Yes, science has failings, but the foundation of scientific thinking is to retest facts and assumptions. Therein lies the profound and overarching difference between MAHA and “believe science .” The “believe science” camp, in which I stand proudly, is and always has been (in this country) open to the possibility that science gets things wrong. MAHA, founded on assertions without evidence, requires perpetual, unquestioning and blind obedience to the cult leader of the moment. And here we are gutting the CDC and NIH including world-leading researchers in Alzheimer’s and cancer treatment, not to mention vaccines. The price will be rivers of blood and lost years of life.
One of the earliest people recorded with Long Covid in Australia was a disgustingly healthy emergency doctor in his mid 30s, who used to ride his bike to work every day. Absolute peak fitness, but Covid destroyed his life.
Every time someone says that Covid only affects people with 'comorbidities', I think of him. All the healthy living in the world didn't protect him - and if he could have avoided it long enough for the vaccine to be developed and distributed, he may have been fine.
Yes, and also what our medical system did with Tuskegee and Purdue Pharma is also actually criminal. We don't need to tit for tat, but I do think the answer is more complex than just "trust science!" It's worth considering that if our medical industrial complex actually served people then we wouldn't have a MAHA movement.
Yes, the medical community made mistakes and to their credit, eventually acknowledged same. Fauci gained fame by turning the tide to treat HIV rather than to shun the communities suffering from the disease and to essentially let them die.
You have to understand that my daughter is an OB/GYN in Texas. She has great empathy for the suffering of women - all women. As someone who has been accused of being raised a privileged white woman, she learned Spanish to better serve a population that was poorly served and is only being ostracized and threatened more. So I do not have a completely objective point of view - acknowledged. But at least I acknowledge my bias, as opposed to MAHAs.
I think the broader point is true too; you could replace 'medical industrial complex' with 'economy' and MAHA with MAGA in the last sentence. The hard part is that people who are upset are leaning in on hate and bigotry, and idk how much of that is the 'leaders' lying to them, and how much is something else.
You've set up a straw man called "The Medical Establishment". The establishment of which I belong has cured, healed and improved human lives far more than causing deaths. Otherwise we'd still see the life expectancy of humans to be around 48 years as it was 75-100 years ago.
“… dismissing MAHA as anti-intellectual is to dismiss the very real ways in which we have been, and are, and will continue to be failed by science and medicine.” So many of us have experienced such failures. Thank you for that powerful acknowledgment, Lyz.
this is so true. those of us who have worked in the medical field know full well that, so much of the time, medicine is a guessing game. doctors and nurses do their best (most of the time) but they aren't all-knowing. mistakes happen and not all professionals are as caring as they should be. that said, the vast majority of the folks who work in medicine are dedicated to helping their patients and families. thank you to all the doctors, nurses and medical staff out there!
So well said. I was raised to question authority (except not to question the Bible). Eventually my wife and I lived in a MAHA way, which led not only to home births with midwives, no vaccinations, and homeschooling, but also to living active and health-conscious lives, eating very healthily, and an inclination to not simply default to doctors visits and prescriptions. The result of this is that we are in our 60s and still quite healthy, we and our daughters are more balanced in our approach to the medical profession while still maintaining a commitment to living healthy lifestyles, and perhaps most importantly, our countercultural mentality led us to leave American Evangelicalism over ten years ago as we saw how religiously toxic it had become.
I don’t know if there is anything from our experiences that is worthy of emulation, but maybe this: we don’t fall into easy dismissiveness about those who differ from us. Like you, I understand the MAGA/MAHA world and have compassion for those trapped by hate- and fear-filled ideologies, even as I do what I can to combat the growth and spread of what we used to believe.
Life, and people, are complicated. Nothing fits into easy and permanent dualities. To keep our hearts loving even as we hate evil is the work of a lifetime.
There is a rage against big Pharma, against a broken health care system that informs much of the MAHA movement. To simply dismiss people who support RFK Jr as ignorant troglodytes is to alienate potential allies. Half of this country has not simply lost its mind. They have chosen very bad leaders out of fear, and not all their fears are baseless.
It is vital to distinguish between the grifting leaders and the people on whom they prey. There are lots of good reasons for people to mistrust the healthcare system, it being ruinously expensive even for the insured is a big one. There is also the fact that many providers are, let’s just say, less than perfectly tactful. (It’s silly, but I have a phobia of hypodermic needles so bad that I always get faint and have been known to vomit merely at the sight of one. Being told that I’m a coward for not liking to be stabbed doesn’t improve my opinion of nurses.)
