Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s12e09 Episode Script

Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver. Thank you so much
for joining us. It has been a busy week,
from George Santos getting over
seven years in prison,
to Pope Francis dying just a day
after meeting with JD Vance,
which, honestly? Relatable.
The pope's funeral was on Saturday
and speculation about his
successor is already brewing.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, an Italian,
currently Vatican secretary of state.
Cardinal Mateo Zuppi,
currently the cardinal of Bologna.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa,
who is currently the Latin right
patriarch of Jerusalem,
meaning the top Catholic
in the Holy Land.
His name in Italian
literally means "Pizza Dance".
It's true. One option for a new pope
is apparently Cardinal Pizzaballa.
And I know that sounds
almost offensively Italian,
but do keep in mind: every last name
in Italy means "pizza dance".
Now, would electing
a Pope Pizza Dance
instantly repair the reputation
of the Catholic Church?
Obviously, the answer is:
we won't know until we try.
So, JD Vance: you stay the fuck away
from cardinal Pizza Dance!
You don't meet him, don't go near
him, don't even think about him.
Sure, he might make a terrible pope,
but don't take Papa Pizzaballa from us,
the way the world is,
we need this right now!
But we're going to dive straight in
with our main story tonight,
which concerns public health.
One of the many good reasons
to wash your hands.
Some do it for the length
of two "happy birthday"s
or "row, row, row, your boat"s.
Personally, I do it for the length
of one "my name is Kid Rock"
and that feels enough.
On the campaign trail,
Trump loved to talk about
who he was going to put
in charge of public health,
and what that person was then
going to do.
Robert F. Kennedy cares more
about human beings and health
and the environment than anybody.
And I'm gonna let him
go wild on health.
I'm gonna let him go wild
on the food.
I'm gonna let him go wild
on medicines.
Look, even if he wasn't talking
about RFK,
I don't like the idea of anyone
"going wild on health".
The same way I don't want
anyone to "go apeshit on water",
"get wasted on the census"
or "go full Armie Hammer on
agriculture". It sounds bad!
Unfortunately, RFK is now the secretary
of Health and Human Services,
and has, indeed, gone wild.
In the run-up to the election,
he pushed the slogan "MAHA"
for "Make America Healthy Again",
and just a month into his tenure,
he made this big announcement.
We're gonna streamline HHS
to make our agency more efficient
and more effective.
We'll eliminate an entire alphabet
soup of departments and agencies,
while preserving their core functions
by merging them into a new organization
called the Administration
for a Healthy America, or AHA.
No, thank you.
I do not like any of that.
I don't like him calling
agencies "alphabet soup"
and I definitely don't like
how he just said "AHA",
which is such a dumb name.
It sounds less
like a government agency
and more like Manhattan
real estate jargon
used to describe the neighborhood
above Hank Azaria.
If you're north of wherever Hank Azaria
is at any given moment,
then guess what?
You're in AHA!
In practice, what that's meant is
a radical downsizing of HHS.
That same day, Kennedy announced
a "dramatic restructuring"
that would shrink the agency
to 62.000 employees from 82.000,
including about 10.000 layoffs,
and another 10.000 people
who retired or resigned,
and now won't be replaced.
Which is alarming, because HHS
is an absolutely vital agency
handling every high-stakes job
related to health you could think of.
That "alphabet soup" includes
the National Institutes of Health,
the Food and Drug Administration,
the Centers for Disease Control,
the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services,
alongside 23 other divisions.
Together, they account for around
28% of all federal spending.
These cuts are gonna have a huge
impact on our day-to-day lives.
And no one knows that better than
some of the workers who just got fired.
We oversee child welfare.
We oversee federally funded Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families,
which is welfare.
We oversee federally funded child care,
child support enforcement.
These are the services that serve
the taxpayer, and they are gone.
Right now, it's this kind of,
"Someone else."
It will impact all of you,
the greater public.
I think we're gonna have a lot
of people die needlessly, honestly.
Yep, and it is pretty alarming to hear
a fired government employee say:
"We're going to have a lot
of people die needlessly",
while wearing a T-shirt that says,
"The horrors are never ending."
Now, would you feel any better
if I told you that, apparently,
the bottom of that shirt says,
"Yet I remain silly?"
I mean, probably for a bit, right?
But then you'd remember
the man wearing it just told you
people were going to "die needlessly",
so you'd feel like shit again.
