The real goal of 'Make America Healthy Again'? Woo-woo treatments for the rich, shrinking healthcare for the poor | Alexander Avila

A new coterie of advisers around Robert F Kennedy Jr is shaping the US’s already exclusionary health system for the worse

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n Donald Trump’s second administration, the US’s health agenda has taken a new shape in the form of a populist movement known as Make America Healthy Again, or Maha. So far, its central figurehead, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr) has cancelled $500m of vaccine research, fired thousands of health agency workers and promoted an unsubstantiated link between Tylenol and autism.

But what underlying vision ties the Maha project together?

Its fundamental claims are simple: Americans suffer from a chronic disease epidemic fuelled by corrupt incentives in the medical, food and pharmaceutical industries. But what starts as a reasonable, even compelling, complaint about corruption quickly devolves into a mistrust of vaccines, health institutions and mainstream medical treatments.