this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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politics

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[–] I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 101 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

"Alternate theory." Oh dear god, it's miasma, isn't it.

Ok.. he was aiming for miasma, but missed. We're doomed.

He wrote an entire section on it in his 2021 book vilifying Fauci, titled The Real Anthony Fauci. The section is titled "Miasma vs. Germ Theory," in the chapter "The White Man's Burden." [...] Kennedy contrasts his erroneous take on miasma theory with germ theory, which he derides as a tool of the pharmaceutical industry and pushy scientists to justify selling modern medicines. The abandonment of miasma theory, Kennedy bemoans, realigned health and medical institutions to "the pharmaceutical paradigm that emphasized targeting particular germs with specific drugs rather than fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition."

Edit: Apparently "The White Man's Burden" is a racist poem by Rudyard Kipling from 1899 about how the US should colonize the Philippines.. the "half devil, half child" people of the Philippines... Curious what that has to do with antiquated ideas about illness, but I'm afraid reading his book might give me brain worms. That's how contagions work, right..?

[–] iltoroargento@lemmy.sdf.org 61 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Excuse me? In the chapter "The What, Now?!?!" Holy fucking christ... dude is pre-Darwinian in his takes.

Edit: autocorrect

Also, I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

[–] moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

It's worse than you think.

The miasma part is pre-germ. The worst part is what's following. The immune system and healthy living part is an ideology that is popular in the New Age beliefs. It was very popular in some communities in the 60s and 70s. But, it's an older ideology about health. The Nazi themselves used this and believed (at least partially) in the immune system bullshit. They all base their beliefs on a German umbrella term and movement, the Lebensreform (German Wikipedia for a longer article )

It was promoted by wealthy bourgeois that lived in urban and industrialized areas of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. The intent was a natural and healthy lifestyle to counter the detrimental effects of industrialization, urban living, and "modernity" on health and overall well-being. It included for example organic food, alternative medicine but also spiritual and religious beliefs.

I highly recommend reading some lines about it. It helps to understand RFK Jr. and where his bullshit comes from.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It looks like these things are all over the board, going from useless and detrimental, to actually good, most of them contextual.

It's like rfkj got brain damage and then tried to make sense if it. It's like he almost gets it but then veers off to the side.

I was actually just talking to a person about this. How it's pretty easy to pursue truth of a topic and continue down the wrong road, all just from a wrong premise or even a missing fact that gives you the wrong perspective and direction. Continuing to deepen an "understanding" of something, stubbornly. Add cognitive biases to a deep impairment, and now you're ready to run the United States apparently.

[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 7 points 1 week ago

Rfkjr has been a twisted little moron his entire life. Any impairment he has he's lived with for decades.

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[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

The white man’s burden is also used referentially to call out people who do things like travel to poor countries to build houses even though they have far less building experience than locals and the money they paid to get there would have gone much further, had it simply been donated in the form of building materials.

I don’t know how RFK Jr. is using it, but it almost certainly makes no sense.

Edit: oh, voluntourism! I knew there was a term for it

[–] meyotch@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

No, you don’t get it! The benefit is not in the houses and wells that we must show those savages how to build. The blessing is the chance to spend time with their white saviors.

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[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The ~~silver~~ quicksilver lining is that plague doctor masks might be making a comeback, at least?

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[–] skhayfa@lemmy.world 74 points 1 week ago (3 children)

In science a theory is not enforced, it's proven. If he believes whatever his worm is thinking to be true, go to a lab and get evidences for it. It's not the European middle age anymore.

[–] running_ragged@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The rest of the world will be fine like when mao had the birds shot or when USSR relied on Lysenko instead of Vavilov. The US...people are going to have to get ok with shitty living real fast. Ironically, this giant reduction in the ability to consume will likely be great for the average carbon footprint.

[–] breakingcups@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm so glad there's an ocean between us for when the shooting starts... Not that the collapse of the US won't have enormous geopolitical ramifications, most of them bad.

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[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

go to a lab and get evidence

They're here to dismantle our society, they don't care.

[–] iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Strictly speaking while you can prove things in mathematics, in science you can only disprove things. A theory which survives for a long time after a large number of experiments is widely accepted and can be trusted, but it is not proven.

[–] skhayfa@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (8 children)

What do you mean by strictly speaking? Germ theory was proven by Pasteur experiments in the 19th century and confirmed by countless of scientists throughout the 20th Century to this day. What more proof do you want when you can literally see bacteria expand and colonize a medium?

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[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

I love reading this pedantic bullshit while my nation and modern civilization is being rolled back to the dark ages.

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 59 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Now we're at the core of it. These morons never believed in germ theory at all. Nevermind the fact that at this point you can actually look at germs in a microscope.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

They don't believe in things they don't understand, and they don't understand things they can't see with their own caveman senses.

We crawled out of 30,000 years of trying and failing to start a civilization, we almost went extinct, we lost countless billions of lives to war, murder, famine, disease and hardships of a natural world that doesn't want us to live. Just to get to this point where a handful of coked-up, mentally handicapped rich fucks can decide all those countless sacrifices were for nothing.

It genuinely boggles me that Americans are at all accepting of this. Where the FUCK are my countrymen who see how stupid and dangerous this is? We should all be storming HHS and dragging RFK and his unqualified goon squad out to the lawn. Seriously. I am not kidding. Modern medical knowledge is too valuable to let some unelected clown who has zero knowledge or training to just decide to roll the entire thing back because his other clowns sowed distrust among our stupidest.