That said, RFK is a lying grifter who makes people’s lives much, much worse for nothing more than his own enrichment. Conmen like Alex Jones who sell worthless but extremely expensive sugar pills should be prosecuted. They kill people. Still, we need to reserve our ire for the parasites and our compassion for their victims.
I hear you. Yet I don’t think it is as simple as saying RFK Jr. is a lying grifter, any more than it is helpful to vilify Fauci for his missteps/mishandling of various aspects of care during the pandemic. It’s so very easy to spend our precious emotional and psychological capital on hate. Self-righteousness is a powerful drug that I have overdosed on too many times.
So while I agree that it is important to distinguish between predators and victims, on some level we are all victims. We are all connected to each other, whether we like it or not. Practically, at least for me, this means acknowledging (for example) the legitimate grievances and fears of those few in my orbit who have supported Trump and Co.
It’s easy (and satisfying) to give in to condescension, hate and snark. And there is a place for sharp humor (which is one reason I’m a supporter of MYAM). Lyz is showing us a way to humanize those with whom we disagree. This is hard and valuable work, especially if we want to find a collective way forward.
The era of Trump will pass; may it not be followed by a repressive regime that we are more comfortable with.
There is no way you can compare Fauci to RFK Jr. Can you list the missteps Fauci made as he had to deal with a totally incompetent president and administration whose only concern was not to look bad so Trump could get re-elected? Meanwhile, millions of Americans died while Trump fiddled around. It’s no coincidence that the massive deaths stopped after vaccinations were created. Yes, vaccines aren’t perfect, but they do save lives for most
I agree, but perhaps I wasn’t clear. The Right/Libertarian folks have demonized Fauci. My point is that it is easy to demonize and that instinct is easy to see in others, less so in ourselves.
I think you articulate something really important here, something that needs to be taken into consideration when trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between virulent mistrust of science and the very real and tangible benefits science has provided the human race.
I have multiple chronic illnesses and have been on a medical odyssey for the last twenty years. I have had both good and bad experiences with doctors, and for sure having a bad experience with a medical professional when you're already in a highly vulnerable state does serious and sometimes irreversible damage. I have had to do a lot of doctor shopping to find professionals I feel comfortable with because I have had to fight at times to get doctors to take me seriously and provide me with the care I need. And as frustrating as that has been for me, I am 100% aware of how privileged I am to live in an area that offers me multiple options and to have enough insurance coverage and financial security to enable me to do that doctor shopping.
If I didn't have that insurance coverage and financial security, I might very well not be here to type this because the specialists I need to see, the procedures I need to have regularly, and the medications I need to take to manage my conditions are all hideously expensive. Without access to modern medicine, I would for sure be dead right now. I think this tension is the problem with healthcare in general. I am both grateful for it and sometimes deeply mistrustful of it. It is so expensive, so hard to obtain, and so dehumanizing that I also fully understand why some people reject it altogether.
The problem is that the MAHA movements isn't proposing any real changes and some of what they're proposing will do active harm. Supplements and dietary changes are not going to fix my issues the way a lot of MAHA proponents claim. However, I fully understand the deep-seated need people feel to find healthcare that feels empowering and responsive to individual needs. We would all benefit if we could figure out how to harness that energy to create a system that serves the needs of human beings instead of venture capitalists and pharmaceutical corporations.
Yeah, the ableism and eugenics of the MAHA-minded folks is what bothers me. The Individual Responsibility of it all that misses how important and necessary community and social nets are for folks, especially those of us who are disabled.
Yes, this is such a HUGE issue. A lot of people deep into wellness cross the line into the territory of "health is a personal responsibility; therefore, if you're unhealthy it's because you're doing something wrong, which means it's your fault." I'm all for seeking out multiple methods of treating illness, but the worry I feel at the possibility of being denied the care and access to the medications I need is very real. We've already seen RFK Jr. flirting with this by being so vague about the measles vaccine and then suggesting people can treat measles with vitamin A. What happens when this slides into "you can't have the vaccine because you should take vitamin A instead"?
As another chronically ill person, I understand why people reject the medical system we have in the US. It's the worst way to be treated for your illness except for all the others, most of which aren't quite as bad but don't provide any relief at all. Ha ha only serious.
This is a larger pattern. For example, our immigration system is broken and has been that way for a long time.
