced the changes in his video. The staff cuts, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, are being made in line with President Trump’s order to carry out the Department of Government Efficiency’s drive to shrink the federal work force.

The plan also includes collapsing 10 regional H.H.S. offices into five.

The department notified union leaders of the “reduction in force” — known as a “RIF” in federal parlance — early Thursday morning by email. The message, obtained by The New York Times, said the layoffs would most likely take effect on May 27 and were “primarily aimed at administrative positions including human resources, information technology, procurement and finance.”

Democrats including Ms. Murray reacted with fury to the cuts. Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the cuts were troubling amid a bird flu outbreak and an uptick in measles cases.

“This is a grave mistake,” Mr. Connolly said in a statement, “and I have serious concerns about how this will impact Americans’ well-being now and long into the future.”

Republicans seemed to be taking more of a wait-and-see stance. Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and the chairman of the committee that oversees health, said he had breakfast with Mr. Kennedy on Thursday. Mr. Cassidy suggested he was open to the reorganization but expected the two “would have more conversations” about specific cuts as their effects became clearer.

Doreen Greenwald, the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 18,500 H.H.S. staff members across the country, issued a statement vowing to “pursue every opportunity to fight back on behalf of these dedicated civil servants.”

“The administration’s claims that such deep cuts to the Food and Drug Administration and other critical H.H.S. offices won’t be harmful are preposterous,” Ms. Greenwald said.

Xavier Becerra, who served as health secretary under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., issued a statement saying the cuts would most likely downgrade services to elderly and disabled people, and those with mental health challenges, in addition to preparedness for health crises.

“This has the makings of a man-made disaster,” he said on social media.

Mr. Kennedy suggested in the video that the changes would help his team get more access to data. That prospect has been worrisome to his critics, given Mr. Kennedy’s long history of manipulating figures to advance arguments about what he contends are the risks of vaccines that have widely been deemed safe.

“In one case,” Mr. Kennedy said, “defiant bureaucrats impeded the secretary’s office from accessing the closely guarded databases that might reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions.”

Mr. Kennedy said the new division he is creating, the Administration for a Healthy America, would combine a number of agencies focused on substance abuse treatment and chemical safety, as well as the agency that administers courts that handle federal claims over vaccine injuries.

“We’re going to consolidate all of these departments and make them accountable to you, the American taxpayer and the American patient,” he said. “These goals will honor the aspirations of the vast majority of existing H.H.S. employees who actually yearn to make America healthy.”

 

 

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Posted (edited)

Damaging their livers because they're following brainworm heroin addict advice instead of a doctors advice

https://www.yahoo.com/news/after-rfk-jr-recommends-vitamin-a-as-a-measles-treatment-some-texas-patients-show-signs-of-toxicity-214353603.html?guccounter=1

Weeks after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. touted vitamin A as an effective treatment for measles amid the largest outbreak of disease in decades, hospitalized patients in West Texas are being treated for signs of vitamin A toxicity.

Several patients at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock have been found to have abnormal liver function, CNN reported, which can occur when a person takes excessive doses of vitamin A. Those being treated include “a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage,” the New York Times reported.

Edited by Captainant
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Posted
8 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Damaging their livers because they're following brainworm heroin addict advice instead of of doctors advice

https://www.yahoo.com/news/after-rfk-jr-recommends-vitamin-a-as-a-measles-treatment-some-texas-patients-show-signs-of-toxicity-214353603.html?guccounter=1

Weeks after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. touted vitamin A as an effective treatment for measles amid the largest outbreak of disease in decades, hospitalized patients in West Texas are being treated for signs of vitamin A toxicity.

Several patients at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock have been found to have abnormal liver function, CNN reported, which can occur when a person takes excessive doses of vitamin A. Those being treated include “a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage,” the New York Times reported.

I prefer damaging my liver the old fashioned way. I also go well out of my way to be pretty healthy in every other aspect of my life so that I can keep damaging my liver for longer. 

Posted
4 minutes ago, bolverk said:

73 new cases reported since Tuesday, and two more counties have been added to the list: Andrews and Midland. Of the 400 infected, only two are vaccinated people, demonstrating how effective the vaccine is. The vast majority are children, many of whom are under 5yo, and teens.

Thank you for providing the update for Friday; got busy with work. IIRC there are around 41 patients hospitalized. Imagine how a couple of minutes in the doctor's office can prevent spending hours in the pediatric ward while a small child struggles to live.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Marks wrote in his letter, referring to US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Marks’ resignation takes effect April 5.