So, given a critical government agency
is in the process of being gutted,
tonight, let's talk about public health:
what RFK's doing,
the many ways it'll impact us
and the troubling direction
this is all going.
Let's start with the sheer scale
and chaos of these cuts.
They actually began before RFK
announced his AHA plan,
because HHS,
like most government agencies,
suffered an initial round
of DOGE cuts in February,
when over 3.600 probationary
employees were fired.
Around then, there were also a string of
other freezes that hampered operations.
At one point, DOGE instituted a 1 dollar
spending limit on credit cards,
meaning researchers couldn't do
things like pay for gas
for vehicles used to transport
patients' blood samples,
and in the words of one scientist,
"We can't order mice."
Which is bad, because you don't
have to be a scientist to know
that lab mice
are a key part of research.
I'm actually pretty sure
that the full scientific method goes,
"Observation, hypothesis,
order a mouse,"
"don't name the mouse, don't get
attached to the mouse,"
"experiment, analysis, conclusion,"
"and finally, cry because you got
attached to Colonel Nibbles."
But then came the big AHA cuts,
which were as sudden
as they were cruel.
Some federal workers didn't even
know they'd been fired
until they turned up to work and
tried to use their badges to get in.
If the light turned green,
they still had their job.
If it turned red, they didn't.
Some fired workers were told
to contact an employee
named Anita Pinder
if they wanted to file
a discrimination complaint,
which was hard to do,
given she died last year.
One former staffer even said,
"This bloodbath was so fucking bad"
"I had multiple officials asking me if
I thought this is an April Fools' joke."
Because on top of everything else,
this happened on April 1st,
which has to be the most confusing
April Fool's Day ever,
second only to the one in 1945
when U.S. troops landed
on the shores of Okinawa,
and the Japanese troops were like,
"Wait, is this an April Fool's thing?"
and the Americans were like,
"No, it's actually World War II,"
and the Japanese were like, "Right. It's
just confusing because of the date."
And the Americans were like,
"Hang on, you guys
do April Fool's Day too?"
and that's how
World War II ended.
RFK initially insisted that these cuts
were made for efficiency,
and that nothing important
was being lost.
But it soon became clear some
crucial stuff had been defunded,
and he didn't know about it.
There's like, more than 50 pages
The cuts were mainly DEI cuts,
which the president.
There were a lot, but I'll give you,
for example,
about 750.000 dollars of
the University of Michigan grant
into adolescent diabetes was cut.
Did you know that?
I didn't know that, and that's
something that we'll look at.
But there's a number
of studies that were cut,
that came to our attention,
and that did not deserve to be
cut, and we reinstated them.
Our purpose is not to reduce
any level of scientific research
that's important.
Okay, it's not great that
that's how he's finding out.
The health secretary shouldn't be
learning what he just did
like a guy at a bachelor party being
told what happened the night before.
Do you not remember, bro?
You spoke French! Well!
Then you pissed on a grave,
fucked a bike rack,
and cut 750.000 dollars of research
money for kid diabetes. You went wild!
And for the record,
simply reinstating studies
isn't as easy
as he's making it sound there.
Some studies, once disrupted,
can't be restarted.
So, that's already infuriating,
before you hear him try to justify
why cutting the wrong studies
or staff is actually fine.
Wouldn't it have been better,
or was thought given to say,
before firing them,
going through and saying,
"What is that job?"
line by line by line and saying,
"I think that person's job maybe
isn't needed, you know,"
That would have been
another approach,
and it's the approach
that has failed for 60 years.
Because you mean it takes too long?
It takes you long
and you lose political momentum.
Okay, so the question he was
asked there boiled down to,
"Do you think you should have
figured out what you were cutting"
"before you cut it?"
And his answer was, "No."
Which is not good! The rules
for restructuring HHS
should be the same
as the ones for a bris:
it is crucially important to know
exactly what you are cutting.
Speed is just
not the most important thing.
And it's one thing to hear
about that in theory,
it's another to see how
these cuts are playing out.
And let's start with the National
Institute of Health.
Its research and funding
are key reasons
why the human genetic code
was deciphered,
hepatitis C was discovered,
the AIDS virus was isolated,
and the first drug
to treat it was discovered.
And it's where the basic research
that helped lead
to the Covid vaccines was done.
