Does the MAHA movement downplay the risks of psychedelics?
Plus my discussion with Rick Doblin on 'antidotes to cultiness'
UPDATE: Robert F. Kennedy Junior just cleared the first vote of his confirmation hearing as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
There was an interesting podcast last week from the Free Press, called ‘MAHA: The Unexpected Coalition of Nutritionists, Mushroom Shamans and Moms’, in which Bari Weiss interviewed three leading figures in RFK’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement: Calley Means, a wellness entrepreneur; Jillian Michaels, a fitness expert; and Vani Hari, author at the Food Babe blog.
The interview got a fair amount of criticism from subscribers (check out the comments) for being a bit of a MAHA puff piece, but it did help to unpack the broad appeal of the MAHA movement and how crunchy whole-foods types came to support Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
These are quotes from Calley Means, who has been tipped – along with his sister Dr Casey Means – as possible advisors to RFK if Bobby is confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Servcies:
What Donald Trump did is actually reframe conservatism - the American people want to thrive, but there's corrupt institutions in the way. I think the foundation of Donald Trump's candidacy and his reason for existence is standing in the way of the swamp corruption. He's redefined a vision. I think it's a perfect vision for our time because the defining issue in the world right now is people crying out in this populist uprising. And Donald Trump channelled that. He channelled a vision of standing up against corruption. There’s nothing more representative of the swamp than what's happening to kids, than industries profiting from the kids.
Here's Vani Hari on ‘MAHA moms’ – the scores of wellness moms who turned up to support RFK at his Senate confirmation hearing:
They're fed up with the mass poisoning of our food system. They see that American companies are using better, safer ingredients in other products overseas while selling the same version of their product here with more toxic, more poisonous ingredients, everything from Kellogg's cereal and General Mills Lucky Charms to Coca-Cola products and Pepsi-Cola and chips.
Here's Jillian Michaels on how folks got pissed off about censorship and heavy-handed public health controls during the pandemic.
You started to see censorship become an issue around health. And you started to see, I mean, this is somewhat unrelated, but sex changes for children. Like, no one's mentioning that our current director of HHS wanted to remove all age limits for sex changes for kids. What the fuck is going on? These kinds of things started to make me more political.
MAHA is tapping into a deep discontent with American healthcare. 54% say there are problems with the healthcare system and 16% say it’s in crisis. As RFK and his followers constantly repeat: Americans spend more on healthcare than any other country and yet its outcomes are, on some measures like obesity, a lot worse. As a result of the pandemic, many people around the world are deeply suspicious of ‘official’ healthcare, medical experts, and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, suspicious that corporate and political interests are manipulating them for ideology or profit. They’re turning away from the mainstream and towards alternative media, alternative health, alternative spirituality.
This is partly the appeal of the MAHA movement, and there’s nothing essentially wrong with it.
When wellness goes woo
The sticking point, of course, is when the alternative veers into the kooky or the outlandish or the unevidenced or the conspiratorial, as can often happen in the wacky world of wellness.
‘Did you suggest that Lyme Disease was an engineered bioweapon?’ RFK was asked at his Senate hearing. ‘I probably did’, replied the future Secretary of Health and Human Services. As another senator put it, when you’re outside power you can ‘just ask questions’, but when you’re in charge of the HHS, you’re making recommendations and decisions that affect the lives of hundreds of millions.
That’s especially the case when it comes to vaccines. ‘Are you supportive of these onesies?’ Senator Bernie Saunders demanded of RFK, pointing to a photo of a baby’s onesie imprinted with the slogan ‘Unvaxxed, Unafraid’, which are sold by the Children’s Defense Fund, an NGO which RFK founded but now says he has nothing to do with.
RFK and the MAHA movement insist they’re not anti-vax, they just want all the facts to be available to the public. Here’s Calley Means:
Right now there are 72 pharmaceutical interventions for every child. If you ask the country “Do you support vaccines?” the majority would probably say yes. But if you asked “Should a criminal enterprise [pharmaceutical companies] be continually subjected to science to make sure they’re telling the truth, especially when there’s an incentive for them to get their vaccines on a schedule? And should we demand transparency?” Ninety percent of people would say yes.
There’s a massive incentive for criminal enterprises—GlaxoSmithKline and Merck—to get more vaccines on the schedule. You cannot watch an NFL game without seeing ad after ad for new vaccines. And it is not out of goodwill or desire for children’s health. There are studies that literally have a three-day window of complications. But the media shuts down anyone who even asks a question. So I think we can question the 72 shots. And we can subject the pharmaceutical industry to continued rigor and science. That is what Bobby Kennedy is saying.