Closer to home for me, many college campuses and municipalities have responded poorly, if at all, to a documented rise in often violent antisemitic incidents that leave Jewish people feeling under threat - a trend that is now nearly 10 years old.
In these cases, as well as medical science as you say, the MAGA approach is really more about exploiting people's fears and grievances than it is about leaning in and making anything better.
I think a lot about Charlottesville when I hear the current administration is threatening to defund colleges and universities for not being harsher on antisemitism. The cynicism is astounding.
Wherever you fit on the slider bar of Left vs Right it is always in your best interests to employ critical thinking combined with curiosity. The latter to keep open to new information and perspectives. The former to ask whose pocket benefits. Thanks for this.
My son, my oldest, was born in 2003, at what felt like the height of the attachment parenting movement, in a crunchy college town, a blue dot in a red district, with a vibrant farmer's market and natural foods co-op. And my son was born to a mother who was deeply anxious, traumatized, and looking for anything-- any idea, any tactic-- that would make sense out of a dangerous world and a debilitating loss of a sense of self.
So, when the attachment folks insisted that I breast feed on demand, co-sleep, and never put my son down for fear that his crying was indication of my inflicting deep, irreversible attachment wounds upon him, I listened. When anti-vaccine folks suggested that the expanded vaccination schedule might contribute to the development of auto-immune disorders (which he had coming down from both sides of the family), I listened. When we moved next door to a family dairy farm with an Organic Valley contract, a picture of Dubya and Laura up in the processing room, who were willing to sell us raw milk off the bulk tank, I listened to those folks who insisted that "live" food, full of enzymes, was better for all of us.
It was a mixed bag, in the end. Attachment parenting mandates, on demand breast feeding, and the resultant guilt when my baby's "strong attachment" came at the expense of post-partum depression, debilitating exhaustion and resentment, was a nightmare. Delaying vaccines for both my kids until after their first birthdays (to let their immune systems develop fully, supposedly) didn't seem to hurt or help them particularly. The raw milk? Delicious, honestly. I'd be happily buying it by the gallon jar off the bulk tank if I still lived next door. (Also a fan of arnica, both oral and topical, for bruising. Works like a charm. And both my kids were born at home.)
Several of the other moms who had kids around the same age have gone from attachment parenting, vaccine questions, and raw milk fandom to the dark side of conspiracies. They buy Kennedy's kool-aid and it's disturbing. But they're not stupid people. They're women with anxiety and suspicion about a medical establishment that, more often than not and at best, ignores and condescends to women. At worst, it experiments on them, as you say.
To draw them back away from the dark side you have to understand where they're coming from, or you're just repeating the ignoring and condescension, which pushes them farther away.
I have just discovered arnica cream. It is the elixir of youth! I have degenerative arthritis in a hip which produces pretty much constant pain and stiffness. Arnica almost eliminates the pain and does eliminate the stiffness.
Based on this I expect Kennedy to ban it for Reasons.
When I take a fall or have muscle pain, I always start it internally via the little homeopathic sugar pills and also do it topically at the same time. The two together work so fast.
I'm definitely not qualified to say. But Mount Sinai says, "When used topically or in a homeopathic remedy, there are no known interactions with arnica and conventional medications." Homeopathic amounts are infinitesimal by design, so that makes sense.
thanks. i'll do a bit more research. i have to be careful with things like voltaren as they can interfere. i haven't used the arnica since i began all the new meds but will definitely return to it if it seems okay for me. this conversation has been very helpful.
thank you, asha, for sharing this. when my two daughters were young, we lived in a small iowa town that had a woman doctor who was from mexico. surprising, huh? anyway, she was a firm believer in using as much natural remedy as possible and only using medications when necessary. we learned a lot from her and, after we moved, continued to walk that middle way between the two approaches.
p.s. you're right. raw milk tastes amazing. it's so much better than the processed kind but there are risks involved unless you are sure of the source.
For sure. I wouldn't buy it from a farmer I didn't know, who wasn't following organic methods. But raw milk with a spoonful of local maple syrup was what finally got my son off the breast (He was a booby whore who did NOT want to wean.) so, to me, it was a godsend.