In an email, an HHS official told CNN, “If Peter Marks does not want to get behind restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency, then he has no place at FDA under the strong leadership of Secretary Kennedy.”

---

Resign or be fired and get nothing.  

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Posted

I cannot believe we are having to even re-think getting re-vaccinated.

Remember all those stupid fucking people in high school. The dipshits with the reading comprehension of 7th graders, who couldn't do basic algebra. Well, that's the party wearing the flag and dictating policy in the guise of mah freedums!

They are the same fucking idiot dipshits, just fatter.

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Posted
11 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

I cannot believe we are having to even re-think getting re-vaccinated.

Remember all those stupid fucking people in high school. The dipshits with the reading comprehension of 7th graders, who couldn't do basic algebra. Well, that's the party wearing the flag and dictating policy in the guise of mah freedums!

They are the same fucking idiot dipshits, just fatter.

My childhood vaccine was considered inferior to the one that came out in 1968.

Posted

I was born between 1960 and 1964, so I got a titer run for measles.  I have no immunity, so my doctor strongly recommended that I remedy that.  Guess who's getting the MMR vaccine at 3:00 this afternoon!  Thanks, morons.

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Posted (edited)

Snake oil salesmen

Dipshits Still Embrace Ivermectin
Five years after the pandemic began, interest in the anti-parasitic drug is rising again as right-wing influencers promote it — and spread misinformation about it.

Joe Grinsteiner is a gregarious online personality who touts the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. In a recent Facebook video, he produced a tube of veterinary-grade ivermectin paste — the kind made for deworming horses.

He gave the tube a squeeze. Then he licked a slug of the stuff, and gulped.

“Yum,” Mr. Grinsteiner said in the Feb. 25 video, one of a number of ivermectin-related posts he has made that have drawn millions of views on Facebook this year. “Actually, that tastes like dead cancer.”

Ivermectin, a drug proven to treat certain parasitic diseases, exploded in popularity during the pandemic amid false claims that it could treat or prevent Covid-19. Now — despite a persistent message from federal health officials that its medical benefits are limited — interest in ivermectin is rising again, particularly among American conservatives who are seeing it promoted by right-wing influencers.

Mr. Grinsteiner, 54, is a Trump supporter and country music performer who lives in rural Michigan. He has claimed in his videos that ivermectin cured his skin cancer, as well as his wife’s cervical cancer. In a video last month, he said a woman told him her nonverbal autistic child had become verbal after using ivermectin. In a recent phone interview, Mr. Grinsteiner said that he takes a daily dose of ivermectin to maintain his general well-being.

There is no evidence to support people taking ivermectin to treat cancer or autism. Yet Mr. Grinsteiner believes that the medical and political establishments just want to keep average people from discovering the healing powers of a relatively affordable drug.

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“These guys are absolutely money driven,” he said in one video. “And when I say ‘these guys,’ I’m talking about all those politicians in Washington taking money from the big pharma.”

Indeed, ivermectin has become a sort of enduring pharmacological MAGA hat: a symbol of resistance to what some in the movement describe as an elitist and corrupt cabal of politicians, scientists and medical experts. While many of those experts fear that misinformation about ivermectin could lead to overdoses — or prompt people to reject proven treatments for Covid or other ailments — conservative lawmakers in a number of states are promoting legislation that would allow ivermectin to be sold without a prescription, often in the name of medical freedom.

cont'd

Spoiler

Last week, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas signed

a law allowing ivermectin to be sold over the counter . Other legislation is pending in at least six other states: Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and Texas. In 2022, Tennessee passed a law making it easier to get ivermectin from a pharmacist.

President Trump’s new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has in the past embraced the idea that ivermectin can treat Covid, but whether he might seek to integrate the drug into his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda remains unclear. Mr. Kennedy did not respond to a request for an interview for this article.

But in 2021, he filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration asking officials to de-authorize the Covid vaccine, arguing that ivermectin was safer.

The Food and Drug Administration continues to emphasize that it has not authorized or approved ivermectin for treating Covid, noting on its website that “currently available clinical trial data do not demonstrate that ivermectin is effective against Covid-19 in humans.”Dr. Robert Califf, who led the F.D.A. during the Obama and Biden administrations, said he was concerned about people choosing ivermectin over proven treatments, like vaccination for Covid or chemotherapy for cancer. He said he was also concerned about overdoses, particularly in people taking the veterinary form of the drug. In high doses, ivermectin can be toxic and cause central nervous system problems like blurred vision, confusion and seizures. The F.D.A. has also warned that high doses can lead to coma or death.

