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Back in my Air America radio days, we put together a "Progressive Voices" cruise that included RFK, Jr who was recognizably still keen on normal science and taming the tiger of greed and avarice. Back then, I helped get his his new radio show onto Los Angeles public radio as his voice and perspective were a hopeful remedy to expanding water pollution and social injustice. My current speculations on his political 180 are not simplistic and about brain worms or other things that can make us feel comfortable and point to a nefarious source.

Meanwhile, let’s do turn our attention to the latest spectacle of modern governance—the ascension of same Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the National Institutes of Health, flanked by a CDC director whose views seem to have been drawn from the more fevered corners of a 19th-century medical almanac. The scientific community, those poor wretches still clinging to their microscopes and reason, are watching with the same dread that someone reserves for a train derailing in slow motion.

Kennedy, of course, is a man whose crusade against vaccines is as famous as his surname, and under his watch, you can imagine a return to the golden days of iron lungs, smallpox scars, and funeral parlors bustling with a brisk business. A world where HIV meds are tossed out like last week’s meatloaf, leaving the virus to mutate into ever more creative and catastrophic strains. A world where the pause button is hit on infectious disease research—because why study science when you can replace it with a fistful of conspiracy pamphlets and a well-placed enema of industrial-strength disinfectant?

And let’s not forget the role of Washington’s favorite strongman in all of this. The president-in-waiting, that great patron of fast food and fiscal ruin – a man who will not hesitate to wield his mighty funding ax, dangling federal dollars over the heads of states like a butcher sizing up a side of beef. California, for example, insists on keeping its schoolchildren vaccinated—a quaint notion, to be sure—but what happens when federal funds are yanked away in the name of "medical freedom" and a new dark age of contagion is upon us?

Meanwhile, as if the gods themselves wished to test our capacity for calamity, we have a bird flu outbreak in California—just a little something extra for those of us still invested in the notion of breathable air. With the state’s sprawling dairy farms and underpaid workers, disease control is already hanging by a thread. Frequent testing? Ha! That requires resources; resources require money, and money, in the hands of this new administration, is reserved for more pressing matters—like tax cuts for billionaires and reanimating the corpse of trickle-down economics.

So the question before us, my dear listeners, is simple: How do we safeguard public health when our institutions are led by men who view science as a mere suggestion, rather than the one thing keeping us all upright and glued to the surface of the planet? How do we ensure that the fate of 380 million people isn’t left in the hands of a man whose most distinguished credential is a last name and an allergy to gamefish?

The stakes are nothing less than life itself.

With us is a leading voice in the fight against scientific disinformation. As a co-founder of the Council for Quality Health Communication, Scott Ratzan has been at the forefront of efforts to mobilize public health experts and combat the growing threat of misinformation. With recent appearances on CNN and other mainstream media, he holds multiple degrees from esteemed institutions, including USC, Harvard, and Emerson, and serving as Adjunct Professor at several top universities.

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