Early on in the recent MAHA Report on children’s health, its authors unwittingly reveal a glaring contradiction at the heart of the alliance between Robert Kennedy, Jr’s, Make America Healthy Again movement, and Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda.

It’s a contradiction that’s even more troublesome, though less headline-grabbing, than the MAHA committee’s carelessness with research citations (we’ll get to that in a minute).

The report states that: “During this administration, we will begin reversing the childhood chronic disease crisis by confronting its root causes—not just its symptoms. This means pursuing truth, embracing science, and enacting pro-growth policies and innovations to restore children’s health.”

By “pro-growth,” the authors do not mean childhood development milestones. They mean economic growth. And therein lies the rub.

The MAHA Report goes to great lengths to show how corporate malfeasance—manifesting as junk food, environmental toxins, and overuse of pharmaceuticals—are the main drivers of childhood chronic disease. It insists that the staggering morbidity plaguing American kids is the result of “corporate capture”—a term the MAHA committee uses repeatedly to describe how profit-hungry food, pharma, and tech industries have manipulated public policy and ravaged public health.

At the same time, though, the committee decries “European-style” regulatory systems that stifle economic growth and overburden industries.

It is hard to dispute the assertions that rise in childhood chronic disease is a consequence of dietary, environmental, and iatrogenic factors, and therefore largely preventable. At least in theory.

But let’s be real: changing the trends detailed in this report will require major changes in industry behavior–MAHA has its sights set on Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma. And change on that scale doesn’t just happen. It requires a combination of grassroots consumer pressures, massive sustained public education, and strong federal and state regulation. It costs money up front, and it often curtails growth.

Think about the decades-long effort to curb smoking. It didn’t happen because the tobacco industry read the lung cancer data, saw the light, and had a sudden flash of remorse. It resulted from federal, state, and local regulation, combined with ongoing education efforts, sales taxes, and–let’s not forget–a ban on cigarette ads on TV.

Given that the GOP’s political genome lacks alleles for regulation of big business, and that the Trump administration has made good on its promise to “reform” the regulatory agencies overseeing healthcare, environmental policy, and commerce, I’m left wondering how the MAHA visionaries intend to actualize the noble goals they articulate in the report.

In other words, it is difficult to reconcile the lofty MAHA dream with the existing MAGA realities.

A Guidance Document

The MAHA Report is a 72-page document, commissioned under President Trump’s Executive order 14212, calling for an advisory to “assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis.”

The MAHA Committee, chaired by Health & Human Services secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr, also includes FDA commissioner Martin Makary, NIH director Jay Bhattacharya, EPA head Lee Zeldin, and Secretary of Education, Linda Miller, along with a retinue of other Trump administration appointees.

The initial report, published on May 22, is a comprehensive assessment of childhood chronic disease trends in the US. It chronicles the troubling rises in obesity, diabetes, asthma, depression, autism & ADHD, and autoimmune disease, and it names four main drivers: ultra-processed foods, environmental toxin exposure, over-medication, and overuse of technology at the expense of physical activity.

By “pro-growth,” the authors do not mean childhood development milestones. They mean economic growth. And therein lies the rub.

The executive order obliges the committee to issue a second document later this year, outlining policy initiatives and practical strategies to address the myriad problems outlined in the first report. 

Sloppy Citations

Days after the MAHA Report was published, journalists Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto, reporting for NOTUS, revealed that several key studies spotlighted in the report simply do not exist—while others are improperly linked, or inaccurately cited. The NOTUS post was quickly amplified by the Washington Post, The Guardian, and other major media.

Democrats on the Senate Health Committee quickly seized on the errors, questioning not only the credibility of the MAHA Report, but also RFK Jr’s fitness to lead HHS. Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks went as far as demanding a resignation. “Making up ‘scientific studies’ to further prove your conspiracy theories is disqualifying. RFK must resign,” Alsobrooks told NOTUS.

Other critics point out that the MAHA committee actually met only once, that the document is a product of foregone conclusions, and that chatbots likely had as much influence on the report as actual expert deliberation.

Citation sloppiness looks bad coming from HHS. It certainly doesn’t square well with the MAHA Report’s repeated insistence that healthcare policy be guided by “gold standard” science.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt waived off the criticisms, attributing the non-existent or misidentified papers to “formatting issues.” She said the errors will be corrected in a forthcoming updated version, but added that none of the mistakes “negate the substance of the report, which, as you know, is one of the most transformative health reports that’s ever been released by the federal government.”

