A Good Follow RE: RFK, Jr.

One of my favorite science bloggers, Derek Lowe, has been doing admirable work reporting on the damage that RFK Jr. is wreaking as head of Heath and Human Services, a role that places him in the position of being able to set back American medical care, research in medicine and the biosciences, and agriculture.

Lowe almost certainly does not agree with me that government should be separate from the economy (including neither funding nor regulating scientific research). Lowe nevertheless rightly demands competent personnel be in charge so long as the government does do these things -- and he is well-qualified to comment on this aspect of the news, given his long career in pharmaceutical research.

I began following Lowe, like many others -- laymen and fellow scientists alike -- when I first became aware of his well-written, informative, and very amusing "Things I Won't Work With" series on hazardous chemicals, but I have found his other writing highly informative as well. For example, Lowe's discussions of various aspects of the Covid pandemic were very helpful then, both for debunking such quackery as ivermectin and for comments on vaccines and more serious possible treatments.

Although I left academic science long ago, I maintain an interest, and Lowe's sound reasoning and engaging, accessible writing have been a very enjoyable part of my way of doing so.

That, briefly, is my short recommendation of Lowe, and why I think it ought to carry some weight: He is an expert and, as someone trained to know the limits of his own knowledge and to evaluate the work of others, I find his opinions well worth consideration.

That said, I offer a quick sample of Lowe's commentary on RFK, Jr., following the latter's ridiculous recent assertions that he would somehow get to the bottom of "the autism epidemic" in only a few short months:

... [L]ast week Kennedy made a bizarre statement that "By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we will be able to eliminate those exposures" That set off all kinds of uproar among those people who follow this stuff (of whom I am certainly one), and it is absolutely the sort of statement that I would expect him to make: assuming that there is an "autism epidemic" to start with, and going on to assume that it is due to "exposures". That's the sort of stuff that has made him a great deal of money over the years, and here he is, playing the hits.

I have been told, though, that some believe that this was a garbled statement on his part and that what he was trying to get across is that his desired study on autism will get underway in September. Be that as it may, I think that what he actually said is what he actually thinks, because it's so consistent with years of behavior and public statements on his part. The idea that you could run a study to prove anything about the causes of autism and have it deliver definite answers to you by September is of course laughable to anyone who knows the field and the amount of research that's been done already - or, for that matter, to anyone who knows anything about clinical research at all. But even if that's not what he was trying to say (I'm agnostic on that point), the facts remain that blaming a so-called "autism epidemic" on environmental factors is not a position that is supported in any way by multiple investigations over many decades. These include gigantic natural experiments in countries where (for example) vaccination types and schedules have changed with absolutely no effect on rates of autism whatsoever. No, people have looked over and over and over for an "environmental exposure" explanation for autism, and nothing has emerged. But I believe what Peter Marks told us in his resignation letter: Kennedy has his mind made up already and is asking people to go prop up his conclusions. [bold added; italics and link in original]

As if that isn't bad enough, Lowe reports that Kennedy went on a truly nutty rant in his official capacity (!) later on in the same week he made the above announcement.

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows much about Kennedy or about science, but there might be revelations to otherwise rational people who don't know much about Kennedy or who are unfamiliar with how scientific research actually occurs.

-- CAV