RFK Jr. likes to wax nostalgic about how “healthy” America was in the 1960’s. He bases this on one datapoint, the prevalence of obesity. But let’s dip our toes into reality. In 1965: -42% of American adults smoked; it’s 11% now. -The infant morality rate was 24.7/1000; it’s 5.6/1000 now
He isn’t a scientist or smart enough to be one
maybe if we started smoking again we would be less obese? it's all about trade-offs 😉
Lots and lots of weed smoked back in the 60's . 😆
I know you meant infant morTality, but I chuckled at the concept of infant morality.
LOL! We must have been typing at the same time. bsky.app/profile/eliz...
😆 I can relate. Prostrate often becomes prostate during conversations.
Yep yep yep
🤔 The truth is it's MADA
What’s the incidence of brain worm?
They are an affront to the airbrushed image of glowing health he imagines was the reality of the 60s. Arrogance, entitlement and racism added to a worm eaten, drug added brain is his reality today.
And back alley abortions killed or sterilized countless women. What moron relies on 50-60s TV sitcom tropes to design a national health care approach? Leave Leave It to Beaver 🦫 outta this.
Was that around the time he was addicted to heroin? Because that could skew his recollection.
He has a very weird take on health in the 60’s—that was the decade I learned to smoke at 13. My mom used to send me to the local store with a note to buy her smokes. Also, there were plenty of obese folks&bad teeth. Lots of drinking and drug taking as well. He’s looking through rose tinted glasses.
RFK JR does not think well.
He could help fix that obesity rate through access to GLPs and research into next gen anti obesity drugs, but he doesn't actually want people to be thinner. He just wants to feel morally superior (as he injects himself with steroids and HGH).
Death rates from alcohol abuse were higher too: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview...
Nobody was obese cuz everybody smoked
Where I lived we had only 2 drive through fast food places in a 200 mile radius. Our food was not processed except bakery items & occasional canned veg & fruit. Produce, eggs, dairy & meat was local. Proportions were normal sizes not super sized.
There is a lot of truth to this.
Relatedly, the tobacco companies bought food companies… with results you’d expect.☹️ UCSF’s Dr Laura Schmidt is a serious expert on this: m.youtube.com/watch?v=bJjv...
RFK has been around for a long time. His thing in the 1990’s was environmentalism. He doesn’t really care about anything. He’s just riding the wave for money.
60’s weren’t very healthy if you were a Kennedy.
And the 'food industry' was developing at pace, but was not like today, ready to poison us with empty calories and novel entities Oh, and we probably didn't have micro plastics in us, now implicated in obesogenic cases. (Also, lots of men had been/were in the military as well in '65?)
I believe the food industry is the primary reason for obesity. There are preservatives and chemicals today that weren’t in use in the 60’s. Seems pretty clear.
Preservatives are moving forward, and more and more are now based on more 'natural' solutions - this can include fermented wheat, which has raised acidity from fermentation. The long list of novel ingredients including emulsifiers, other weird shit and chemical leaking from plastics is scary
Disagree completely.
In the 1960's my doctor smoked in my hospital room. I was there for serious bronchitis that turned into pneumonia. My father was irritated when I needed to use oxygen tent as he had to leave my room to smoke. 🤦♀️
That's as may be, but Americans are also 200% more stupid now than in 1965.
Facts matter.
Let’s not forget about all the pseudoscience which perpetuates healthcare disparities. journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-...
🎯 I used to talk about this in one of my classes—how discussions around smoking at some point changed to a moral failing and the same is happening with overweight and obesity. Thinness is often portrayed as holiness and foods like chocolate are actually advertised as “sinful”.
Well then put a stamp on my ass and ship me off to hell with the amount of chocolate I consume 😂 Love that you taught this.
When I worked in hospitals and went to rounds, I’d ask the docs a lot of questions on behalf of patients when they minimized patients dx or prognosis and tell them to lose weight (when we knew weight wasn’t clinically significant to a treatment plan) because patients didn’t know what to do or ask.