Excellent article. The most effective lies are half-truths, and the MAHAts have a lot of truth they can start with to make people mistrust the medical system. Even the raw milk bit has some truth — not the part that pasteurization destroys the Magic Health Sparkles but the part that raw milk isn’t poisonous. My grandfather ran a dairy and sold milk in his small town from 1928 until 1969. He kept two Jerseys to provide milk for himself and my grandmother until he died. The difference between his milk and the raw milk sold at suburban food coops is that there were about three hours between the cow and the customer, and the customer got one or two quarts every day. Grandaddy was extremely careful and followed strict rules about the health of his cows, the sterilization of equipment, and the storage temperature of his product. Everyone in town knew him, so there was a social enforcement mechanism if anyone got sick from his products. The system and his own integrity made the product safe. I can’t reproduce a lifelong relationship with raw milk producers now, so I rely on government regulations and inspectors to keep things safe for me.
That is the main problem with all of the New Right’s nonsense. They idolize an image of the world and don’t analyze further to see what the systems were that produced it. Human society is extremely complex. Even a single product like milk requires a huge network of people and institutions to produce it safely. We need to continue to improve those institutions and networks, but that’s boring and involves a lot more than One Weird Trick, so let’s just yell at immigrants and feminists instead.
I have often thought that the right likes to make rules that punish people for not living in the world they imagine to be morally correct, without the "ok then what next" piece; while the left is (when they're on their game) more interested in making rules for how things actually are. E.g., the whole concept of abstinence-based sex ed, no abortions, and then no safety net.
When I was in high school, I tried raw milk once - we were visiting my father's aunt and uncle near Trinidad, Colorado. They did not pasteurize milk - so with dinner I said I'd try some. My dear old Dad followed my lead and tried some as well. It was different but good. In Ohio where I grew up, there is a farm/store/restaurant called "Young's Jersey Dairy" just north of Yellow Springs after you cross the Clark County Border. A classmate in the early 1980's was telling us that the laws about pasteurization were so strict that Young's was the only place that could sell raw milk (years later I had moved back to Ohio for awhile for a job offer I had - I saw no raw milk for sale in the early 2000's). Finally at age 7, we were visiting my father's family on the ranch in western Colorado - I got to milk a cow for the first time, then we took the milk back to my aunt and uncle's place, and my aunt got out this thing that looked like a big coffee urn. Like a coffee urn, it was a heating appliance - a pasteurizer. I helped her set up the pasteurizer and got to plug it in, and when the buzzer sounded, I unplugged it - sadly I didn't get to try that milk as my aunt put it in the refrigerator right away. PS: While my uncle was milking the cow a cat came by and he squirted milk into it's open jaws.
RFK Jr. and his cohort may be excused for some skepticism about science and medicine, although the examples you mention are the failings of people, and don't on their own invalidate the results of scientific studies. There is no excuse for pushing "cures" that have no valid scientific or medical basis. That, to me, is the reason MAHA can reasonably be accused of being anti-intellectual.
This is going to be halfbaked at best, but what I think irks me the most is that yes, people - especially women, especially women of color - have been let down by the patriarchal medical establishment. And what we see now is a patriarchal lashing out and raising up of some kind of white rural mother ideal. I really don't have clear thoughts, just anger at the white woman of it all.
I loved this article - it's an important perspective. Everything is scary and it's hard to know who to trust! Also, we have to remember beliefs are social because humans are social. If everyone at your church or social group believes something, it's hard to fight against thinking that they might be right.
Lyz- your story about how the doctors treated you when you were asking for information is so enraging. I'm sorry you went through that, and I'm glad you wrote about it. The myriad ways in which women are told they can't advocate for themselves or that they don't know anything is also enraging. I'm turning 60 tomorrow, and I credit this to a mix of trad and non-trad health approaches. I'm incredibly lucky to have found doctors who listen, but I haven't always had them. I still live with a ton of fatigue that no one has figured out, and it will be some miracle if I ever do. I credit my oncologist with referring me to a naturopath who specialized in cancer treatment. I think the most criminal thing beyond medical professionals dismissing people who probably know themselves is insurance companies making decisions based on profits.
Yes, science has failings, but the foundation of scientific thinking is to retest facts and assumptions. Therein lies the profound and overarching difference between MAHA and “believe science .” The “believe science” camp, in which I stand proudly, is and always has been (in this country) open to the possibility that science gets things wrong. MAHA, founded on assertions without evidence, requires perpetual, unquestioning and blind obedience to the cult leader of the moment. And here we are gutting the CDC and NIH including world-leading researchers in Alzheimer’s and cancer treatment, not to mention vaccines. The price will be rivers of blood and lost years of life.
