Dear Secretary Kennedy,
When the US Senate confirmed you as the 27th Secretary of the Department of Health and Human services last February, the newly formed “MAHA” coalition was energized. It was a testament to the political capital the President wielded at that time.
Those who have been following your work and leadership at the World Mercury Project and its evolution into Children’s Health Defense were perhaps more stunned than anything else. Few who were truly familiar with the formidable influence of Big-Pharma interests and depth of the agency capture at the HHS and its subdivisions could have expected such an abrupt upheaval around the authority governing public health in this country.
While many in our camp hoped for proper pre-licensure vaccine safety testing, the repeal of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a major overhaul of the vaccine adverse event reporting systems, the repeal of the PREP act, etc., I had more modest expectations.
I am a physician and former senior science editor for the Defender, the online CHD newsletter. I have since returned to my practice and presently work with medical professionals on a daily basis. They are and always have been well-intending, highly educated and, tragically, deeply programmed individuals. Few, if any of them, would ever accept such reformations coming from a “Kennedy HHS”. I know because I interact with them every day.
I anticipated that our own medical organizations would rally to thwart any action that attacked the mystique of vaccines and their purported history of miraculously improving public health. The medical establishment is patiently waiting for the next administration to appoint another figurehead to do the bidding of the Pharma Industrial complex and restore the status quo.
A true referendum on vaccines, THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE for nearly everyone in the MAHA camp, will never be a top down initiative. It is and always will be a grass-roots, bottom up movement. This should be evident by now if it wasn’t already.
Preserving your Credibility is Essential
While some of your supporters are now questioning your motives and intentions, others who are familiar with and admire your long record of diligently examining and critiquing the evidence of vaccine harm, inadequate safety regulation and rampant agency capture believe that your hands have been tied by an administration that doesn’t really serve the health of the American people. I have never questioned your motives.
On the other hand, by issuing a PREP (Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness) declaration last week for the antiviral drug, favipiravir in response to the recent outbreak of the Andes strain of Hantavirus, you are demonstrating an inexplicable lapse in sensibility. The extreme legal protection granted under the PREP declaration to anyone using this demonstrably dangerous drug is unjustified and arguably unconstitutional.
The Andes strain does not pose a biological threat to our national security. Moreover, physicians can already prescribe this medicine for off-label use if they wish. Through the power which you solely possess as HHS Secretary you have effectively increased risk to patients by eliminating any risk to prescribers. This is precisely what Alex Azar, one of your predecessors did on February 4, 2020, with regard to future countermeasures (i.e. modRNA shots) against SARS-COV2 before there was a single death from Covid-19 in this country. This is why the immense and yet to be fully appreciated damage to the health of potentially millions of people from the Covid shots will to continue to be ignored. If cases are never adjudicated, the system will not acknowledge them.
This declaration, though limited in scope, is medically and ethically indefensible in my opinion. Given the extremely limited number of potential cases and questionable effectiveness of the drug, the declaration offers benefit to no one and only jeopardizes your credibility amongst many.
Resigning is NOT Conceding Defeat. It’s a Path to Victory
We all have learned something through this year-long experiment. The experiment, for all practical purposes, has come to an end. It is time for you to resign and return to leading the movement which you brought into public discourse like no other has done before you.
How, you may ask, will a swath of passionate, well-informed citizens with no executive power or institutional authority upend a Pharma complex with staggering resources and tentacles which penetrate the media, editorial boards of the most venerated medical journals, medical organizations, politics and even their own regulatory bodies?
Answer: It must come through physicians themselves. Once they change their minds the CDC and their medical organizations will no longer hold sway over the way medicine is practiced in this country. This is a necessary step and an unavoidable reality.
At this moment this may seem impossible, but it isn’t. Even the most pro-vaccine doctor is trained and obligated to listen to their patients in the privacy of their office. As an anesthesiologist I interview dozens of patients daily. I regularly meet patients who express deep skepticism around the safety of the Covid shots they “chose” to take. They have been waiting for the medical establishment to validate what they have experienced: a decline, sometimes a precipitous one, in their own health or the health of someone they know following repeated exposure to modRNA technology. This unfortunate and tragic situation also offers people the space to seriously question the evidence (or lack thereof) which supports the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule.
