It is hardly BREAKING NEWS to report that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of Health and Human Services, has for years been a fountain of conspiracy theories ranging from dangerous and evil to just plain wacky.

But today, while we are about to report what was one of his all-time worst, we are also going to spread some real and important news about one of Kennedy’s pet theories that – much to my surprise – now merits new attention and public discussion. It is about (get ready to be as surprised as I was) the fluoride we have long been adding to our drinking water.

We’ll get to that. But first we’re rewinding back to July 2023 to remind each other of one of Kennedy Jr.’s most hateful, contemptible and forever unacceptable statements. It’s one that’s so awful that even this run-amok scion of one of America’s greatest, socially contributing families stopped saying it after word got around.

Kennedy, who was three months into his ultimately failed Democratic presidential primary campaign, was at a dinner at a restaurant on New York City’s Upper East side. Among those there were his campaign manager and some reporters. A video, later published by the New York Post and verified as genuine, shows Kennedy apparently campaign trail-testing perhaps the most preposterous and potentially dangerous conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard about the COVID pandemic.

“There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted,” Kennedy declares.“COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

By that time, Kennedy had long been denouncing pandemic mask mandates and COVID vaccination requirements by comparing them to the era of the Holocaust. (A year earlier, Kennedy told a demonstration against vaccine mandates: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”)

You may have forgotten, or never heard about, Kennedy’s assertion that was of course never supported by studies or evidence of any sort. Kennedy was attacked for his claim and moved on to championing other conspiracy claims.

But now that Trump has announced he wants Kennedy to run HHS – and “go wild” on health and food policies, the staunchly conservative, Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post just editorialized against Kennedy’s selection in strongest terms: “The overriding rule of medicine is: First, do no harm. We’re certain installing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services breaks this rule…. (It) leaves a lot of room for things to go wrong – and for people to wind up harmed or even dead.”

Now this: After Trump’s presidential victory, Kennedy publicly spoke of the need for government officials to remove fluoride from drinking water – or at least stop adding it, as federal health officials have required since 1962. Officials say fluoride has reduced cavities by 25%.

But on Tuesday, the Washington Post’s highly regarded health columnist, Dr. Leana S. Wen, wrote a column concluding: “It’s not an entirely crazy idea.” And she backed up that stunning conclusion with recent evidence from prominent academic studies.

“Multiple studies show that neonatal fluoride exposure might interfere with brain development,” Wen wrote. “…A U.S. study published this year in JAMA Network Open found that prenatal fluoride exposure was associated with children developing neurobehavioral problems. Researchers followed 229 women in the Los Angeles area from pregnancy through about the third year of their child’s life and linked higher amounts of fluoride by the expectant mothers to nearly double the odds of the child having problems such as anxiety and emotional instability.”

And this leads us to a sharply focused rethinking of where we are in these early days of Trump’s tumultuous presidential transition – and where we need to be to protect ourselves and our families. After Trump’s presidential victory, his top officials cringed when RFK Jr. publicly urged an end to adding fluoride to drinking water. They quickly assured reporters that RFK Jr. wouldn’t have a Cabinet job – he’d be proposing his controversial health revamps not from the Cabinet Room but from some sort of lone-ranging presidential health sidecar.

Little did Trump’s insiders know that their assurances were just hours away from being impulsively Trumped.

The bigotry of RFK Jr.’s past blurtations must never be forgotten, nor forgiven. RFK Jr. is forever unfit for any president’s Cabinet. But we owe it to ourselves to not reflexively dismiss all he has ever championed.

Let serious, proven experts investigate today’s fluoride realities – and reshape the right policies for our times.

___

©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.