One of the earliest people recorded with Long Covid in Australia was a disgustingly healthy emergency doctor in his mid 30s, who used to ride his bike to work every day. Absolute peak fitness, but Covid destroyed his life.
Every time someone says that Covid only affects people with 'comorbidities', I think of him. All the healthy living in the world didn't protect him - and if he could have avoided it long enough for the vaccine to be developed and distributed, he may have been fine.
I think this interpretation requires an almost dogged and intentional denial of the way that the medical establishment has systemically failed people and resulted in their deaths. https://time.com/5494404/tressie-mcmillan-cottom-thick-pregnancy-competent/
There are always failures in medicine. But what the MAHA movement is doing is almost criminal
Yes, and also what our medical system did with Tuskegee and Purdue Pharma is also actually criminal. We don't need to tit for tat, but I do think the answer is more complex than just "trust science!" It's worth considering that if our medical industrial complex actually served people then we wouldn't have a MAHA movement.
Yes, the medical community made mistakes and to their credit, eventually acknowledged same. Fauci gained fame by turning the tide to treat HIV rather than to shun the communities suffering from the disease and to essentially let them die.
You have to understand that my daughter is an OB/GYN in Texas. She has great empathy for the suffering of women - all women. As someone who has been accused of being raised a privileged white woman, she learned Spanish to better serve a population that was poorly served and is only being ostracized and threatened more. So I do not have a completely objective point of view - acknowledged. But at least I acknowledge my bias, as opposed to MAHAs.
I mean, Lyz doesn't HAVE to understand anything.
You weren't "failed" by science. You were failed by fallible humans.
I think the broader point is true too; you could replace 'medical industrial complex' with 'economy' and MAHA with MAGA in the last sentence. The hard part is that people who are upset are leaning in on hate and bigotry, and idk how much of that is the 'leaders' lying to them, and how much is something else.
You've set up a straw man called "The Medical Establishment". The establishment of which I belong has cured, healed and improved human lives far more than causing deaths. Otherwise we'd still see the life expectancy of humans to be around 48 years as it was 75-100 years ago.
“… dismissing MAHA as anti-intellectual is to dismiss the very real ways in which we have been, and are, and will continue to be failed by science and medicine.” So many of us have experienced such failures. Thank you for that powerful acknowledgment, Lyz.
this is so true. those of us who have worked in the medical field know full well that, so much of the time, medicine is a guessing game. doctors and nurses do their best (most of the time) but they aren't all-knowing. mistakes happen and not all professionals are as caring as they should be. that said, the vast majority of the folks who work in medicine are dedicated to helping their patients and families. thank you to all the doctors, nurses and medical staff out there!
So well said. I was raised to question authority (except not to question the Bible). Eventually my wife and I lived in a MAHA way, which led not only to home births with midwives, no vaccinations, and homeschooling, but also to living active and health-conscious lives, eating very healthily, and an inclination to not simply default to doctors visits and prescriptions. The result of this is that we are in our 60s and still quite healthy, we and our daughters are more balanced in our approach to the medical profession while still maintaining a commitment to living healthy lifestyles, and perhaps most importantly, our countercultural mentality led us to leave American Evangelicalism over ten years ago as we saw how religiously toxic it had become.
I don’t know if there is anything from our experiences that is worthy of emulation, but maybe this: we don’t fall into easy dismissiveness about those who differ from us. Like you, I understand the MAGA/MAHA world and have compassion for those trapped by hate- and fear-filled ideologies, even as I do what I can to combat the growth and spread of what we used to believe.
Life, and people, are complicated. Nothing fits into easy and permanent dualities. To keep our hearts loving even as we hate evil is the work of a lifetime.
There is a rage against big Pharma, against a broken health care system that informs much of the MAHA movement. To simply dismiss people who support RFK Jr as ignorant troglodytes is to alienate potential allies. Half of this country has not simply lost its mind. They have chosen very bad leaders out of fear, and not all their fears are baseless.
It took courage to write what you did today.
It is vital to distinguish between the grifting leaders and the people on whom they prey. There are lots of good reasons for people to mistrust the healthcare system, it being ruinously expensive even for the insured is a big one. There is also the fact that many providers are, let’s just say, less than perfectly tactful. (It’s silly, but I have a phobia of hypodermic needles so bad that I always get faint and have been known to vomit merely at the sight of one. Being told that I’m a coward for not liking to be stabbed doesn’t improve my opinion of nurses.)
