Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blamed the media for dragging his campaign Sunday, saying he has been slammed “even more than President Trump was slammed” by mainstream media outlets.
“I’ve been really, you know, slammed in a way that I think is unprecedented,” Kennedy said during an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic who is running a longshot primary campaign against President Joe Biden, is more popular among Republicans than Democrats, according to polling.
The nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy Jr. has been hit with backlash for his stances on vaccines, particularly recent comments he made suggesting that the coronavirus could have been “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” while sparing Jewish and Chinese people. Kennedy denied allegations of racism and antisemitism, saying on Twitter: “I have never, ever suggested that the Covid-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews.”
“I mean, listen, if I believed the stuff that’s written about me in the papers and reported about me on the mainstream news sites, I would definitely not vote for me,” Kennedy told host Maria Bartiromo. “I would think I was a very despicable person.”
Bullshit. He’s been peddling dangerous crackpot theories for decades:
Kennedy made his name in the anti-vaccine movement in 2005, when he published a story alleging a massive conspiracy regarding thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that had been removed from all childhood vaccines except for some variations of the flu vaccine in 2001. In his piece, Kennedy completely ignored an Institute of Medicine immunization safety review on thimerosal published the previous year; he’s also ignored the nine studies funded or conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have taken place since 2003.
Coming from someone who read some of his fantastic environmental work from the Bush II era, I can honestly say he’s ventured so far into the deep end of paranoia he should be shunned everywhere he goes. Children are dying because of him.
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You think Lemmy is big enough for a paid shill? Kinda cool if it is.
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Ribbit
Just don’t feed the trolls.
I have this conspiracy theory where he’s actually a genius who realized the world is overpopulated and is now on an evil genius plan to murder the world’s children to save the planet
But it’s obviously just a joke
He’s against mercury in the vaccines.
A lot have been removed since his initial push against it, because the vaccines we were pumping into everyone had them.
I thank him for his work to get poisonous amounts of mercury out of the vaccines
“Thiomersal (also spelled thimerosal, especially in the United States) is an organomercury compound used as a preservative in vaccines to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination.[9] Following a mandated review of mercury-containing food and drugs in 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) determined that under the existing vaccination schedule “some children could be exposed to a cumulative level of mercury over the first 6 months of life that exceeds one of the federal guidelines on methyl mercury.”[20][21] They asked vaccine makers to remove thiomersal from vaccines as quickly as possible as a precautionary measure, and it was rapidly phased out of most US and EU vaccines,[22][23] but is still used in multi-dose vials of flu vaccines in the U.S.”
I’m pro-vaccine. So is RFK Jr. He has concerns with some of the testing and chemicals in some of the mandatory vaccines.
I’d rather have overly cautious studies when it comes to big pharma, their limited liability, their rich history in bribing US officials (including FDA members), pumping the country full of poison (see opioids) while lying to people about what is in their drugs.
Thiomersal is in almost no vaccines at this point, and you get more mercury from a can of tuna than you would from a vaccine with thiomersal in it.
So maybe start scaremongering about tuna salad sandwiches instead.
Do you know if Thiomersal was removed from most vaccines before or after the issue was brought up?
Why did you ignore the part of my comment about tuna?
I’m vegan.
Believe it or not, repeating that doesn’t answer my questions.
Lemmy was having issues so I didn’t see my initial reply.
Ok? How is that relevant to the fact that there is far more mercury in a can of tuna than there ever were in any vaccine? Shouldn’t your dire warnings be tuna salad-based? Shouldn’t you be telling the world that they’ll get mercury poisoning from tuna salad?
I was asking a question, hoping you’d know before I’d have to research it on my own, since you seem to have done some research on this.
I don’t get why you’re being so passive aggressive so the vegan reply was meant as a joke.
Thanks to those who fought it!
And they recommend limited how much tuna one eats…because of…that’s right! Mercury!
