Pharmaceutical stocks convulsed and elected officials and media dutifully piled on with a visceral reaction to the nomination by President-elect Donald Trump of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to spearhead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy’s campaign vaulted such topics as the safety of vaccines and pharmaceuticals, children’s health, and Americans’ diet and declining fitness to the national stage as a prominent issue in the 2024 cycle.
Americans’ health has been neglected as a national issue perhaps since Dwight D. Eisenhower implemented the Presidential Fitness Test for school children. Kennedy’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy lamented childrens’ declining health, even in the early 1960s.
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Media have smeared Kennedy as a conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic — though in short, his exact outlook on the shots amounts to calls for increased scrutiny in their testing.
The allergic reaction to Kennedy’s appointment among elected officials and media conceals major money in the shadows, and members of Congress as deeply interested in the way the science plays out.
RFK Jr. poses a danger to public health, scientific research, medicine, and health care coverage for millions.
He wants to stop parents from protecting their babies from measles and his ideas would welcome the return of polio.
I have a lot of questions for his Senate hearing. https://t.co/YlpqO4dBdO
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 14, 2024
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., waded into the furor, but she herself is, among others, is a significant recipient of pharmaceutical campaign cash.
It comes as no surprise as the pharmaceutical industry spends big and lobbies big: pharmaceutical companies spent $71 million on the 2024 cycle, $50 million on the 2022 midterms, and a whopping $100 million on the 2020 election.
That’s just one wing of the pharmaceutical industry, as Federal Election Commission data tracks pharmaceutical manufacturing spending separately. Pharma typically favors Democrats 60-40, but that also means a lot of Republican lawmakers are interested parties, too.
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President Joe Biden raked in $9 million from pharmaceuticals in 2020, the height of industry campaign spending, although Kamala Harris received a similar amount in 2024.
Unsurprisingly, 2020 was the spire of pharmaceutical spending on elections in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pfizer spent $10 million on lobbying that cycle, though the mRNA vaccine and drug giant didn’t even top the list.
The embattled mRNA technology in the rushed COVID jabs has been linked to the emergence of grave heart problems in children. Pfizer notoriously pushed for its data to stay in the dark for 75 years.
Media have their own interests in preserving the way the pharmaceutical industry’s revolving door with the Federal Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health conducts business. The industry spends on average $18 billion a year on advertising — important ad revenue for TV stations, newspapers, and magazines, throwing into sharp relief media spasms over calls for increased vaccine and drug scrutiny.
Kennedy and Trump have made noises about ending direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals. Kennedy’s oversight of the FDA, NIH, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, may signal a tectonic shift in the way science, vaccine testing, public health, and drug development transpires, even if the money behind the status quo made losing bets to the contrary.