That said, RFK is a lying grifter who makes people’s lives much, much worse for nothing more than his own enrichment. Conmen like Alex Jones who sell worthless but extremely expensive sugar pills should be prosecuted. They kill people. Still, we need to reserve our ire for the parasites and our compassion for their victims.
I hear you. Yet I don’t think it is as simple as saying RFK Jr. is a lying grifter, any more than it is helpful to vilify Fauci for his missteps/mishandling of various aspects of care during the pandemic. It’s so very easy to spend our precious emotional and psychological capital on hate. Self-righteousness is a powerful drug that I have overdosed on too many times.
So while I agree that it is important to distinguish between predators and victims, on some level we are all victims. We are all connected to each other, whether we like it or not. Practically, at least for me, this means acknowledging (for example) the legitimate grievances and fears of those few in my orbit who have supported Trump and Co.
It’s easy (and satisfying) to give in to condescension, hate and snark. And there is a place for sharp humor (which is one reason I’m a supporter of MYAM). Lyz is showing us a way to humanize those with whom we disagree. This is hard and valuable work, especially if we want to find a collective way forward.
The era of Trump will pass; may it not be followed by a repressive regime that we are more comfortable with.
There is no way you can compare Fauci to RFK Jr. Can you list the missteps Fauci made as he had to deal with a totally incompetent president and administration whose only concern was not to look bad so Trump could get re-elected? Meanwhile, millions of Americans died while Trump fiddled around. It’s no coincidence that the massive deaths stopped after vaccinations were created. Yes, vaccines aren’t perfect, but they do save lives for most
I agree, but perhaps I wasn’t clear. The Right/Libertarian folks have demonized Fauci. My point is that it is easy to demonize and that instinct is easy to see in others, less so in ourselves.
So much of this movement is fear-based!
I think you articulate something really important here, something that needs to be taken into consideration when trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between virulent mistrust of science and the very real and tangible benefits science has provided the human race.
I have multiple chronic illnesses and have been on a medical odyssey for the last twenty years. I have had both good and bad experiences with doctors, and for sure having a bad experience with a medical professional when you're already in a highly vulnerable state does serious and sometimes irreversible damage. I have had to do a lot of doctor shopping to find professionals I feel comfortable with because I have had to fight at times to get doctors to take me seriously and provide me with the care I need. And as frustrating as that has been for me, I am 100% aware of how privileged I am to live in an area that offers me multiple options and to have enough insurance coverage and financial security to enable me to do that doctor shopping.
If I didn't have that insurance coverage and financial security, I might very well not be here to type this because the specialists I need to see, the procedures I need to have regularly, and the medications I need to take to manage my conditions are all hideously expensive. Without access to modern medicine, I would for sure be dead right now. I think this tension is the problem with healthcare in general. I am both grateful for it and sometimes deeply mistrustful of it. It is so expensive, so hard to obtain, and so dehumanizing that I also fully understand why some people reject it altogether.
The problem is that the MAHA movements isn't proposing any real changes and some of what they're proposing will do active harm. Supplements and dietary changes are not going to fix my issues the way a lot of MAHA proponents claim. However, I fully understand the deep-seated need people feel to find healthcare that feels empowering and responsive to individual needs. We would all benefit if we could figure out how to harness that energy to create a system that serves the needs of human beings instead of venture capitalists and pharmaceutical corporations.
Yeah, the ableism and eugenics of the MAHA-minded folks is what bothers me. The Individual Responsibility of it all that misses how important and necessary community and social nets are for folks, especially those of us who are disabled.
Yes, this is such a HUGE issue. A lot of people deep into wellness cross the line into the territory of "health is a personal responsibility; therefore, if you're unhealthy it's because you're doing something wrong, which means it's your fault." I'm all for seeking out multiple methods of treating illness, but the worry I feel at the possibility of being denied the care and access to the medications I need is very real. We've already seen RFK Jr. flirting with this by being so vague about the measles vaccine and then suggesting people can treat measles with vitamin A. What happens when this slides into "you can't have the vaccine because you should take vitamin A instead"?
As another chronically ill person, I understand why people reject the medical system we have in the US. It's the worst way to be treated for your illness except for all the others, most of which aren't quite as bad but don't provide any relief at all. Ha ha only serious.
This is a larger pattern. For example, our immigration system is broken and has been that way for a long time.
