Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. kicked off a tour by way of southwestern states on Monday by calling on states to ban fluoride in consuming water provides, a transfer that will reverse what some medical specialists contemplate one of the crucial necessary public well being practices within the nation’s historical past.
The announcement got here at a information convention in Utah, the primary state to enact such a ban into regulation. The state’s new regulation is ready to take impact in early Could, regardless of considerations from public well being specialists who contemplate fluoridation of water core to stopping tooth decay.
“It is unnecessary to have it in our water provide,” Mr. Kennedy mentioned, echoing a place he took through the 2024 presidential marketing campaign. “I’m very, very happy with this state for being the primary state to ban it, and I hope many extra will come.”
The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, which Mr. Kennedy oversees as well being secretary, has listed fluoridation as one of many 10 nice public well being achievements of the twentieth century. After the information convention, Stefanie Spear, Mr. Kennedy’s principal deputy chief of employees, mentioned Mr. Kennedy would direct the C.D.C.’s neighborhood preventative companies activity pressure to review fluoride and make a brand new suggestion.
Mr. Kennedy appeared on the information convention alongside the administrator of the Environmental Safety Company, Lee Zeldin, who introduced that the E.P.A. would re-examine analysis on potential well being dangers of fluoride in water.
The present customary “was most just lately reviewed July of 2024, however rather a lot has occurred since July of 2024,” Mr. Zeldin mentioned. The assessment of security knowledge “wouldn’t be occurring, if not for Secretary Kennedy,” he added.
The fluoridation debate stretches again to the Fifties, when conspiracy theories swirled round whether or not the follow was a Communist plot to trigger mind harm. Some research recommend that extra publicity to fluoride — at ranges twice the quantity advisable by the federal authorities — might hurt infants.
The American Dental Affiliation has mentioned that water fluoridation reduces dental decay by at the least 25 % in youngsters and adults.
The Make America Wholesome Once more tour, which is able to take Mr. Kennedy by way of elements of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, was supposed to attract consideration to among the secretary’s common-ground pursuits, spotlighting initiatives that emphasize diet and life-style decisions as instruments for combating illness. On the information convention, Mr. Kennedy additionally lauded Utah’s latest laws to ban ultra-processed meals in class meals and to limit individuals from utilizing federal meals help advantages to buy sweet and soda. He introduced late final month that the Trump administration would start permitting states to bar members of the Supplemental Vitamin Help Program, or SNAP, from utilizing the cash to pay for soda.
Mr. Kennedy’s first cease on the tour was the Osher Heart for Integrative Well being on the College of Utah, which prides itself in taking a “whole-person” method to affected person care, together with an emphasis on sleep, train and even neighborhood connection.
The Osher Heart, set towards the backdrop of the Wasatch Mountains, is provided with a “meals pharmacy” for continual illness sufferers and a “instructing kitchen” to coach medical college students on diet.
With campus cops stationed across the perimeter, Mr. Kennedy boarded the Wellness Bus, a 40-foot automobile that gives neighborhood well being screenings for blood strain, blood glucose and ldl cholesterol. He additionally climbed into the again of the cell meals pharmacy, the place sufferers with continual well being circumstances carry prescriptions for substances like brown rice, zucchini, almond milk and canned pears.
Mr. Kennedy visited the middle’s take a look at kitchen — a contemporary house with expansive home windows and indoor shrubbery — the place medical college students and dietitians led him by way of wholesome snack preparations.
In between Mr. Kennedy’s occasions on the campus, about two dozen protesters appeared alongside the driveway to the middle, chanting and waving posters with messages akin to “Little one Killer” and, in a nod to the Trump administration’s termination of quite a few medical analysis grants, “Analysis Saves Lives.”
Mr. Kennedy has confronted harsh criticism for his dealing with of the federal authorities’s response to a measles outbreak in West Texas, which has contaminated almost 500 individuals there and has unfold to different states.
On Sunday, Mr. Kennedy attended the funeral of an unvaccinated 8-year-old woman — the second confirmed fatality from measles in a decade in america — and met together with her household earlier than persevering with to Utah.
Throughout his first months in workplace, Mr. Kennedy’s insurance policies have been unfurled with nice brouhaha, however the secretary himself has stored a comparatively low profile, notably for an official together with his diploma of fame. The White Home has inspired Mr. Kennedy to take a extra public-facing method to his function, however the timing of his first main push out within the nation would require toeing a cautious line round essentially the most conspicuous subject on the desk: vaccines.
Public well being specialists say the outbreak is pushed by low vaccination charges. Mr. Kennedy, who’s famously skeptical of vaccine security, shifted his rhetoric after the little woman’s funeral, posting on X: “The simplest option to stop the unfold of measles is the MMR vaccine.”
It was essentially the most definitive assertion he has made endorsing vaccines as a preventive device, however some public well being specialists had been dismayed that he didn’t explicitly suggest that folks vaccinate their youngsters and didn’t say the vaccines had been protected. And several other hours later he posted on X once more, praising two medical doctors who’re utilizing unproven therapies to take care of tons of of kids with measles.
For months, Mr. Kennedy has emphasised that vaccination is a matter of parental alternative and has inspired individuals to contemplate unproven regimens like vitamin A, which may result in toxicity, and prompt that poor life-style decisions had been at play amongst victims.
Weight-reduction plan and diet “don’t supply any profit to stop an infection with measles in anyway,” mentioned Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist who has studied measles.
Wholesome meals and train can “assist restrict the implications of many infections, together with measles, however is not going to stop them,” he added. “Prevention is by far the perfect drugs.”
