Per Trump: “Mr. Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
What “Chronic Disease epidemic”? I am not even sure what Trump or RFKJ might think this phrase means. The CDC defines it this way:
"Chronic diseases are defined broadly as conditions that last 1 year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living or both.
"Chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. They are also leading drivers of the nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual health care costs.123
“Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and 4 in 10 have two or more chronic diseases.2 Many preventable chronic diseases are caused by a short list of risk behaviors: smoking, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and excessive alcohol use.”
According to another source:
“The World Health Organization states that chronic diseases are not passed from person to person. They are of long duration and generally slow progression. The four main type are cardiovascular diseases (like heart attacks and stroke), cancers, chronic respiratory diseases (such as chronic obstructed pulmonary disease and asthma) and diabetes. They usually last for more than 3 months. Common features of chronic disease are; complex causality, with multiple factors leading to their onset a long development period, for which there may be no symptoms a prolonged course of illness, perhaps leading to other health complications associated functional impairment or disability.”
Despite the WHO’s definition of “epidemic,” the word is increasingly used by medical practitioners and researchers to refer also to non-contagious diseases and conditions.
It’s certainly true that a number of chronic diseases have been on the increase for years, and many are caused by harmful practices like smoking (though far fewer people now smoke than once did) and poor diets. The HHS might well be able to do a better job in persuading people to change bad habits. But it’s not as if HHS has completely fallen down on the job here, and it was Republicans who mocked Michele Obama’s push to improve school lunch menus. It was Trump’s last administration that blocked bipartisan efforts in Congress to remove ultra-processed foods and certain dyes from federally-funded school lunch programs (remember Perdue?).
As for some other of the “multiple factors in the complex causality” of chronic diseases and their increase, one is an aging population. In 2020, 1 in 6 Americans was 65 or older, and the rate of the increase in the size of that population since 2010 was very rapid. The elderly will inevitably have more cardiovascular problems and cancers than the rest of the population. And one reason Americans increasingly live long enough to develop inevitable chronic diseases of aging is the improved medical treatments they received when younger and continue to receive after they reach 65. Programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act have increased the number of Americans who receive this improved medical care. Planned Parenthood, too. Vaccines, of course, have increased life expectancy. Most of those 65 and older received vaccines for polio and even smallpox, and for the three Tdap diseases.
Some chronic ailments and increased rates of cancer are “epidemic” not to the whole country but to specific localities and regions, often where poor (and often black or brown) people live – Cancer alleys around oil refineries, for instance. Increased rates of cancer in areas where industries have released dangerous chemicals into the soil and water. The possible role of microplastics in some cancers and other diseases. Asthma more common among the poor living in urban areas. Lead water pipes. Let’s not forget pesticides (though these have their legitimate uses – it’s mostly the people who apply them and spend their days picking vegetables and fruits sprayed with them who suffer). The list could go on. The factors here are environmental, many of them under the purview of the EPA.
I wonder how much cooperation RFKJ will receive from industry lobbyists and fellow cabinet appointees like Lee Zeldin and Doug Burgum.
And, to what period does “Make American Healthy Again” harken back? Despite our chronic health problems, it’s possible we’ve never been healthier, on the whole, than we are today.
I know it’s silly of me to occupy myself with a comment like this, esp. when I’m preaching to the choir. It’s just my way for now of fending off despair.