Closer to home for me, many college campuses and municipalities have responded poorly, if at all, to a documented rise in often violent antisemitic incidents that leave Jewish people feeling under threat - a trend that is now nearly 10 years old.
In these cases, as well as medical science as you say, the MAGA approach is really more about exploiting people's fears and grievances than it is about leaning in and making anything better.
I forgot to add - what is especially infuriating about it is how cynical it is.
I think a lot about Charlottesville when I hear the current administration is threatening to defund colleges and universities for not being harsher on antisemitism. The cynicism is astounding.
Wherever you fit on the slider bar of Left vs Right it is always in your best interests to employ critical thinking combined with curiosity. The latter to keep open to new information and perspectives. The former to ask whose pocket benefits. Thanks for this.
My son, my oldest, was born in 2003, at what felt like the height of the attachment parenting movement, in a crunchy college town, a blue dot in a red district, with a vibrant farmer's market and natural foods co-op. And my son was born to a mother who was deeply anxious, traumatized, and looking for anything-- any idea, any tactic-- that would make sense out of a dangerous world and a debilitating loss of a sense of self.
So, when the attachment folks insisted that I breast feed on demand, co-sleep, and never put my son down for fear that his crying was indication of my inflicting deep, irreversible attachment wounds upon him, I listened. When anti-vaccine folks suggested that the expanded vaccination schedule might contribute to the development of auto-immune disorders (which he had coming down from both sides of the family), I listened. When we moved next door to a family dairy farm with an Organic Valley contract, a picture of Dubya and Laura up in the processing room, who were willing to sell us raw milk off the bulk tank, I listened to those folks who insisted that "live" food, full of enzymes, was better for all of us.
It was a mixed bag, in the end. Attachment parenting mandates, on demand breast feeding, and the resultant guilt when my baby's "strong attachment" came at the expense of post-partum depression, debilitating exhaustion and resentment, was a nightmare. Delaying vaccines for both my kids until after their first birthdays (to let their immune systems develop fully, supposedly) didn't seem to hurt or help them particularly. The raw milk? Delicious, honestly. I'd be happily buying it by the gallon jar off the bulk tank if I still lived next door. (Also a fan of arnica, both oral and topical, for bruising. Works like a charm. And both my kids were born at home.)
Several of the other moms who had kids around the same age have gone from attachment parenting, vaccine questions, and raw milk fandom to the dark side of conspiracies. They buy Kennedy's kool-aid and it's disturbing. But they're not stupid people. They're women with anxiety and suspicion about a medical establishment that, more often than not and at best, ignores and condescends to women. At worst, it experiments on them, as you say.
To draw them back away from the dark side you have to understand where they're coming from, or you're just repeating the ignoring and condescension, which pushes them farther away.
I have just discovered arnica cream. It is the elixir of youth! I have degenerative arthritis in a hip which produces pretty much constant pain and stiffness. Arnica almost eliminates the pain and does eliminate the stiffness.
Based on this I expect Kennedy to ban it for Reasons.
When I take a fall or have muscle pain, I always start it internally via the little homeopathic sugar pills and also do it topically at the same time. The two together work so fast.
i've only used the topical variety. i'll try the pills as well next time. do you happen to know if there is any contraindication with heart meds?
I'm definitely not qualified to say. But Mount Sinai says, "When used topically or in a homeopathic remedy, there are no known interactions with arnica and conventional medications." Homeopathic amounts are infinitesimal by design, so that makes sense.
thanks. i'll do a bit more research. i have to be careful with things like voltaren as they can interfere. i haven't used the arnica since i began all the new meds but will definitely return to it if it seems okay for me. this conversation has been very helpful.
it does work!
thank you, asha, for sharing this. when my two daughters were young, we lived in a small iowa town that had a woman doctor who was from mexico. surprising, huh? anyway, she was a firm believer in using as much natural remedy as possible and only using medications when necessary. we learned a lot from her and, after we moved, continued to walk that middle way between the two approaches.
p.s. you're right. raw milk tastes amazing. it's so much better than the processed kind but there are risks involved unless you are sure of the source.
For sure. I wouldn't buy it from a farmer I didn't know, who wasn't following organic methods. But raw milk with a spoonful of local maple syrup was what finally got my son off the breast (He was a booby whore who did NOT want to wean.) so, to me, it was a godsend.
sounds like a miracle cure to me. 🤣
Just to be clear the processing is heating it until the bacteria dies.