Citation sloppiness looks bad, coming as it does from HHS, which oversees nearly $2 trillion in annual healthcare spending, and controls the medical care of more than 170 million Americans in Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program), and other HHS programs.

It certainly doesn’t square well with the MAHA Report’s repeated insistence that healthcare policy be guided by “gold standard” science. Come to think of it, that grossly overused term is a quaint anachronism given that the American economy and indeed the entire global monetary system has not been on a Gold Standard since the 1970s (a fact not lost on the many people buying up gold these days).

Troubling Trends

Citation controversies aside, the MAHA Report gets a lot of things right. It correctly points out that the US spends more than twice as much per capita on healthcare as other industrialized nations, yet our life expectancy is down at the bottom, and most if not all of our childhood health indicators are below those of peer nations.

Over 40% of the roughly 73 million US children, age 0-17 years, have at least one chronic disease, according to the CDC.

It chronicles the steady rises in childhood obesity, cardiometabolic risk, and autoimmune diseases over the last half-century, along with the soaring costs of treating an ever-increasing number of sick kids. Here’s a smattering of troubling stats:

• Over 40% of the roughly 73 million US children, age 0-17 years, have at least one chronic disease, according to the CDC.

• Over 75% of American teens and young adults (aged 17-24) are ineligible for military service—primarily due to obesity, poor physical fitness, and/or mental health challenges.

• More than 1 in 5 children over age 6 are obese—a 270% increase since the 1970s, when the figure was 1 in 20. US childhood obesity prevalence is more than double that of other G7 nations.

• Roughly 70% of obese kids already have at least one heart risk factor.

• More than 350,000 American children have been diagnosed with diabetes (3.5 per 1,000). Epidemiologists predict a 600% increase in childhood type 2 by 2060 if present trends continue.

• Autism impacts 1 in 31 children by age 8, according to the CDC.

• 1 in 4 American children has allergies, including seasonal allergies, eczema, and food allergies. Eczema (atopic dermatitis) and skin allergy prevalence in kids under 18 increased from 7.4% in 1997-1999, to 12.7% from 2016-2018.

• During the same period, childhood food-allergy prevalence rose by 88%.

• Celiac disease increased 5-fold in American kids since the 1980s. Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), including Crohn’s, rose by 25% over the last decade.

• Over 10% of children have been diagnosed with ADHD, with approximately 1 million more diagnosed in 2022 compared to 2016.

• Suicides among 10- to 24-year-olds increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021, making suicide the second leading cause of death in teens aged 15-19.

Yes, the report’s authors played loose and fast with citations, and probably failed to double-check the info returned by their AI assistants. One can, no doubt, find fault with particular stats. But on the whole, it is difficult to dismiss the report’s general picture of declining childhood health over the last 50 years.

Likewise, it is hard to dispute the assertions that rise in childhood chronic disease is a consequence of dietary, environmental, and iatrogenic factors, and therefore largely preventable. At least in theory.

UPF, UPF and Away

The MAHA authors stress the connection between poor diet and childhood illness, with an intensive focus on “ultra-processed” foods (UPF). They acknowledge that there is no universally-accepted definition of UPF, and refer to the Nova food classification system’s definition: “industrially manufactured food products made up of several ingredients including sugar, oils, fats and salt, and food substances of no or rare culinary use.”

“Food substances” in this context means artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors, colorants, and emulsifiers.

The rising consumption of UPFs “corresponded with a pattern of corporatization and consolidation in our food system.”

Highly processed, ready-made, high-sugar, low-nutrient foods are extremely popular. The MAHA Committee repeatedly states that UPFs now make up nearly 70% of the average American child’s total calories, and 50% of the total diets of pregnant and post-partum mothers. Roughly half of all kids aged 2-18 years never eat actual unprocessed fruit on any given day.

UPFs pile on calories, but fail to deliver vitamins, minerals, or fiber. They also tweak childrens’ (and adults’) brain reward pathways and satiety hormones in ways that favor over-consumption, faster consumption, and repeated consumption. This ultimately leads to elevated glucose and insulin levels, while damaging the gut microbiome.

And then there are the additives. The MAHA Report states that there are over 2,500 food additives in common use, including emulsifiers, sweeteners, binders, colorings, preservatives, and flavorings. Most have never been formally tested for long-term safety in humans, yet some have been linked—at least epidemiologically—to increased risk of cognitive problems, ADHD, CVD, metabolic disorders, and some forms of cancer.

The report specifically calls out Red 40, Titanium dioxide, propylparaben, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin.

