Columnist Olin Rose-Bardawil: RFK, Jr. could bring change for Americans’ health woes

Olin Rose-Bardawil

Olin Rose-Bardawil

By OLIN ROSE-BARDAWIL

Published: 12-12-2024 4:13 PM

If you look at American public health data from the past few decades, one thing will be very clear: Americans are sicker now than perhaps at any time in our history.

An estimated 129 million people in the U.S. have at least 1 major chronic disease, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, according to the CDC.

The costs associated with treating chronic disease are just as staggering as the number of people it affects: The U.S. spends $3.7 trillion dollars a year treating chronic disease and mental health issues, more than it spends on education, defense, and infrastructure combined.

Until recently, the effects of chronic illness were not often raised as part of the political discussion of health care. It is an issue that has been steadily intensifying over the past few decades, but it seems only now Americans are waking up to the havoc long-term health issues are wreaking.

Many are worried that Donald Trump’s pick to lead the HHS and the person who has raised the most awareness around the issue of chronic disease, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is going to do more harm than good in the area of health.

But when it comes to chronic disease, Kennedy is one of the few people sounding the alarm on this pressing issue. Far too many in government health agencies have been captured by pharmaceutical corporations, and it seems like few health administrators want to get to the root of the problem, which is one that pharmaceutical drugs cannot solve.

Because of this, I believe the new conversations about health that Kennedy’s appointment will spark will be a net positive for the country.

In terms of diet and reforms to the food system, I think most people would probably support Kennedy’s proposals. Kennedy plans to increase regulation of a number of food dyes and other chemicals that are banned in many European countries, including the dye Red-40, because of their links to developmental disorders and even cancer in high doses.

Additionally, he has proposed to reform the SNAP food assistance program to promote the consumption of healthy foods rather than highly processed products, many of which the program currently subsidizes. If implemented, these changes could lead to significant improvements in the American food system and its relationship to Americans’ health.

Right now, the most important shift we should have in the way we discuss chronic illnesses like obesity and diabetes should be to remove blame from individuals who suffer from them, and instead hold accountable the many corporate interests that are the real threat to health.

Americans can no longer be healthy simply through willpower or healthy habits alone. The abundance of foods with effectively poisonous ingredients — along with the high prevalence of environmental toxins — makes it difficult to depend on individual choices to be healthy. This is especially the case for lower income Americans, who are currently bearing the burden of the American health system’s failings.

One of the major issues with the American way of approaching health, nutrition expert Barry M. Popkins says, is that we focus “on psychological rather than sociological origins for problems. We blame the individual — sloth and gluttony are the causes of obesity — and conclude that individual medical treatment is needed if the individual cannot change.”

I have written in my columns before about regulatory capture, and how various federal agencies have been hijacked by the industries they are supposed to be holding accountable. The failure of the FDA to regulate the food industry may be the best example of this corruption, and it poses one of the greatest threats to Americans.

Many experts now admit that the FDA’s food guidelines, like the infamous 1992 food pyramid, had no basis in actual science but were the result of lobbying from agriculture and food companies.

Today, Americans are paying the price for decades of this type of dishonesty and corruption. And unfortunately, they will continue to suffer until U.S. health agencies become willing to take any sort of responsibility for their failures.

You may not agree with Kennedy’s takes on topics like vaccine safety or fluoride in drinking water, some of which are not based in current science. However, it is hard to deny that his plans to tackle the root causes of chronic illness are desperately needed — and could lead to positive changes for the state of American health.

Martin Luther King Jr. was completely right in noting that “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane.” Right now, the failure to mitigate threats to Americans’ health is one of the most shocking injustices being committed.

Kennedy’s plan to tackle the injustice of chronic illness may not be perfect, but his recognition of the problem is an important first step in solving it. In the richest nation on Earth, 129 million people should not be suffering from major health conditions — but it does not have to be this way.

Olin Rose-Bardawil of Florence is a student at the Williston Northampton School and the editor in chief of the school’s newspaper, The Willistonian.