Trump victory increases hazards for climate and global health

The well documented and steadily increasing health problems globally, directly associated with climate change, have been discussed with appropriate alarm by many expert contributors to P & I.

Trump’s denial of the reality of climate change, (“The planet’s temperature will rise by 0.1 degrees by the end of the century”) , and his determination to use as much fossil fuel as he can have extracted from US soil, will shred any hope of the US meeting its promised contributions to tackling this frightening reality. Let’s have no more of those ugly wind farms that kill birds and may even cause cancer!

Its truly disturbing to think that his victory indicates that millions of Americans believe what he says. If you accept the oft repeated claim that, without parental permission, some boys are going to school in the morning only to have a surgical procedure to emasculate them so they come home that afternoon as a girl, or that Haitian legal immigrants are eating their neighbour’s pets, it’s easy to accept climate change skepticism. 

My concern is not just for the extraordinary gullibility of so many Americans. All ideas, good and bad are so easily disseminated globally in this age where social media provides far more people with the information they rely on than traditional sources which are (mostly) concerned with the evidence base for what they disseminate. Tackling climate change is so difficult that many are only too happy to have doubts about the existence of the problem challenged. Trump and his sycophants views on climate change will hinder the international effort to control this existential threat.

But there is another major health hazard associated with Trump’s victory. As is true for many of Trump’s stated positions his comments on vaccine safety have been totally inconsistent. He likes to claim that he was responsible for the rapid development of a Covid vaccine but has repeatedly declared that any school that mandated normal childhood vaccinations would receive no Federal dollars!. Then there is the embracing of Robert Kennedy Jr. and his really dangerous ideas.

If it were not for the “Kennedy” label many think Robert would have found no audience nor traction for his crazy ideas. For those of us who have spent their careers championing the concept that medical care should be underpinned by an evidence base developed with sound scientific methodology, it has been alarming and depressing to see the truly enormous amount of health related misinformation spread by social media and false advertising. Not surprisingly Australians are as vulnerable to the false imprimatur given to something accepted by thousands on social media outlets. All doctors today have to contend with this new phenomenon on a daily basis as they try and help their patients.

Robert Kennedy, after a long struggle with Heroin addiction emerged to become a major proponent of dangerously misleading conspiracy theories many of which involved health care. He has been “disowned” by his family who are “frustrated and embarrassed” by his conspiracy theories. He insists the CIA killed both his father and President John Kennedy. 

Kennedy for two decades vehemently claimed that Mercury in Influenza vaccines caused Autism and when it was pointed out to him that modern vaccines do not contain Mercury he insisted it must be some other chemical causing the problem. A major theme of his lectures to the vulnerable who love a good conspiracy, is that vaccines kill far more people than they help. Kennedy has steadfastly held to his much publicised theory that school shootings were associated with the introduction of the drug “Prozac”. 

Kennedy insists that the Covid virus was bio-engineered to use as a weapon. He had constantly insisted that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. The US has put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes and labs in Ukraine have collected Russian and Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.” Kennedy also promoted use of unapproved treatments for Covid-19, such as Ivermectin.

And did you realise that former White House medical advisor Dr Antony Fauci and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates sought to exaggerate the pandemic, in part to promote vaccines?

While vowing not to “take away anyone’s guns,” if elected president, Kennedy Jr. made the debunked claim that Gun ownership in Switzerland is similar to the United States despite data that shows U.S. civilians possess an average of 120.5 firearms per 100 people, the highest per-capita rate in the world, compared to 27.6 in Switzerland.

Finally and disturbingly both Kennedy and Trump agreed that if Trump was president they would remove fluoride from the water supply!

Given the result of the election its probably not surprising that when Kennedy announced his candidature for the Presidency 44% of Americans thought he would be a viable candidate.

During the latter part of the election campaign Kennedy was not visible at many of Trump’s rallies and I thought that maybe Trump was worried about his previous embracing of Kennedy. However in Trumps acceptance speech the day before the completion of the vote count, Trump announced that Kennedy would play a major role in his administration “making America Healthy again”. 

With Trump’s promise to collapse the Federal bureaucracy with current functions assigned to individuals whose only essential qualification is undying loyalty to Trump, a number of my American friends are worried that the Centre for Disease control (CDC), crucial for so many health issues including preparation for the next SARS virus pandemic, and the Food and Drug administration (FDA) responsible for ensuring the safety of therapeutics and whose work is valued around the world, may disappear as we know them. Also at risk is US financial support for the WHO which, despite criticisms around its role in disseminating Covid information rapidly at the start of the pandemic, plays an absolutely crucial role in improving global health.

Australians are vulnerable to conspiracy theories augmented by AI capabilities literarily at one’s finger tips. Efforts to help Australians differentiate genuine expertise from pervasive misinformation so easily disseminated via the ‘net’ is a huge challenge we must address as a matter of great urgency.