It is by far the world's largest public
funder of biomedical research,
and in particular, the largest
funder of cancer research.
The NIH has been called "the crown
jewel of American science,"
which, if anything,
is understating it,
because it's clearly
better than a crown jewel.
Those things don't really do much
aside from bedazzle a puffy hat
that we occasionally balance on
top of a collection of recessive genes.
The NIH, however,
is really important.
But it's now in trouble. Because
within weeks of Trump taking office,
it stopped considering new
grant applications entirely,
which instantly stalled about
16,000 of them.
It then announced hundreds of
existing grants would be terminated,
many seemingly for including
terms like "minorities", "transgender",
"AIDS" and "vaccine hesitancy".
In fact, they've reportedly
"cut about 750 million
in HIV-targeted grants alone."
And while that is clearly bad enough,
all research is now threatened.
Especially because-in addition
to these cuts,
this administration has a disastrous
new proposal to cap
what are sometimes called
"indirect research costs".
Here is a DOGE guy,
in a group interview with Elon,
explaining the rationale.
So, if I take NIH as an example,
today, if you're an NIH researcher
and you get a 100 dollars grant
at your university,
today, you get to spend 60 of that
and your university spends 40.
The policy that we're proposing to make
is that you get to spend 85 of that
and your university spends 15.
More money going to the scientists
who are discovering new cures.
Okay. Set aside the fact
that that group looks like a regional
choir of orphaned businessmen,
what he just said there
is extremely misleading.
For starters, indirect costs don't
come out of grants to researchers,
they're issued on top of them.
Essentially, right now, if you get
100 dollars to fund your research,
your university gets
an additional 40 dollars.
And it's not ideal that he doesn't
seem to know that.
Especially as, under this new plan,
that 40 dollars would be capped
at 15, which is a real problem.
Because that money goes to cover
costs that make research possible,
like buildings, utilities,
lab equipment, animal caretakers
and other support staff.
As one expert pointed out:
"If you're going to use mice
for your experiment,"
"you actually need a mouse facility",
which does make sense.
You cannot have your lab mice
commute into work,
however adorable
that might turn out to be.
And scientists will tell you,
capping expenses at 15% of a grant
is a requirement that would make it
functionally impossible for them
to do high-quality work.
Here is one scientist explaining
what it would mean
for his research on pneumonia.
If there are no indirect costs flowing,
we can't keep the computers running.
If we can't keep the computers running,
we can't do the science we're doing.
If we're supposed to work
without buildings, without computers,
without centrifuges, there's no way
to get that done from someone else.
It should go without saying, but
scientists need buildings, computers.
I mean, maybe they can get by
without centrifuges?
I mean, I guess Carl
can spin around pretty fast,
but you know what, no, I actually
think they're gonna need those, too.
The point is, you
wouldn't ask a research scientist
to do their job without
a computer or lab equipment,
the same way you wouldn't ask
a DOGE employee to do their job
without an iron deficiency
and a deep-seated conviction
they're the smartest boy in the world.
They need that for work.
But the attacks on research
don't end there.
There've also been wholesale cuts
to grants at institutions
across the country,
and not just at Ivy League schools
that you might've heard about,
but also at flagship state schools
in places like Florida, Georgia, Ohio,
Nebraska, and Texas.
Which is very bad.
Because, "Virtually all of modern
medicine relies, to some degree,"
"on research
that was supported by federal dollars."
Interestingly, the same day
as those mass layoffs,
NIH published a paper
about a breakthrough
in using a person's own immune cells
to fight gastrointestinal cancers.
Which is absolutely amazing.
Unfortunately,
two patients' treatments
using that therapy
have already had to be delayed
due to these cuts.
And that is just
one example of many.
As one Alzheimer's researcher put it,
"Disruptions delay discovery."
And it's impossible to know
how many breakthroughs
have already been delayed,
or that may now never happen.
And while this is all supposedly
being done in the name of saving money,
I will point out-a recent report
found every dollar of research
funded by NIH
delivers 2.56 dollars
in economic activity.
And not that we should be investing
in health research
purely for economic gain,
but it is still worth noting
that that kind
of return on investment
would make the sharks on "Shark Tank"
shit in their Eames chairs.
And so far, I've just been talking
about the NIH.
But RFK also oversees the FDA,
where the cuts range from
communication specialists who alerted
the public to urgent safety recalls,
to veterinary division specialists
investigating bird flu transmission.