This sounds like MAHA is in favour of rigorous science and careful tracking of outcomes. I am all for that as well. Let the public know what adverse events are associated with any medicines – vaccines included. Let the public know if the CDC funded research in the Wuhan Laboratory where (possibly) the COVID virus originated. This – and the cover-up - would be the biggest medical scandal in history.
But here’s Calley Means in the same interview talking about psychedelics:
I've never met a veteran that suffers from PTSD that hasn't gone through appropriate psychedelic therapy that said it wasn't the most impactful experience of their lives. We should be taking that seriously. Not having the FDA, which is totally an orgy of corruption with SSRI makers, say that psychedelics are too dangerous and slow that progress.
Here’s Jillian Michaels:
There are no side effects to psilocybin. There are a lot of side effects to ozempic, girl, which we'll talk about later.
This is weird, right? Vaccines = big pharma + hidden side effects, so we need for full transparency. But psychedelics? No side effects and any regulatory scepticism about them comes from ‘an orgy of corruption’.
Why would there be so much suspicion of the pharmaceutical industry except when it comes to psychedelics? You don’t think similar incentives to minimize adverse events exist in the psychedelic industry?
Calley Means said, to repeat:
I've never met a veteran that suffers from PTSD that hasn't gone through appropriate psychedelic therapy that said it wasn't the most impactful experience of their lives
As it happens, CBS 60 Minutes had a special this Sunday following nine veterans as they took part in a Heroic Hearts psychedelic retreat for PTSD. Nearly a year later, eight of the veterans felt their symptoms have improved. One veteran – TJ Duff - felt their symptoms had got worse. This from CBS:
TJ Duff found it unsettling and at times scary: ‘I've heard a lot of you guys’ stories and I did not get as immersive as you guys did. I'm kinda glad I didn't, honestly, 'cause I was kinda afraid of that.’ That night Duff took part in another psilocybin ceremony, but the next day he left. He later told us the whole experience caused a dangerous decline in his mental health. He's now back on antidepressant medication.
One of out nine felt worse – 11%. That’s around the figure we find for people who report adverse events lasting longer than a day after psychedelics. To be clear, eight out of nine feeling better is amazing. But don’t leave that 11% who feel worse without any support.
If RFK and the MAHA movement are serious about listening to patients and tracking outcomes and drug side effects, they should do that with psychedelics as well. I’m hopeful about this, especially as MAHA insiders appear to be in conversation with psychedelic researcher Matthew Johnson. Jillian Michaels said:
I spoke with Matt Johnson who is an incredible researcher with psilocybin in particular but utilizing therapeutics to treat addiction and I asked him, I was like, Matt, one session of psilocybin, 85% smoking secession rate, incredible science there. I was like, can you use this for people who are morbidly obese to treat those traumas, to get to the bottom of it, to deal with the deeper issues? And the thing is, it's not legal. It's like, I'd have to get a study.
I don’t know if Johnson might have a possible future role in HHS – I asked him but didn’t hear back – but I do know that he takes psychedelic side effects seriously, has published on them and spoken about them often. So I think he would be a measured voice within the MAHA movement with regard to psychedelics. And I’m certain all MAHA moms would want to know both the benefits and the risks of psychedelics, especially for their kids.
From ego-dissolution to state-dissolution
But the final issue, which is much bigger than psychedelics, is this – can we effectively keep track of health outcomes if the machinery of public health and of the bureaucratic state in general is disabled?
Elon Musk and his DOGE team, inspired by the example of libertarian president Milei in Argentina, are currently tearing through the federal bureaucracy, freezing NIH funding, removing CDC data-sets, firing government watch-dogs, closing down entire departments like USAID. The CDC have recalled all journal articles to make sure they don’t contain politically-incorrect terms like trans or LGBT.
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been sent emails encouraging them to resign if they don’t get on board with the MAGA revolution. And Musk’s team have apparently gained control of the Treasury payment system, which Paul Krugman has called a coup.
Is the politicization of the civil service and a libertarian assault on federal funding going to lead to better tracking of health outcomes? Will it help keep track of the things we care about, like life expectancy, or inflation, or educational standards, or crime?
I fear it will lead to what Francis Fukuyama calls re-patrimonialization – the replacement of the modern impersonal bureaucratic state with informal and untransparent networks of influence, funding and power. If the state is not tracking outcomes, you don’t really know what’s going on.
After the paywall, this week’s links, including my discussion yesterday with Rick Doblin on ‘antidotes to cultiness’ at Holomind; GH Research ends its 5-meo-DMT trial with post-partum mothers, and looks to raise another $150 million; the New York Times publishes a long feature on Psymposia; a trial studies lucid dreaming for PTSD; and what happens when Rationalism goes weird? You get a murderous AI safety cult called the Zizians…
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