In their vast litany of stats, the authors point to a 2024 British Medical Journal report which assessed 45 independent metanalyses representing, in aggregate, roughly 10 million people. The paper linked high consumption of UPFs to higher risk of 32 adverse health outcomes (Lane MM, et al. BMJ 2024).  They also cite a 2019 JAMA Internal Medicine report based on 44,000 people, showing that for every 10% increase in UPF intake, there is a 14% greater mortality risk (Schnabel L, et al. JAMA Intern Med. 2019).

Again, quibble with specific stats if you’re so inclined. But it’s difficult to dismiss the overall inverse correlations between childhood health and junk food consumption.

Corporate Capture

The culprit? The MAHA Committee places a large share of the blame on “the consolidation of the food system.”

The rising consumption of UPFs “corresponded with a pattern of corporatization and consolidation in our food system,” they write. The trend gathered steam in the 1980s and accelerated in the 90s, as large food and ag companies acquired smaller ones, and then began acquiring or merging with each other to the point where a handful of mega-corporations like PepsiCo, Archer Daniels Midland, Tyson, and Nestle now have near-total control over all levels of food production, distribution, and marketing.

Not only is it popular, junk food is highly lucrative. The major food and ag companies—especially the publicly traded ones—are concerned first and foremost with profit and shareholder return, not health. That’s what “pro-growth” looks like.

“The greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare.”

–The MAHA Committe

As the food conglomerates grew, so did their influence on agricultural and food policy. The authors repeatedly point out that most research on foods, food additives, and diet-health connections, is funded by major food corporations which also have tremendous lobbying power in Washington.

The MAHA authors spare no vitriol toward Big Ag, Big Food, and Big Pharma. They’re equally generous in their praise of American farmers, who are “the backbone of America,” who “feed the world,” and who must be “put at the center of how we think about health.”

Of Food & Farmers

The MAHA Report lament the fact that, according to the US Department of Agriculture, American farmers actually received only 16 cents of every food dollar spent in 2023, the other 84 cents going to food processors, distributors, marketers, and retailers. They hold a special reverence for small, independent, organic family farmers and ranchers.

Though organic food production has grown steadily over the last 20 years, it is still a minute slice of the overall agricultural pie. According to USDA data, there were 17,445 certified organic farms in the US in 2021, out of a total of 1.9 million farms. That’s less than 1%. Organic farms account for roughly 4.9 million total farmland acres, which is about 0.5% of the nation’s total.

As the food conglomerates grew, so did their influence on agricultural and food policy. Most research on foods, food additives, and diet-health connections, is funded by major food corporations which also have tremendous lobbying power in Washington.

The USDA data indicate that organic foods generated $11.2 billion in sales in 2021, a 13% increase since 2019. Despite their relatively small footprint, certified organic farms contributed significantly to the ag economy. In 2021, they generated $11.2 billion in sales, about 5% of total food sales that year. That’s largely because organic products carry premium price tags. They’re popular with relatively affluent people who can afford to pay extra for the perceived health benefits, but they’re out of reach for many who live on tight budgets.

The MAHA authors rightly note that the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), and other federal and state regulations impose odious compliance requirements that small family farms are less able to meet. Much like the case with independent private practice clinicians, independent farmers rarely have the resources or staff to deal with burdensome paperwork hassles.

Organic certification is expensive and many small farms simply lack the money to obtain and maintain certification even if their operations would qualify. This locks them out of the premium market for certified organic food, and hobbles growth of organic farming.

“The greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare,” the authors state.

Love-Hate with “Europe”

The MAHA Committee lavishes high praise on France, where “schools are required to source half their products from local sources and prohibit vending machines.” Likewise, “Japanese schools typically prepare meals on-site using whole ingredients, often from local farms and school gardens.” Similarly, Nordic countries insist that school lunches contain plenty of unprocessed produce while strictly limiting high-fat, high-sugar, and high-sodium processed items. Meanwhile, here in the US, public school lunches are laden with sugar, salt, unhealthy fats, and additives.

But here’s where the schizophrenia kicks in.

On average, Japanese school districts spend roughly ¥234 per student per day on public school lunches. That’s about $1.57, and most of that goes to the food itself, because labor and facilities costs are typically covered under municipal budgets. In the US, school lunch programs spend an average of $2.99 per student per day, and only about $1.00 goes to purchasing ingredients, while $1.99 goes to labor and overhead costs. As in healthcare, American school lunch programs cost more and deliver less.