So, now it's going to be much harder
to get answers to important questions
that you may have about bird flu,
like, "Is it in milk?"
or "Is my pet vulnerable?"
or "I fucked Big Bird two weeks ago,"
"and now I have a sore throat,
do I need to get tested?"
RFK also now oversees the CDC,
and cuts there range from the firing
of all 20 members of an office focused
on Alzheimer awareness and prevention,
to the shuttering of a lab
that tracked STIs,
meaning the U.S. has apparently
just lost its ability
to detect drug-resistant gonorrhea.
One former CDC staffer said,
"Shitshow is an understatement
for what just happened."
Which seems right, doesn't it?
Because "shitshow" is a word you use
to describe Anne Hathaway
and James Franco hosting the Oscars,
or Fergie performing
the national anthem,
not, "Look out, turbo gonorrhea
is on the loose, and it is pissed."
And the thing is, the impact of cuts
like that reverberate beyond the CDC.
Just take Wisconsin,
where they've been dealing
with a burgeoning lead-paint
problem in schools in Milwaukee.
They've already had
to close four of them for cleanup.
And normally, a city can lean
on the federal government for help
in responding to lead
contamination, but not right now.
Milwaukee health officials turning to
the federal government for assistance.
To see that all of our partners
at the CDC had been let go
was pretty difficult.
Totoraitis received a CDC response
saying, quote,
"My entire division
was eliminated today."
Two days later, the health department
received another follow-up email
saying, quote, "I sincerely regret
to inform you"
"that due to the complete
loss of our lead program,"
"we will be unable to support you."
The move leaving the health department
without any federal guidance.
You do not have contacts with the CDC
when it comes to lead poisoning?
Correct.
- Has that ever happened before?
- No.
That is awful.
And the CDC's responses there
showed some superhuman restraint.
"My entire division was eliminated"
and "I sincerely regret to inform you
we'll be unable to support you"
are an incredibly diplomatic version
of what I'm pretty sure what they
wanted to say, which is,
"Our shit just got rocked"
and "Buckle up, because your shit's
about to get rocked too."
Now, RFK has since said,
in his now classic style,
that, "If we make mistakes,"
"we're going to admit it
and we're going to remedy it."
And that eliminating that lead program
was "one of the mistakes".
But as of right now,
that has not been remedied.
And even if it had,
I doubt he'd even know about it.
It seems he only finds out
what's going on in his agency
whenever he appears on an episode
of "This Bitch Brings Receipts".
And that's not even
getting into the fact
HHS has also abruptly canceled
more than 12 billion in grants
to states for their health services.
And while some states
are fighting that in court,
in many cases,
the damage has already been done.
In Minnesota,
their health department was told
that they'd be losing more
than 220 million
in previously approved funding,
and they've warned
they may now have slower response
times to infectious disease outbreaks.
Which is bad enough before you learn
the cuts could even compromise
their "Team D."
What is Team D, you ask?
It's Team Diarrhea, a group
of public health students
who interview people
who've had diarrhea,
to track food poisoning outbreaks.
And I love that name so very much.
'Cause it's straight to the point.
If someone calls and says,
"Hi, I'm from Team Diarrhea",
you don't say,
"And what is this regarding?",
because you know things
are about to get personal.
You're about to talk about force
and viscosity with a stranger.
Team Diarrhea is the best team name
since the inter-department softball team
on "Law & Order: SVU" that was
literally called "Sex Crimes."
"Sex Crimes" is still number one,
but "Team Diarrhea" is a close second.
And that's the impact
on a big health department.
In smaller, rural communities,
losing even relatively small
amounts of money can be devastating.
The head of a mental health
initiative in Kansas said,
after losing around
50.000 dollars in federal funds,
"That is nothing
to the federal government."
"But it is massive to this agency.
And to the people we serve."
And I'm still not done, because
HHS grants also help support programs
that might not immediately
come to mind, from this one,
which provides things like heating
and cooling assistance
to more than six million
low-income families,
to public services like Meals on Wheels.
Yeah, Meals on Wheels!
They get funding from the
Administration for Community Living
and nearly 50% of the staff there
was just terminated.
One of those people actually tried
to confront Indiana Senator Jim Banks
about the cuts.
And it didn't go well.
Hi, I was a worker at HHS.