If we don't rise up and do something, I strongly feel you all deserve what the consequences will be.

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[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

You can also just expose someone to a pathogen and predict the outcome based on the pathogen. Like the doctor who proved that Helicobacter pylori causes stomach ulcers and cancer by taking a shot of broth laced with the bacteria and, predictably, got stomach ulcers, which he successfully treated with antibiotics.

[–] splonglo@lemmy.world 55 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I'm not surprised. Carl Sagan saw this coming in 1995

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

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[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 53 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Remember an M.D.. voted to install this dipshit because he's a Republican.

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[–] DrCake@lemmy.world 42 points 1 week ago

Reject germ theory, embrace worm theory

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Oooohhhh, when they said "the good old days" they meant 1400s. That makes so much more sense.

[–] iltoroargento@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 1 week ago

"This is the worst [Black Plague] of your life, so far."

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[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 34 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I am at a loss as to how we could have regressed like this. At a complete and absolute loss.

As a 90s kid I remember the zeitgeist of the time (and even in the early 2000s) that the world was ever in a forward march and we will never stop going forward...

Holy shit they were not just wrong, but how wrong was scary. I will also never forget how on the internet shortly after 9/11 (albeit those view points predate 9/11) made the whole clash of civilization between the rational and intelligent and scientific west and the barbaric Muslim world that is stuck in the 12th century or something.

They made the then scientific lead of the west a result of a core, rock solid trait of the west that was reached purely through discussion and debate and based only on facts. Meaning it cannot be done away with that quickly.

But barely in the past 15 years (maybe even less) view points that would be seen as an absolute joke became mainstream, and not only that, the same loonies are the ones in charge now. Ironically in the early covid-19 time many were acting all shocked that Muslim countries not only had lock downs and that there was no resistance to them... as if Muslims are in such denial of modern anything that they think they cannot be barred from being sick or something.

And then they claimed that the Muslims morons who DID defy lockdowns and became super spreaders were purely unique to the Islamic world. Never mind the fact that religious people of all stripes (Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians... my god the Christians! Christians Koreans were singlehandedly responsible for making covid-19 a problem in Korea!) Fucked up, they still acted like it was purely a Muslim problem.

I wonder how many of them now even realise just how fucking FAST the entire world order they claim is a deep intrinsic trait is falling apart.

[–] clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago

I blame the rise of social media - especially the video version - for giving a voice to the idiots and letting their sheer high quantity distort facts with clickbaity and rage inducing headlines

This may or may not be the darkest timeline (it's pretty close)... but it's 100% the stupidest.

[–] Botzo@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I think you will enjoy this recent episode of the This Machine Kills podcast.

We discuss Quinn’s analysis of “new fusionism” or a mutant strain of neoliberalism that crystallized in the 1990s, which sought to ground and defend neoliberal policies through their own bastardization of biological sciences — cognitive, behavioral, evolutionary, genetic, and so on. They then used scientism to justify and propagate political ideas and economic models based on hardwired human nature and hierarchical differences between races, cultures, and intelligence. The fringes of the 1990s have now become the mainstream of the 2020s.

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[–] sepi@piefed.social 33 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Wow how many members of the cabinet are fucking idiots?

[–] freshcow@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago

It's the main qualification, aside from being an ass-kisser.

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[–] grober_Unfug@discuss.tchncs.de 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Well, in that case he surely wouldn’t mind getting a shot of rabies virus, probably mixed with Ebola and Marburg. Just germs, nothing to worry about!

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago (8 children)

What doesn't kill him only makes him dumber and more dangerous

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[–] itsonlygeorge@reddthat.com 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Let’s bring back blood letting and leeches. For health reasons.

[–] MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

And we use maggots to eat dead tissue

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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 22 points 6 days ago (2 children)

You know what they call “alternative medicine” that works?

Medicine.

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[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 19 points 1 week ago

Sounds like we're going back to the "four humors:"

The "four humors" are a classical theory, developed by ancient Greek physicians like Hippocrates, that suggests human personality and health are determined by the balance of four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. An excess or deficiency of these humors was believed to influence both temperament and susceptibility to illness. 

This theory was influential in ancient and medieval medicine, influencing how people understood and treated illness and even personality. While no longer considered a scientifically valid theory of human health, it's a significant part of the history of medicine and offers a glimpse into ancient philosophical and medical thinking.

Except now we are actually using a contemporary version of it to rule our health care system.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm sorry, where did this guy get his relevant PhD(s) again?

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 8 points 6 days ago

He probably thinks PhD means Pretty huge Dick. Which he does not have either.

[–] MuskyMelon@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

He's doesn't wash his hands after using the toilet.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Everybody around him probably constantly has diarrhea and is getting sick

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[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] Bouzou@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago

pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, pricks, potions, and poisons

Look, I'm not here to defend the pharmaceutical industry, but at least they're fucking REGULATED.

Unlike, say, the supplement industry which he so loves... That'll tell you: take these 50 expensive potions and you'll get better, not the thing that has been rigorously tested & proven over generations.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The brain worm commands it

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[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

The rest of the world should forbid all travels in and out of the US. And bring back lazarettos for those that must travel there.

[–] Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

FUCK IT! Why not also throw out all the work of Koch and Pasteur!

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[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 7 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Back in the 80's or 90's there was this one show in Spanish "Erase Una Vez LA Vida". You just have your kids watch that a few times and they will be experts in the human body. Including the knowledge of how viruses are always lurking around trying to fuck us all up:

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