The MAHA Committe is selective when referencing European virtues and values. They applaud European investment in healthy school lunches and commitment to organic artisanal agriculture. They lament the sizeable gaps between US scores on child health indices, and those of European nations. But they ignore all the European public policies that account for those differences.

Further, Japan, France, and the Nordic nations all have strong central governments and strict—some would say ‘burdensome’—regulations on agriculture, food processing, and food labeling. They also have reliable, if imperfect, national healthcare systems and relatively robust social safety nets. In short, they’re the very sort of ‘socialist nanny states’ that many MAHA supporters hold in contempt, and the MAGA movement vilifies. 

The authors are very selective when referencing European virtues and values. They applaud European investment in healthy school lunches and commitment to organic artisanal agriculture. And they lament the sizeable gaps between US scores on child health indices, and those of European nations. But they generally ignore all the “European-style” public policies that account for those differences.  

The Texas Tussle

There’s a similar set of contradictory impulses in the recently ratified Make Texas Healthy Again legislation—a sort of state-level “mini-MAHA” championed by Texas senator Lois Kolkhorst, a staunch conservative.

Among other things, the new law requires all packaged foods sold in Texas to include a warning label disclosing artificial coloring agents, preservatives, additives, or other chemicals that have been banned in Canada, the UK, or the EU.

It’s the sort of move one would expect from a left-leaning, regulation-happy state like California—which is pursuing its own state-level effort to purge UPFs from school meals–but not Texas, with its longstanding disdain for government interference in commerce, education, or medical practice. It seems downright out of character for Texas Republicans like Kolkhorst, Senate President Dan Patrick, and other GOP stalwarts to suddenly be interested in what the EU regulators are banning. Clearly, times are changing.

In many ways, Texas is a test-kitchen for the practical implementation of MAHA principles. And already we’re seeing that the movement’s high ideals falter when confronted with the grinding reality of business. In late May, the Texas house of representatives forwarded an amendment that exempts dietary supplement products from the labeling requirements.

The new rules met with major pushback from supplement industry trade groups, as well as beverage makers, and retailers. Objections included concerns over cost of compliance, the potential for major labeling complications as individual states stipulate their own labeling laws in the absence of a unified national system, and a sense that supplements were being unfairly lumped together with junk foods.

Texas is a test-kitchen for the practical implementation of MAHA principles. And already we’re seeing that the movement’s high ideals falter when confronted with the grinding reality of business.

The industry’s objections are understandable. Supplement makers are contending with widespread uncertainty over tariffs (roughly 80% of all supplement ingredients are imported), supply chain disruptions, shaky consumer spending, and intense downward price pressure at retail. The last thing companies want is a set of new and odious state regs—however well-intentioned– that will suck time, cost money, and possibly dent sales.

But if outcry from supplement makers was enough to deflect the new Texas labeling rules, what’s going to happen on the national level if—no, make that when–Big Ag and Big Food throw their substantial weight against whatever new rules the MAHA movement ends up proposing?  

Rockwell vs Reality

The MAHA report presents a Rockwell-esque vision of rosy-cheeked family farmers producing wholesome fruits and vegetables for happy, healthy kids at local public schools (which are, of course, free from nuisances like active shooter incidents).

But our current reality is that most school food programs—like most hospital food programs—are administered by massive companies like Aramark and Sysco. They purchase the commodity output of industrial farms that monocrop pesticide-laden GMO staples, and CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) that churn out antibiotic-drenched meat and dairy.

At home, far too many kids are eating highly processed yet tasty goop extruded by major corporations and wrapped in seductive colors that tap primal brain circuitry. Harried parents, struggling to make ends meet in a precarious economy, often lack the time, money, and energy to shop for and prepare healthy, wholesome meals.  

How can we possibly move from this status quo to MAHA’s optimistic vision without massive top-to-bottom policy changes?

It is difficult to reconcile the lofty MAHA dream with the existing MAGA realities.

And as the Texas experience is already showing, industries—even ones like the supplement industry that play in the health and wellness space—are generally resistant to changing their ways, especially if it increases costs and hassles, and threatens sales.

WIC & SNAP

The MAHA report criticizes many federal programs which, the authors say, have been captured by corporate interests and complicit in the surge of childhood illness. But it does praise WIC—the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children–which provides food support for roughly 6.7 million women with young kids.

“WIC has a proven track record of improving children’s health,” they say. “WIC allows health-conscious food purchase that are adjusted according to participants’ life stage nutritional needs, including increased fruit and vegetable consumption, reductions in

juice consumption, and reductions in calorie intake.”