Right-wing media, however, is full of advertisements for the drug; some ads describe it as an essential component of survivalist tool kits. The website Gateway Pundit recently ran a sponsored post from an online company that offers prescription ivermectin for “stockpiling” purposes, with an illustration of a postapocalyptic street scene.

Two major figures in the MAGA movement — former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the F.B.I., have promoted All Family Pharmacy, an online outfit that dispenses ivermectin with “a prescription from our licensed doctors.”

“No more fighting the system for the treatments you want,” Mr. Bongino said on an episode of his popular podcast, one of his last before starting at the F.B.I. “Stock up now before the next crisis hits.”

The ongoing interest in ivermectin comes as little surprise to Lewis A. Grossman, a law professor and historian at American University who has written extensively about the concept of “therapeutic choice.” Mr. Grossman said that over the course of American history, a number of treatments have become popular despite having little or no buy-in from medical experts.

For example, he said, laetrile, an unproven cancer remedy derived from apricot pits, surged in popularity in the 1970s; the actor Steve McQueen used it in his unsuccessful fight against cancer.

At the height of laetrile’s popularity, proponents praised its affordability and railed against a big medicine-government “conspiracy” against it, while many experts classified it as quackery. The F.D.A. never approved it for treating cancer or any other therapeutic use, said Mr. Grossman, who is writing a book about laetrile called “Seeds of Rebellion.”

“The ivermectin story fits within a very, very long tradition in America of people latching on to nonorthodox therapies based in part on their suspicion that, for profit-maximizing reasons, drug companies and physicians are suppressing truth about them,” Mr. Grossman said.

Mr. Grinsteiner said that he was familiar with ivermectin because he runs a small farm and uses it on some of his livestock. Suspicious of the Covid vaccine, he decided to take ivermectin preventively during the pandemic instead. His wife did so as well.

She got pregnant six months after she started taking ivermectin regularly. They went to the doctor, Mr. Grinsteiner said, and found out that her previously diagnosed cervical cancer had cleared up. He also said that he rubbed ivermectin on a cancerous spot on his nose. He added that the spot cleared up and that a doctor later told him the cancer was gone.

He made his first Facebook video about his experience with ivermectin in January. “It was like, maybe a minute video, and I went to bed,” he said. “And I woke up and my phone was just melting.”

Facebook briefly suspended his account, then reinstated it. The company has appended to some of his videos links to a “context” page from the fact-checking group Science Feedback.

The page notes that ivermectin and another anti-parasitic drug, mebendazole, have shown “promising anticancer effects in in vitro and animal studies. However, preclinical studies cannot reliably predict a drug’s effectiveness against cancer in humans, and drug candidates that show effectiveness in cells and animals often fail in clinical trials.”

Still, Mr. Grinsteiner has been frustrated with Facebook and has started a stand-alone website that he often mentions in his Facebook posts. On the site, Mr. Grinsteiner says he does not give advice on “what to take and (or) how to take it.” Rather, he said, it is a place for people to compare notes.

Thus far, visitors to the site have discussed ivermectin as a potential treatment for neuropathy, renal failure, lupus and other maladies. Mr. Grinsteiner sells a T-shirt for $15.68 that declares, “I wish ivermectin worked on the parasites in D.C.!”

A number of the lawmakers pushing to make ivermectin easier to buy in their states say they want to help constituents who are already taking it, some of whom use veterinary-grade ivermectin because they cannot get it at a regular drugstore.

“Constituents brought it to me; it wasn’t something I thought up on my own,” said State Senator Alan Clark of Arkansas, the Republican who sponsored the new law there.

“Mostly they’re going to the ag store” for ivermectin, Mr. Clark said. “And it would be much safer for them to use what is intended for human consumption.”

Professor Grossman said that it has long been assumed that states do not have the authority under federal law to make a prescription drug available over the counter.

Many lawmakers seeking to ease access to ivermectin, like State Representative Wes Virdell of Texas, say they are promoting what Mr. Virdell, a Republican, calls “medical freedom.”

“I think people should be able to choose whatever route they want” to treat themselves, he said. “Even if they’re wrong, right?”

Dr. Califf, the former F.D.A. commissioner, sees it differently.

“All interventions have risks,” he said. “And if you have no benefit, and you have some risk, then why on earth — you know, there’s no rational reason why someone should take the intervention.”

 

Edited by bolverk
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Posted
37 minutes ago, bolverk said:

In high doses, ivermectin can be toxic and cause central nervous system problems like blurred vision, confusion and seizures.

Yep. That checks out.

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