Ethylmercury (C2H5Hg+) and methylmercury (CH3Hg+) are not the same thing. The former is a preservative that’s rapidly metabolized, and the latter is a bio-accumulative environmental toxicant. Huge difference between ethyl and methyl groups. It’s the same reason that ethanol (C₂H₆O) will get you drunk but methanol (CH3OH) will make you go blind.
God I hate when internet laypeople try to act like they understand chemistry. Have you literally ever taken a chemistry class? If not, please start here, and in the meantime shut the hell up before you get someone killed.
I know they aren’t the same thing.
I’m simply stating that due to thiomersal, there was questions of mercury poisoning. Most vaccines don’t have thiomersal anymore (since 1999), which most agree is a good thing.
What are you even arguing?
It’s not a good or bad thing. It just is. The CDC reacted to a bunch of know-nothings who wanted something that sounded bad out of vaccines, so they took it out. Turns out it wasn’t dangerous at all and it was a bunch of wasted effort, and people still get to point back to it and say, “see!? it’s a GOOD thing!” The people questioning its toxicity were morons, and we kowtowed to a bunch of morons. Now people are saying we should put one of those morons in the White House. I’m arguing because you very clearly don’t understand that thimerosal/ethylmercury is not at all dangerous. It’s still in your flu vaccine.
So is the CDC trustworthy?
ALL vaccines are properly tested, thimerosal is not dangerous, and RFK Jr. is a nutcase who’s aided in the harming of children.
Stop trying to change the topic.
It’s amazing what happens when you don’t stop reading a source when you find something useful to lift out of context:
"Upon conclusion of their review, the FDA, in conjunction with the other members of the US Public Health Service (USPHS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), CDC and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), in a joint statement with the AAP in July 1999 concluded that there was “no evidence of harm caused by doses of thimerosal found in vaccines, except for local hypersensitivity reactions.”.
And more:
"The notion that thiomersal causes autism has led some parents to have their children treated with costly and potentially dangerous therapies such as chelation therapy, which is typically used to treat heavy metal poisoning, due to parental fears that autism is a form of “mercury poisoning”.[16] As many as 2 to 8% of autistic children in the U.S., numbering as many as several thousand children per year, receive mercury-chelating agents.
Your own source made my point for me. Why didn’t you read the whole thing?
So it can cause issues to some…why force it on 2 month olds?
I don’t get why you think this argues against me? I never said it caused autism, I don’t believe it does.
Local hypersensitivity reactions happen with all vaccines. That’s why they tell you to stay in the pharmacy for 15 minutes after you get a shot. It has nothing to do with thimerosol. The reason you accept that is that we take immunological advice from immunologists, not from partisan nincompoops who read something that sounds bad on the internet and go, “SeE!? WhY mAkE ShOt? iT hUrT bAbY1!!”
I’m reiterating why your “why not play it safe” shtick is a toxic mischaracterization and deflection that downplays the very real harm his JAQ conspiracy ideation has caused in the world. The answer to “why not play it safe?” is “you’re not playing it safe, your trolling and people are taking your megaphoned ignorance as gospel, often at the expense of their own children.”
You’re not making a great case to mandate over 30 vaccines for kids without proper testing.
Nobody is arguing that. But rigorous testing in line with most western nations, seems fair.
Yeah, I don’t like when the government forces every child to get a shot from a big pharma organization that pays the FDA to get through the testing with shitty made up science. I think there should be rigorous testing, which there are good trials, but just to be more in line with most of western europe, as opposed to safeguarding big pharma companies.
ALL vaccines are properly tested. Stop implying they’re not.
ALL vaccines are properly tested. Stop implying they’re not.
And I don’t like when my toddler gets measles from your un-vaxxed kid before they’re old enough to be inoculated. Don’t want a government mandated vaccine? Then don’t interact with the general public. Problem solved.
Bullshit. Source your claims. I’d bet my life savings you couldn’t even read the findings of a Phase III clinical trial without relying on quora.com for support.
There is and there are. Next.
Done. Next.
Absolutely murdered. I upvoted your comment, kind stranger
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In what way?