I was fired illegally on February 14th.
There are many people who are
not getting social service programs,
especially people with disabilities.
Are you gonna do anything
to stop what's happening?
- You probably deserved it.
- I deserved it?
- Dude, that's so rude and sad!
- Yeah, that's great to hear.
- Why did I deserve it?
- Because you seem like a clown.
Fuck off!
All else aside, do you even
know what a clown is?
Can you imagine how disappointed
people would be if they thought
they were going to see a funny clown
and instead got a guy lecturing them
about the dire lack of social services
for people with disabilities?
Trust me:
they wouldn't like it!
Sure, they'll tolerate it
for around 12 seasons.
They'll even come and see it filmed
every once in a while.
But that doesn't mean they like it.
Believe me.
And look, these cuts
are dangerous on their face.
But it gets so much worse when you
remember who is in charge of all this.
Which brings us back to RFK.
As we've talked about before,
he has some extreme views
on public health.
Although, in his confirmation hearings,
he tried to distance himself from them,
pushing the idea that, if confirmed,
he'd steer away
from his controversial views
on things like vaccines,
and would instead
prioritize health and wellness.
Should I be so privileged
as to be confirmed,
we'll make sure our tax dollars
support healthy foods.
We will scrutinize the chemical
additives in our food supply.
We will remove financial conflicts
of interest from our agencies.
We will create an honest,
unbiased, gold-standard science at HHS,
accountable to the president,
to Congress
and to the American people.
Yeah, that was his pitch. Which does
make sense, doesn't it?
It'd probably
be harder to get confirmed
if he admitted he's a rabid conspiracy
theorist who, among other things,
has suggested psychiatric drugs
may cause school shootings,
that Anthony Fauci was engaged
in a historic coup d'etat
against western democracy, insisted
that he "won't take sides"
on what happened on 9/11,
and thinks it's acceptable
to go barefoot on an airplane.
That is true. He took off
his shoes and socks on,
wait for it, a trip
to the bathroom.
Here is a photo of it. And I know
I literally just said 9/11 out loud
but RFK dragging his urine-soaked
free-range piggies through first class
is literally the worst thing to ever
happen in American airspace.
But that whole "I just care about
Americans' health" argument
appealed to a lot of skeptics
at that hearing,
and he even won over Senator
Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor,
who'd previously expressed concerns
about Kennedy's stance on vaccines.
I know there are some who still think,
"Well, RFK's weird about vaccines,"
"but he knows a lot
about health-related issues."
But you would be surprised
by just how wildly wrong he can be
when he's spouting alarming,
official-sounding statistics.
We are 4.2% of the world's population,
we buy 70% of the pharmaceutical
drugs on Earth.
15% of American youth are now on
Adderall or other ADHD medication.
When I was a kid, I always say this,
a typical pediatrician would see
one case of diabetes in his lifetime.
Today, it's one out of every three kids
who walks through his office door.
20 years ago,
there was no diabetes in China.
Today, 50% of the population
is diabetic.
Okay, so, here's the thing:
all the numbers
you just heard him say are bullshit.
Americans don't buy
70% of the drugs on Earth,
we buy around 6%.
15% of American youth
aren't on ADHD meds,
estimates put it closer to 5%.
One in three kids don't have
diabetes, it's actually .35%,
or one in 285 kids.
And the rate of diabetes in China
is roughly 12%,
not, as I think you already know,
50%.
Half of all the people in China
do not have diabetes.
And look, we've asked our researchers
to fact check some dumb shit before
on this show.
Last year, we literally emailed
JD Vance's team to ask,
"Has Senator Vance
ever had sex with a couch?"
and "Has Senator Vance
ever had sex"
"with any other furniture
or household items?"
But somehow,
that was still less embarrassing
than writing to multiple diabetes
experts this week and asking,
"Do half the people in China
have diabetes?"
and in return, getting a bunch
of versions of "no"
and one response from a doctor
that called Kennedy's statement,
"ludicrous," adding, "these stats might
be related to the worm in his brain."
And when you get key information
about problems that wrong,
you're probably going to fuck up
any attempt at a solution.
And that's not even the biggest
issue with Kennedy's approach.
Because for all his loud talk of
"making America healthy again",
some of the cuts he's overseen are
going to do the exact opposite of that.