So well said. You have allowed your journey to be rooted in love and an expansive perspective. Kudos.
Excellent article. The most effective lies are half-truths, and the MAHAts have a lot of truth they can start with to make people mistrust the medical system. Even the raw milk bit has some truth — not the part that pasteurization destroys the Magic Health Sparkles but the part that raw milk isn’t poisonous. My grandfather ran a dairy and sold milk in his small town from 1928 until 1969. He kept two Jerseys to provide milk for himself and my grandmother until he died. The difference between his milk and the raw milk sold at suburban food coops is that there were about three hours between the cow and the customer, and the customer got one or two quarts every day. Grandaddy was extremely careful and followed strict rules about the health of his cows, the sterilization of equipment, and the storage temperature of his product. Everyone in town knew him, so there was a social enforcement mechanism if anyone got sick from his products. The system and his own integrity made the product safe. I can’t reproduce a lifelong relationship with raw milk producers now, so I rely on government regulations and inspectors to keep things safe for me.
That is the main problem with all of the New Right’s nonsense. They idolize an image of the world and don’t analyze further to see what the systems were that produced it. Human society is extremely complex. Even a single product like milk requires a huge network of people and institutions to produce it safely. We need to continue to improve those institutions and networks, but that’s boring and involves a lot more than One Weird Trick, so let’s just yell at immigrants and feminists instead.
I have often thought that the right likes to make rules that punish people for not living in the world they imagine to be morally correct, without the "ok then what next" piece; while the left is (when they're on their game) more interested in making rules for how things actually are. E.g., the whole concept of abstinence-based sex ed, no abortions, and then no safety net.
Wow yes. I have no grace in my heart for RFK who I see as a predator, but otherwise you make powerful points
When I was in high school, I tried raw milk once - we were visiting my father's aunt and uncle near Trinidad, Colorado. They did not pasteurize milk - so with dinner I said I'd try some. My dear old Dad followed my lead and tried some as well. It was different but good. In Ohio where I grew up, there is a farm/store/restaurant called "Young's Jersey Dairy" just north of Yellow Springs after you cross the Clark County Border. A classmate in the early 1980's was telling us that the laws about pasteurization were so strict that Young's was the only place that could sell raw milk (years later I had moved back to Ohio for awhile for a job offer I had - I saw no raw milk for sale in the early 2000's). Finally at age 7, we were visiting my father's family on the ranch in western Colorado - I got to milk a cow for the first time, then we took the milk back to my aunt and uncle's place, and my aunt got out this thing that looked like a big coffee urn. Like a coffee urn, it was a heating appliance - a pasteurizer. I helped her set up the pasteurizer and got to plug it in, and when the buzzer sounded, I unplugged it - sadly I didn't get to try that milk as my aunt put it in the refrigerator right away. PS: While my uncle was milking the cow a cat came by and he squirted milk into it's open jaws.
RFK Jr. and his cohort may be excused for some skepticism about science and medicine, although the examples you mention are the failings of people, and don't on their own invalidate the results of scientific studies. There is no excuse for pushing "cures" that have no valid scientific or medical basis. That, to me, is the reason MAHA can reasonably be accused of being anti-intellectual.
This is going to be halfbaked at best, but what I think irks me the most is that yes, people - especially women, especially women of color - have been let down by the patriarchal medical establishment. And what we see now is a patriarchal lashing out and raising up of some kind of white rural mother ideal. I really don't have clear thoughts, just anger at the white woman of it all.
i hear you.
Thank you, Lyz. As a rabid "trust the science" guy, I absolutely needed to read this.
I loved this article - it's an important perspective. Everything is scary and it's hard to know who to trust! Also, we have to remember beliefs are social because humans are social. If everyone at your church or social group believes something, it's hard to fight against thinking that they might be right.
Lyz- your story about how the doctors treated you when you were asking for information is so enraging. I'm sorry you went through that, and I'm glad you wrote about it. The myriad ways in which women are told they can't advocate for themselves or that they don't know anything is also enraging. I'm turning 60 tomorrow, and I credit this to a mix of trad and non-trad health approaches. I'm incredibly lucky to have found doctors who listen, but I haven't always had them. I still live with a ton of fatigue that no one has figured out, and it will be some miracle if I ever do. I credit my oncologist with referring me to a naturopath who specialized in cancer treatment. I think the most criminal thing beyond medical professionals dismissing people who probably know themselves is insurance companies making decisions based on profits.