Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged to tackle high rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity as President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services. They\u2019re goals that many in the public health world find themselves agreeing with \u2014 despite fearing what else the infamous anti-vaccine activist may do in the post. <\/p>\n
Just don\u2019t suggest that he tackle those goals with medications like Ozempic. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re counting on selling it to Americans because we\u2019re so stupid and so addicted to drugs,\u201d Kennedy said in an appearance with Fox News\u2019 Greg Gutfeld that he posted to Instagram last month, concluding that Ozempic, a wildly popular medicine approved to treat type 2 diabetes and used off-label for weight loss, is not going to \u201cMake America Healthy Again.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kennedy claimed that Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic, doesn\u2019t market the medicine in its home country of Denmark, where \u201cthey do not recommend it for diabetes or obesity; they recommend dietary and behavioral changes.\u201d <\/p>\n
In fact, Denmark does use Ozempic, so much so that the Danish Medicines Agency said in May that it would restrict its use until after people had tried less expensive medications to treat diabetes. Instead of a shift to eschew medication in favor of lifestyle changes, as Kennedy suggested, it was a cost-cutting move, since more than 100,000 people had received the drug or others in its class, known as GLP-1 receptor agonists. <\/p>\n
Denmark also uses Ozempic\u2019s sister drug approved for weight loss, Wegovy, and has similarly grappled with the cost, questioning whether its benefits justify them. It\u2019s a debate also taking place in the US, where the drugs are priced far higher. <\/p>\n
Kennedy said in the same appearance that the European Union \u201cis right now investigating Ozempic for suicidal ideation,\u201d although the European regulator concluded in April that available evidence doesn\u2019t suggest Ozempic and other GLP-1 medicines cause suicidal thoughts or actions. <\/p>\n
The US Food and Drug Administration, which Kennedy would oversee as HHS secretary, also reached that conclusion, although it\u2019s continuing to monitor for potential risk. <\/p>\n
Those kind of confident but false or misleading assertions are Kennedy\u2019s signatures, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. And they can be especially dangerous, he said, when applied to public health bedrocks like vaccines. <\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s anti-vaccine stance put public health experts on edge even before Trump announced Thursday that Kennedy was his choice to run a department encompassing the FDA, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and more. <\/p>\n
Kennedy claims he\u2019s not anti-vaccine, but he has falsely said they cause autism, may cause more deaths than they prevent and could have sparked some of the world\u2019s deadliest pandemics. <\/strong> <\/p>\n \u201cIt will hurt children all across America\u201d if Kennedy\u2019s put in charge of HHS, said Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, a physician who helped with a vaccination effort in Samoa after a deadly measles outbreak there in 2019 that\u2019s been linked to misinformation spread by Kennedy \u2014 a connection that Kennedy <\/strong>denies. \u201cLet\u2019s rethink this. Let\u2019s pull back this nomination and let him go be some part of the Environmental Protection Agency.\u201d <\/p>\n Many in the public health world see Kennedy\u2019s focus on pesticide regulation or rethinking agricultural subsidies as potentially positive moves and a safer place for him to work <\/strong>than the department that oversees vaccine regulation. <\/p>\n Even as they agree that it\u2019s important to address growing rates of diabetes and obesity, doctors in that field say Kennedy\u2019s plans miss the mark. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is wrong to assume that people with high body weight and BMI just sit around and eat low-quality food,\u201d said Dr. Jody Dushay, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an attending physician in endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. \u201cTaking medication to treat obesity should not be demonized.\u201d <\/p>\n Kennedy claimed in the same Fox segment that if the US spent a fraction of what it would cost to treat every overweight person in the US with Ozempic \u2014 not something anyone\u2019s suggesting, as GLP-1 drugs aren\u2019t approved for everyone who\u2019s overweight \u2014 on \u201cgiving good food, three meals a day to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight.\u201d <\/p>\n Dr. Angela Fitch, co-founder and chief medical officer of Knownwell, a provider specializing in health care for people with obesity, said Kennedy\u2019s suggestion that diet and exercise alone can solve obesity \u201covernight\u201d would set back hard-won efforts to better address the condition. <\/p>\n Dr. Daniel Drucker, a pioneer of research into GLP-1, the hormone Ozempic and similar drugs mimic, agreed. <\/p>\n The GLP-1 class has revolutionized the way doctors approach weight-loss treatment because it offers therapy that works \u2013 clinical trials showed 15 to 20% loss of body weight, on average \u2013 after decades of meager options with often severe safety issues. Doctors don\u2019t argue the medicines alone are the solution to growing rates of obesity, but nor do they think they should be abandoned, and they\u2019re recommended on top of lifestyle changes including healthy diets and exercise. <\/p>\n Not everyone with obesity will want the drugs, and for some, they may have strong side effects such as nausea. Additionally, many people don\u2019t have insurance that will cover them, or obesity care generally \u2014 a problem that Fitch argues would go a lot further to tackling obesity in the US, if addressed. <\/p>\n In a social media post in September, Kennedy acknowledged \u201cthat weight-shaming is cruel and that obesity is not a failure of character\u201d and suggested instead that \u201cour sickening food system\u201d is partly to blame. <\/p>\n Doctors who treat people with obesity suggest that fixing the food system shouldn\u2019t be mutually exclusive with using weight-loss medications, when appropriate. <\/p>\n Kennedy\u2019s views on Ozempic don\u2019t appear to be shared universally throughout Trump\u2019s orbit. In a post on Friday, Elon Musk, the billionaire who\u2019s been tapped to cut government spending in the Trump administration, suggested making GLP-1 drugs \u201cavailable at low cost to Americans who wish to use them would greatly improve health and reduce health-care costs.\u201d <\/p>\n Musk said in October of 2022 he had been using Wegovy. <\/p>\n Kennedy told NPR that Trump expects him to show \u201cmeasurable impacts on a diminishment of chronic disease within two years.\u201d He has suggested getting there through measures including prohibiting beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to use those benefits to buy soda or processed foods, and revisiting \u201cpesticide and other chemical-use standards.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s a goal Osterholm expressed skepticism he\u2019d meet. <\/p>\n \u201cWe all agree it\u2019s a very important issue,\u201d Osterholm said. \u201cBut a lot of his thinking is like \u2018A plus B plus C plus miracle, and you\u2019ve got an answer.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged to tackle high rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity as President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services. They\u2019re goals that many in the public health world find themselves agreeing with \u2014 despite fearing what else the infamous anti-vaccine activist …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1657,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":684,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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