Because while he made a big show
this week of claiming
he'd eliminate eight dyes from foods
like Froot Loops, which, fine,
he's been much quieter about
his decision to fire everyone
at the CDC's Office of Smoking
and Health, even though
"smoking remains the leading cause
of preventable death and disease."
As one former head of that agency
has said, shutting it down
is "the greatest gift to the tobacco
industry in the last half century,"
with another former
worker saying,
"If you're really worried
about the ingredients in cereal,"
"wait until you find out
about the thousands of chemicals"
"that are contained in cigarettes."
And exactly.
Just ask the Trix rabbit.
He's smoked three packs a day
for the last 30 years,
and he was just diagnosed
with lung cancer.
And it wasn't eating Trix that did it.
He has three months to live.
He's gonna die.
For all RFK's self-promotion as being
a scourge of big pharma and big food,
he has just taken a buzzsaw
to the regulatory agencies
whose job it was
to keep them in line.
And yet, there is one area where
he is flooding attention and resources,
despite it being the area that he had
promised he'd stay away from,
and that is sowing doubt
about vaccines.
He pushed out the top vaccine
regulator at the FDA,
who claimed Kennedy's team
requested he "turn over data"
"on cases of brain swelling and
deaths caused by the measles vaccine."
Something that was hard to do,
since, as he pointed out,
that data doesn't exist,
because there have been
no such confirmed cases in the U.S.
But that is not all.
Kennedy's also been making some
very bold promises, like this.
We've launched a massive testing
and research effort
that's going to involve hundreds
of scientists from around the world,
and by September, we will know what
has caused the autism epidemic.
We'll be able
to eliminate those exposures.
So, first,
there is no autism "epidemic",
there are autism diagnoses
for people who are autistic.
And it is pretty bold to claim
you're going to get a definitive answer
to something that people have been
studying for decades by September.
Almost as bold as admitting to
dumping a bear corpse in Central Park,
your daughter telling the world you
decapitated a whale with a chainsaw
and yet still having the audacity
to make a highlight reel on Instagram
that simply says "Animals."
Keep their fucking name
out of your fucking mouth!
Most people agree, the vast majority
of the rise in autism diagnoses
is due to there being more research,
better awareness
and more access for people
to get an accurate diagnosis.
That is what can happen
when you put time and money
into health services.
But RFK has persisted in treating
the rise in diagnoses as a tragedy
and the way he talks
about autistic people, in general,
can be utterly dehumanizing.
Autism destroys families.
More importantly,
it destroys our greatest resource,
which is our children.
These are kids
who will never pay taxes,
they'll never hold a job,
they'll never play baseball,
they'll never write a poem.
They'll never go out on a date.
Many of them
will never use a toilet unassisted.
And we have to recognize
we are doing this to our children.
And we need to put an end to it.
Fuck you!
And I've got to say:
it is pretty telling
that you are so divorced from any
semblance of humanity
that "paying taxes" is your first
example of a fulfilling life.
It may surprise you, but most parents
don't actually hold their newborn baby
for the first time and say,
"There's my future taxpayer."
"I can't wait until you get your
first 1099 and therefore"
"have any value as a human being!
A coocheecoocheecoo!"
To be clear: lots of autistic people
can do the things RFK listed there.
Marianne Eloise, an autistic poet,
responded to those remarks
with, "I would love to read RFK's
poetry, if he could share it",
adding,
"I am not familiar with his work."
But also, even if someone can't
play baseball, or write a poem,
or needs assistance using the toilet,
they're still a person
and their life
still has dignity and value.
And as autistic advocates
and journalists have noted,
if Kennedy actually
wanted to improve their lives,
there are things
he could be prioritizing,
from research into how autistic people
die needlessly from epilepsy episodes,
to fixing our onerous system to provide
around-the-clock care services.
The sort of programs he's been
taking a fucking hatchet to.
There are good reasons to have doubts
about RFK's plan to tackle autism,
even before you learn
who he's bringing in to help him.
Because among those he's turning to
is David Geier.
He's a longtime vaccine skeptic
who Kennedy recently hired
to head a study
of immunizations and autism.
Geier and his dad, seen here moments
after telling each other "I love you",
have published papers claiming vaccines
increase the risk of autism,
something that has been
thoroughly debunked,
as we've already walked through
at length before on this show.
Much of their research was
conducted in what his dad called
"a world-class lab, every bit
as good as anything at NIH."