They’re less sanguine about SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which permits recipients to spend government dollars on UPFs, soda, and other garbage foods. Approximately 42 million Americans receive SNAP, which had a total expenditure of $113 billion in 2023.

“Children receiving SNAP benefits are more likely to consume greater quantities of sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats compared to income-eligible nonrecipients. By one estimate, nearly twice as much will be spent by SNAP on UPFs and sugar-sweetened beverages ($21 billion) compared to fruits and vegetables ($11 billion) in FY2025.”

The MAHA authors point to a Tufts University study showing that adult SNAP recipients are twice as likely to develop heart disease, three times more likely to die from diabetes, and have higher rates of metabolic disorders. Children on SNAP often fail to meet federal dietary guidelines—which are themselves subject to MAHA criticism—and they generally show lower scores on key health indicators compared with non-SNAP kids.

Some health advocates believe a campaign prohibiting use of SNAP dollars for soft drink purchases, is far more likely to see the light of day under Kennedy’s HHS. Over the last 20 years, legislators from across the political spectrum have periodically clamored for such a change, to no avail.

Other policy initiatives, such as a 2018 bipartisan effort to include basic vitamin and mineral supplements in SNAP, have similarly failed to progress.

If Kennedy and the MAHA movement can, in fact, actualize these sorts of policies, it would indeed be a blessing for the health of the nation’s children.

But all of this ignores the bigger question about the fate of WIC and SNAP under the Trump administration. Already, the administration has proposed work requirements for WIC enrollment, along with a relocation of WIC from the USDA to HHS. The administration’s 2025 budget calls for a $200 million cut in WIC funding. The program is already staggering from cuts under the 2023 House appropriations bill, which reduced WIC’s budget to $800 million below the requested amount.

According to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, those 2023 cuts have already resulted in major benefits reductions, including a 56% cut in cash value benefits for fruit and vegetable purchases for children aged 1-4, from $25 to $11 per child per month; a 70% reduction for pregnant and post-partum women (from $44 to $11); and a 69% cut for breastfeeding women (from $49 to $15 per month).

On the SNAP side, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” proposes a $267 billion cut to the program’s funding, along with work requirements for able-bodied individuals, an enrollment limit of six members per family, and tighter income thresholds for enrollment.

The millions of people on federal food assistance aren’t likely to be buying organic produce from local family farms any time soon.

Confronting the Chemical Soup

I’ve focused here on the food component of the MAHA Report. But similar contradictions bedevil the report’s position on environmental toxins.

The MAHA Committee notes that there are over 40,000 potentially toxic chemicals in wide use across a vast range of industries, and which can become air and/or water pollutants. Residues of pesticides, herbicides, and microplastics are showing up with increasing frequency in blood and urine samples from American children and pregnant women.

“Children are exposed to numerous chemicals, such as heavy metals, PFAS, pesticides, and, phthalates, via their diet, textiles, indoor air pollutants, and consumer products,” they write. “Children’s unique behaviors and developmental physiology make them particularly vulnerable to potential adverse health effects from these cumulative exposures, many of which have no historical precedent in our environment or biology.”

The report boldly, and rightfully, states that toxicological research is heavily funded directly or indirectly by industries with vested interests. This skews safety assessments.

For example, the authors point out that 50% of non-industry research on a commonly used pesticide found it harmful to human health, compared with only 18% of industry-funded studies. Of 115 studies looking at Bisphenol A (BPA)—a xenoestrogenic chemical used in plastic production–100% of industry-funded studies declared it “safe,” while more than 90% of non-industry research found it harmful, even at low levels.

MAHA advocates—including RFK Jr—may see environmental toxins as a serious children’s health concern. Judging from its actions so far, it seems that the Trump administration does not share this view.

Leaving aside the question of whether the Committee played fair by including water fluoridation—viewed by many dentists and public health professionals as a preventive measure–in its section on environmental toxins, the MAHA Report makes a solid case that today’s kids are exposed to unprecedented quantities and types of potentially harmful chemicals about which we know little.

Few of these revelations are new. Environmental health advocates have been sounding the alarm about toxin exposures for decades. What is new is that the MAHA movement has main-staged these issues, backed by the authority of HHS and major federal healthcare programs.

But again, guidance documents are one thing, reality is another. And the reality is that since January, the Trump administration has reversed decades’ worth of environmental regulations. It has withdrawn the US from the Paris Climate Accords, curtailed the EPA’s authority, and fired many EPA employees.

