Day 2 of confirmation audiences for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to become the country’s next health secretary began with animated discussions on the safety of vaccinations, chronic diseases and COVVI-19.
Here is a list of key health claims, verified by our journalists.
Read Check Wednesday’s factsand take A deeper look at Mr. Kennedy’s statements Over the years.
Prioritize chronic diseases
“There has never been a HHS secretary who came to do so,” said Kennedy, answering a question about his goal of focusing on the fight against chronic diseases as a secretary of health and to social services.
Research on chronic diseases has been a major objective of the National Institutes of Health, an agency under the HHS umbrella for many years.
The NIH spends dozens of billions of dollars in research on chronic diseases, operational institutes dedicated to the study of diabetes, obesity, neurological disorders And heart disease.
In addition, the Biden administration defended a “Moonshot” cancer program To finance cancer research, one of the most common chronic diseases.
COVID-19 in children
Kennedy said for the second consecutive day that COVVID does not present any risk to young children. Senator Rand Paul echoes these statements, saying that no healthy child had died of Covid.
It is incorrect: while children suffering from underlying health problems are more at risk of the disease, those who have no chronic conditions are still dead from the virus.
A study published in the fall examined 183 cases of children who died of Covid between 2020 and 2022, and found that about a third Of these children had no other state of health beyond Covid in their time of death. Between 2021 and 2022, Covid was The eighth head cause of death in children in the United States.
“No one would dispute that you wanted to approach one of the main causes of death,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, specialist in infectious diseases at the University of California in San Francisco, who stressed that the risk that I am Faced with children was “really not zero.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data also showed that in 2023, more than 100 children In the United States, has developed multi-community inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS, a rare but serious condition which generally occurs weeks after a cocovid infection.
The vast majority of the Mis-C cases were in children who were eligible to be vaccinated, but who were not. Roughly 1 to 2% of these children are dead, according to the CDC
Hepatitis B vaccinations
Senator Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, questioned hepatitis B vaccines, wondering if infants need protection against a virus that is often sexually transmitted.
“You tell my child to take a hepatitis B vaccine when he has 1 day,” he said. “It’s not science.”
Mr. Kennedy did not respond to Mr. Paul’s statement. But, in fact, the The vaccine is given to infants Because their mothers can transmit it to their babies. Hospitals often do not test pregnant women for this.
The infection, which can cause permanent liver damage and cancer, infects around 18,000 children each year, About half of them at birth.
Since vaccination has become routine, hepatitis B has become extremely rare in American children.
Use of addrall
Mr. Kennedy said that 15% of American children took Adderall, a commonly prescribed medication for the hyperactivity disorder of the attention deficit, or ADDH
In reality, it is estimated that 5% of children In the United States, drugs are currently prescribed for ADHD
Stimulating drugs like Adderall are sometimes abused, and the percentage of children Who uses them without a prescription varies depending on the school to which they frequent.
Weight loss drugs
Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy called Wegovy and new drugs on obesity and diabetes “Miracle Drugs”, a passage of Critical remarks He has done medication and their manufacturers in the past.
During the hearing, he said he did not think that drugs should be a “front line intervention” for 6 -year -old children. The Food and Drug Administration did not authorize Wegovy and Ozempic for children that young people, although Novo Nordisk, the drug manufacturer, have deposited access to Liraglutide, an older obesity drug which causes weight loss , to a younger age group.
Wegovy is authorized to deal with obesity in children aged 12 and over, and Ozempic is only approved for adults, although there are studies examining similar drugs in younger age groups.
Kennedy said these drugs “eat muscles” if people do not exercise. It is a concern shared by certain doctors on older adults Losing too much muscle with rapid weight loss. To this end, doctors often recommend that patients taking these drugs eat a lot of protein and do strength training exercises to counter the risk of muscle loss.
Mr. Kennedy also noted that these drugs have side effects, which is correct. The most common side effects are gastrointestinal problems, such as nausea, vomiting, constipation and stomach pain. For most patients, but not all, the Side effects decrease Because they adapt to drugs.
And he said people had encountered “problems” when they stopped taking medication, but did not describe what he meant. Research has revealed that people tend to get weight if interrupt drugs.
Cost of infantile diabetes
Kennedy said diabetes rates increased in children. It’s true.
It was a correction of the declarations he made in the past that 48% of the country’s teenagers are diabetic. This number is Bad by orders of magnitude.
The national report on diabetes statistics estimated that in 2021, around 35 for 10,000 children and adolescents under the age of 20 – 0.35% – had a diagnosis of diabetes. Another study found that 0.1% of people aged 10 to 19 suffered from diabetes in 2017.
He also said that the high incidence of diabetes and pre-diabetes in children was partly responsible for the “bankruptcy of our country”.
Although chronic diseases are a major engine of health care expenses, it is unlikely that the costs of infant diabetes contribute considerably.
The pre -diabetes increased children – 28% Adolescents are prediabetic – but most cases do not require insulin treatment and can be reversed with lifestyle changes, which is expensive for the country’s health care system.
Damage to electromagnetic radiation
Kennedy said electromagnetic radiation was dangerous for health. But scientific studies dating back to the 1990s failed to support this assertion. This includes studies involving mobile phones and power lines.
For example, a journal in 1996 from the National Academy of Sciences of 500 studies found no risk. A large national study the following year examined infantile leukemia in particular and has not found any link again.
At the time, Robert Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland, said: “The number of questions you can ask is infinite. If it is not the intensity of the electric field, it may be the number of times you activate and deactivate the field. Perhaps it only causes cancer to conjunction with the consumption of bananas. You can continue to ask questions forever.
But, he said, at some point, it’s time to invest research money in other things.
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