But apparently, was in his house
in a room with wall-to-wall carpeting
and faux wood paneling.
Here is the two of them in that
home lab. So, no red flags there!
Just two regular dudes,
knocking out experiments
in what looks
like a 1970s jack shack.
And their conclusions have been,
shockingly, transparent bullshit.
Geier's dad was often called
to testify in court,
and over the years, judges called
his testimony, among other things,
"intellectually dishonest" and "at best
negligent if not a fraud on the court."
In fact, by the time he died,
his medical licenses had been
suspended or revoked in 10 states.
As for his son,
that is luckily not a concern,
because, fun fact, he was
disciplined by Maryland regulators
for practicing medicine
without a license.
And while I do not know
what the ideal qualifications are
to run the nation's new inquiry
into vaccines and autism,
I'm assuming "playing doctor for
a while before getting caught"
isn't one of them.
Not only is he not a doctor,
he doesn't even play one on TV.
Now, more than ever, this is
literally just some fucking guy.
And if you are thinking,
"This is all going to end badly",
it's already heading that way.
As you undoubtedly know, measles
is ripping across the country.
As of taping, it has spread
to at least 30 states.
Which is obviously bad,
because it can cause pneumonia,
swelling of the brain, and one
or two deaths per 1.000 people.
So far, three people have died,
two of them children,
meaning the country's seen the first
pediatric measles death in 22 years.
And RFK's response has been
a long way from ideal.
He initially called the outbreak
"not unusual", which it very much is.
When he wrote an op-ed acknowledging
the benefits of the MMR vaccine,
he made sure to say that the decision
to vaccinate is a personal one.
And he's been recklessly pushing
alternative theories and remedies.
While Health and Human Services
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says
the vaccine does protect children
against measles,
he also touts vitamin A
as an effective therapy,
writing in an op-ed last week,
"Vitamin A can dramatically
reduce measles mortality."
What is the cure for measles?
Your measles
is chicken soup and vitamin A.
Okay, first: chicken soup
is not a cure for anything.
It is floating meat water
parents trick their kids into eating
by saying that it'll make them
feel better.
And that is only because
the only way to get a child to eat
anything is just to lie to them.
Spider-Man eats broccoli
all the time!
Apples make you jump high!
Santa Claus made these eggs
and if you don't eat them,
he will kill himself.
Kids will believe the dumbest shit
and apparently so will the head
of the nation's health services.
And while that clip
was from a few years ago,
Kennedy is still pushing vitamin A
as a measles treatment.
Seems to have had consequences,
given multiple children in west Texas
have been treated
for vitamin A toxicity,
stemming from at-home
attempts to treat measles.
And all the while,
Kennedy's funding cuts
have hampered states' ability
to mitigate this outbreak.
Vaccination clinics in multiple states
have been canceled,
including in places like Dallas, which
had to cancel 50 vaccination clinics,
"including events specifically targeting
schools with low immunization rates."
Proving, once and for all
that the city of Dallas
and anyone from the Kennedy
family simply do not mix well.
And it's not just measles. Whooping
cough cases are also soaring right now
and multiple people have died of it
in recent months,
including two infants.
The CDC's also been tracing an
outbreak of hepatitis in Florida,
but their lab that tests samples
was just shut down,
even though the kind of genetic
tracing it performs
is not conducted by any other lab
in the U.S. or, indeed, the world.
And on top of all that,
as we've mentioned,
there are currently real concerns about
bird flu spreading among wildlife
and its potential to spread among
humans. That could be a total disaster.
This Colorado veterinarian has been
sounding the alarm about bird flu
for a while now, and she's only
getting more concerned.
Do we have enough information
about how this virus is spreading?
I would say today, no.
At present, we're given a stick and
they put a blindfold on us
and we're sent into a gunfight,
and we're losing. We are losing.
Well, that is terrifying.
And I really hope the worst-case
scenario doesn't happen here,
if for no other reason than
I so badly do not want to get stuck
in that white void again,
slowly losing my mind
while talking to myself
and occasionally
a passive-aggressive face
that seems to hate me.
Don't send me back in there!
The point is, these are just
some of the current crises.
The damage that radiates out
from the wholesale gutting of HHS
is only going
to compound over time.