Specifically, the administration:

• Reversed a Biden-era ruling that would have set discharge limits on PFAS from manufacturing facilities
• Begun a comprehensive effort to scuttle many air quality regulations aimed at limiting air pollution from transportation and manufacture
• Proposed elimination of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
• Elimination of the Environmental Justice Grants program, which formerly funded roughly $100 million in environmental improvement initiatives in poor, at-risk communities
• Cut CDC funding and staffing for environment-related programs, including a lead poisoning prevention program
• Proposed a 54.5% reduction of the EPA’s total budget in 2026, cutting it from $9.1 billion to $4.2 billion…approximately what the agency was working with in the mid 1980s.

And that’s only a handful of its actions in a mere 4 months.

MAHA advocates—including RFK Jr—may see environmental toxins as a serious children’s health concern. Judging from its actions so far, it seems that the Trump administration does not share this view.

The MAHA Report decries the corporate takeover of nutrition and toxicology research, yet the MAGA government is gutting most federal healthcare research agencies, cutting funding, and withholding medical research grants to universities as a means of forwarding other policy agendas. It has also alienated many scientists and researchers—including some who are doing the very sort of independent non-industry studies that the MAHA document insists is vital.

So, if industry-funded research is compromised, and government research is curtailed due to budget and staffing cuts, and university research funding is subject to sudden politically-driven withdrawals, who exactly is going to do all the “gold standard” clinical research that the MAHA Report calls for?

The V-Word

For the most part, the MAHA Report avoids inflammatory culture war language, though in an obvious nod to Project 2025, it refers to gender-transition medical treatment as “Child Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” and asserts that “puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries,” carry significant risk of “irreversible effects.”

Here, the authors also grab an opportunity to a jab at several major medical organizations, particularly the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, for supporting gender transition treatments “despite an HHS review finding no long-term evidence for safety.”

Speaking of jabs, the MAHA Report slyly pussyfoots around the subject of vaccines—the issue that brought RFK Jr to national prominence, and the one about which he has faced the most flak.

Folded into the section on “The Overmedicalization of Our Kids,” the committee’s vaccine comments begin by stating: “Vaccines benefit children by protecting them from infectious diseases. But, as with any medicine, vaccines can have side effects that must be balanced against their benefits.”

The authors then say that the number of CDC-recommended vaccine injections for babies has increased since the mid 1980s from 3 to 29, though they include “in utero exposures from vaccines administered to the mother” in that tally. They claim the number of shots recommended by CDC far exceeds the guidelines used by most European countries, yet nobody’s doing the international comparative studies on rates of vaccine-related adverse effects.

They point out that vaccines are the only class of pharma products for which all 50 states have some sort of formal mandate for use in kids (though most states do still allow religious and/or personal exemptions), yet many vaccines on the CDC’s list were approved based on relatively small studies that had no inert placebo controls (the “gold standard” research method), and short safety monitoring periods of six months or less.

The report signals to MAHA supporters that it shares their vaccine criticisms and is willing to bring them to the halls of power, while avoiding categorically “anti-vax” statements.

Parents have questions and concerns. So do a lot of practitioners, says the Committee. They deserve answers. Yet the current biomedical status quo constrains the types of vaccine questions that can be researched, while efforts to combat “disinformation” are squelching open dialog. As a result, parents and clinicians are unable to make truly informed decisions free from the fear of social and professional repercussions.

In short, the report signals to MAHA supporters that it shares their vaccine criticisms and is willing to bring them to the halls of power, while avoiding categorically “anti-vax” statements.

It remains to be seen what sort of policy recommendations the MAHA Committee will issue this Fall. But already it seems clear that any such policies that require big federal spending, impose new regulations and requirements, and substantially impact corporate practices and profits will likely meet with strong resistance from industry and from within the government itself.  

For all its praises of Europe’s admirable child health stats, artisanal school lunches, and more relaxed vaccine guidelines, MAHA Committee stresses that the vision it holds for improving American children’s health “cannot happen through a European regulatory system that stifles growth.”

Rather, it asserts that the American formula for happy healthy kids depends on “a renewed focus on fearless gold-standard science throughout the federal government and through unleashing private sector innovation.”

I suppose we’ll have to wait for the Committee’s forthcoming policy report to find out what that means.

Read the MAHA Report. For all its flaws and drawbacks, it is an important document that articulates many core principles of holistic, functional, and naturopathic medicine. For better and for worse, it is putting those principles front and center in public discourse.

But read it with realistic expectations. As it moves from position statement to policy, the Good Ship MAHA could very well be dashed on MAGA’s jagged rocks.

END