Patients, through a sacred relationship with their doctors, will have to push them to defend their opinion on the topic. As we both know, the truth and the evidence is on our side, not theirs. Doctors need to be forced to look harder. Nobody else but their own patients can impel them to do that. It is the only way.
This means we need a well-informed public and body politic. This will take time. Your voice is necessary. At this moment your influence over public opinion is trammelled by your association with the current administration. This has been immediately apparent and painful to witness.
You fulfilled your end of your political agreement by endorsing President Trump. Your endorsement arguably granted him the majority of the popular vote in the last election. This was a major boon to the present administration. Your support effectively gave the President a mandate to enforce his entire political agenda. Your supporters, who likely number in the tens of millions, would like you to move on, cease with the calculated flattery of our Commander-in-Chief and return to saying it like it is. That is what we voted for.
I urge you to act strategically once again. Resigning as Secretary of Health and Human Services will send a clear message to the millions of American citizens whose eyes are open that the fight to preserve the health of our children has reached the next stage.
There is very little to be gained by remaining in the President’s cabinet for another day even if you’ve been promised more freedom “to go wild on health and medicines” in the future. Doctors don’t trust their own eyes—and they trust you even less. That will not change in two years, especially if you stay where you are. You can never reach doctors until you reach their patients.
There is, however, much to be gained from leaving the HHS, but only if it is on your own terms. Your resignation will energize the movement, a movement that was never political and always based solely in the pursuit of the truth for the greater good.
Public skepticism around vaccine science and safety is growing. A recent survey from the highly regarded Annenberg Public Policy Center demonstrates that the public is presently equally divided between vaccine proponents and skeptics (see graphic below). In terms of public opinion, the momentum is on our side. That’s what the numbers show. That’s what I see in my clinical practice.
Your term as a public servant is finite. Leave with your integrity intact. You are going to need it more than anything else if you are serious about fixing the pediatric chronic disease epidemic.
Sincerely,
Madhava Setty, MD
I know Bobby. He is the same warrior he always was. Those of you with "all or nothing" instincts (and I respect and understand that) hate the fact that the PREP act still exists at all with regard to spikeshots. But do not get confused with the PREP exclusion for a tiny group of people (those in quarantine) who WANT to take an (admittedly mixed blessing/curse) drug for the next six weeks. You could not have issued a more limited, patient-centric, non-threatening and non-coercive to anyone rule...and for those who want it it was the fastest way to get it in when it might make a difference. (We all know it might not, but this is a patient choice only PREP exclusion.) Everyone recoils when you say "Oh no, he invoked PREP" and that is understandable. But go read the actual action and you will see how limited it actually is both in time and effect. Do not confuse this minor blip with the bigger issues or throw the baby out with the bathwater.
In the horrible world of politics, one must often do things that are unpalatable because vast forces of money are arrayed against one. The whole vaccine issue is one of those. But RFK Jr has, often quite cleverly, circumvented these forces by doing end runs that in hindsight are even cleverer than I at first thought. When he was appointed my comment was "It is far easier to be the underdog fighting against the big bad wolf (I know, mixed metaphor) than to be the dog that caught the car. And that is where we are now. Whatever Bobby gets done will be more than you will see over the next 20 (or more) years so let us hope he lasts as long as he can stand it and does as much as he can. If it makes you feel better to have someone saying "all the right things" that can actually do nothing about any of them that is your right. But I am not in that camp...I prefer someone doing as many right things as are physically and politically possible. One man's opinion.
I hope Bobby can hear this message from you. Sasha Latypova offered the same message from a more alienated perspective yesterday. https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/bobby-kennedy-fakes-a-pandemic-in
We need your reasoned voice and Sasha's shrill voice and everything in between. The question remains: Does Bobby know something that we don't that convinces him he will be able to accomplish his goals within a deeply corrupt administration? Or is he just seduced by power, as so many good people have been?