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sábado, abril 19, 2025

Kennedy Requires States to Ban Fluoridated Ingesting Water


Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. kicked off a tour by means of southwestern states on Monday by calling on states to ban fluoride in ingesting water provides, a transfer that might reverse what some medical specialists think about some of the 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 about to take impact in early Could, regardless of issues from public well being specialists who think about fluoridation of water core to stopping tooth decay.

“It is senseless to have it in our water provide,” Mr. Kennedy stated, echoing a place he took through the 2024 presidential marketing campaign. “I’m very, very pleased 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 workers, stated Mr. Kennedy would direct the C.D.C.’s neighborhood preventative companies activity power 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 lately reviewed July of 2024, however so much has occurred since July of 2024,” Mr. Zeldin stated. The overview of security knowledge “wouldn’t be taking place, if not for Secretary Kennedy,” he added.

The fluoridation debate stretches again to the Nineteen Fifties, when conspiracy theories swirled round whether or not the follow was a Communist plot to trigger mind harm. Some research counsel that extra publicity to fluoride — at ranges twice the quantity beneficial by the federal authorities — might hurt infants.

The American Dental Affiliation has stated that water fluoridation reduces dental decay by at the very least 25 p.c in kids and adults.

The Make America Wholesome Once more tour, which is able to take Mr. Kennedy by means 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 vitamin and way of life selections as instruments for combating illness. On the information convention, Mr. Kennedy additionally lauded Utah’s current 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 individuals of the Supplemental Diet Help Program, or SNAP, from utilizing the cash to pay for soda.

Mr. Kennedy’s first cease on the tour was the Osher Middle for Integrative Well being on the College of Utah, which prides itself in taking a “whole-person” strategy to affected person care, together with an emphasis on sleep, train and even neighborhood connection.

The Osher Middle, set in opposition to the backdrop of the Wasatch Mountains, is supplied with a “meals pharmacy” for continual illness sufferers and a “educating kitchen” to coach medical college students on vitamin.

With campus law enforcement officials stationed across the perimeter, Mr. Kennedy boarded the Wellness Bus, a 40-foot automobile that gives neighborhood well being screenings for blood stress, blood glucose and ldl cholesterol. He additionally climbed into the again of the cellular meals pharmacy, the place sufferers with continual well being situations convey prescriptions for substances like brown rice, zucchini, almond milk and canned pears.

Mr. Kennedy visited the middle’s check kitchen — a contemporary area with expansive home windows and indoor shrubbery — the place medical college students and dietitians led him by means 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 corresponding to “Youngster 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 practically 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 the US — and met along 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, significantly for an official along with his diploma of fame. The White Home has inspired Mr. Kennedy to take a extra public-facing strategy to his function, however the timing of his first main push out within the nation would require toeing a cautious line round probably the most conspicuous difficulty 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 probably the most definitive assertion he has made endorsing vaccines as a preventive software, however some public well being specialists have been dismayed that he didn’t explicitly advocate that folks vaccinate their kids and didn’t say the vaccines have been secure. And a number of other hours later he posted on X once more, praising two medical doctors who’re utilizing unproven therapies to look after a whole lot of youngsters with measles.

For months, Mr. Kennedy has emphasised that vaccination is a matter of parental selection and has inspired individuals to contemplate unproven regimens like vitamin A, which might result in toxicity, and advised that poor way of life selections have been at play amongst victims.

Food plan and vitamin “don’t supply any profit to forestall an infection with measles in any respect,” stated 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 medication.”

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