We talked to Dr. Georges Benjamin,
the executive director of the
American Public Health Association,
not a man given to hyperbole,
and he told us,
"When you go into a restaurant,"
"I cannot guarantee that
the food you're going to eat is safe."
"And if there's a foodborne outbreak,
I cannot guarantee there's gonna be"
"a mechanism to come in
and do the investigative work"
"to understand how you got sick."
"I can't tell you that if there's
a train derailment tomorrow,"
"that there will be an entity that
can come in and assess,"
"in short and long term, what your
exposure from toxic materials is."
"If there is an Ebola outbreak,
we will not have the capacity,"
"federal, state or local, to get our
hands around it quickly enough."
It was a really
uplifting conversation.
And look, I am not saying that our
system was perfect before this.
Over the years,
we've done multiple stories
about shortcomings
in various parts of HHS.
But our solution was always,
"It needs to be strengthened"
and not "Hey, here's a good idea:
let's cut its budget"
"and put a dipshit screaming
'AHA' in charge."
But unfortunately, it feels right now,
we're all about to get a harsh lesson
in what each part of our
public health system does,
as it gets taken away.
Which is sort of like finding out
what each of your organs does,
as someone removes them
one by one.
I'll be honest, in the course
of working on this piece,
we called a lot of people who have
either worked for these agencies
or rely on them.
Sometimes, they were people we've
talked to multiple times over the years
on various stories. They include many
doctors and scientists, who are,
by profession, not alarmists.
They can be endearingly,
and sometimes annoyingly,
measured in everything
that they say.
But they've been utterly shattered
by the last few months.
When we started making calls after
the election, they sounded alarmed,
but they were still holding off
judgment, saying,
"Well, let's just see how this goes."
But more recently, those same
people have been telling us, flat-out,
"This is a disaster."
"People will die because of
the mistakes we're making right now."
That leader of the APHA
recently put out a statement that read,
in part, "As a physician, I pledged
to first do no harm"
"and to speak up when I see
harm being done by others."
"Secretary Kennedy
is a danger to the public's health"
"and should resign
or be fired."
And look, I am not a physician
or a scientist, despite, admittedly,
looking like the child of Dr. Bunsen
Honeydew and Beaker of The Muppets.
But I completely agree.
RFK needs to go,
and by impeachment if necessary.
To the extent any senators
like Bill Cassidy were willing
to give him the benefit of the doubt,
and I still cannot believe
they thought they could do that,
that grace period
is emphatically over.
Because too much damage
has already been done.
This is a man who is clearly in
way over his worm-riddled head.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
He doesn't know who he's fired.
He doesn't even know how many
diabetic people there are in China.
And if that wasn't bad enough,
he's currently spreading
dangerous nonsense and
gutting life-saving research,
all while bringing in
a basement quack.
RFK, in this job, is dangerous.
In fact, if I may quote
every single passenger in the cabin
of his ill-advised,
piss-footed walkabout, there is
something deeply wrong with this guy
and we need to stop him,
before he makes us all fucking sick.
And now, this.
And Now: Local Anchors Learn
About Their Colleagues' Families
on National Siblings Day.
- Today is National Siblings Day.
- I have four other siblings.
I was gonna say,
I think you have quite a few. Four?
Four. I'm the oldest.
And then it ranges down
to my youngest brother,
who's 15 years
younger than me.
- That's a big age gap.
- Pretty big gap there.
But the rest of us are all kind of
sandwiched in a four-year time-span,
one after another.
- So, was he planned?
- Not really.
Siblings Day, shoutout
to my four brothers,
one of which will never
watch me on TV.
The guy with the perm,
that's Rick there.
He tried to change my cloth diaper
and stabbed me with the safety pin
through the hip.
And I still bear the scar.
So there you have the four of us.
And Milo and Robbie
are the two redheads.
Two redheads, that's right.
Different dads, but then
that's the story of our lives!
I think all of us have siblings, right?
Guess I have to call my brother.
- You're an only child?
- I am an only child.
Did I not know this in all
these years we've worked together?
Only been working together
for 25 years, Joy.
Hi, have we met?
First day?
You never talked about
a brother or sister.
It takes the first day of this graphic,
just so happens
to be National Siblings Day
for Joy to realize that after 25 years
of working together,
that I'm an only child.
Just when you think
you know Todd Simcox.
Apparently we don't.
That's our show, thanks for watching,
we'll see you next week, good night!