RFK Jr. is an idiot!!!
The 60's is when he started using heroin, isn't it?
Maybe I'm delusional, but I would like to see doctors, nationwide begin mass protests via TV, radio, social media. I just don't think reality has sunk it with the American public. I would like to see doctors commenting on MAGA media & podcasts. After all, MAGA personalities have children, too.
And we had 0 worm brains
Obesity has now been cured with drugs he opposes!
-Overall life expectancy was 70 years; it’s about 77 years now. Many of you know this, but RFK Jr. doesn’t actually care about your health. He simply despises people who are overweight, poor, sick, or living with disabilities. He views it as weakness. End of.
the problem with rfkjErK is also or primarily is he hates being alive.
correction: he hates having been born.
The 60s were so healthy. I had three school friends who had braces and crutches because of polio. Every year, there were botulism poisoning news stories involving commercially canned food. There were no paramedics, just funeral home "ambulances." Heady times!
For a guy who had/has the most unhealthiest of vices, the hypocrisy oozes out of every pore in his body.
Oopsie. I can’t really comment on the morality of infants. They seem like good eggs. What I meant to say is the infant morTality rate. This is almost as bad as when I accidentally omit the “L” in public when I type public health.
At first I wondered what was the matter with a "public heath", sort of like a park in Scotland or something? (Ok, I eventually got the point. By the time I figure it out, *everybody* has figured it out.)
😂
Our brains automatically correct. Only a few perverts pick out spelling errors. I know this because they always let me know.
😂
I remember when the printer messed up the “public” in public health on our business cards. It was pretty hilarious.
💕🤣
There was once a speaker who instead of "shift" had "shit" on all his slides. We couldn't keep a straight face through a serious seminar.
Oof. Sometimes spellcheck isn’t enough.
I recall a man who was annoyed when people at work needed a keyboard they'd just hop on his computer when he was gone. He muttered & whined about this. Which led someone to program the device to automatically replace the word "and" with another word. Next week another word.
Anyone who says "oopsie" is automatically my best buddy.
Yasss we are friends forever now.
😂
Oh dear. You've conjured an image of "public lice" and I can't stop snickering.
Pretty much the whole WH administration
I’m glad to bring a smile in these dark days. 💕
Oh you!
I dunno, sometimes babies are straight up a*holes. Although maybe that's more a matter of ignorance of etiquette, but who knows.
Yup. Thsts me in the middle, rn.
We are living in the Age of Eugenics
The guy who was an addict, who led others to addiction…
💯. A regressive idea of thinness as the ultimate and only measure of health.
Absolutely right. He is obsessed with an idealized body and nothing else.
And that has shrunk by a bit since Covid. Women and Children ALWAYS get ignored.
I wish Kennedy wasn't working so hard to increase infant mortality - but it is one area where his wretched nostalgia will be fulfilled.
He remembers he wasn’t crazy and could talk normally back then. So it Must have been better.
Another seldom mentioned factor in lower obesity in the 60s is that food was a larger portion of a household budget, farm productivity was lower, and portion sizes were smaller. More expensive food meant we ate less.
And we didn’t live in a convenience society. You had to very often had to expend a bit of energy to get anywhere really. Not the case now.
My kids were surprised to learn 7-Eleven is called that because it was remarkably open from 7am to 11pm. That was unusual at the time.
Measles vaccine wasn’t widely available until 1963. Measles killed and maimed more children than polio. Mumps vax 1967, Rubella 1969. These vaxes nearly eliminated the injuries and deaths.
Exactly right. There are reasons the infant mortality rate has dropped significantly, but he can’t talk about that. It’s his personal third rail.
It's going back up in Texas...
Anywhere there’s pockets of low vaccination we will be seeing more outbreaks across the country. With school restarting this week and next I anticipate lots more measles cases.
I was talking about the infant mortality rate, not the measles outbreak, although the measles outbreak isn't good either.
Lead in paint and in water.
Smallpox and polio cases are also down approximately 100%
I was a grade schooler in the 60s. Everybody smoked, you could only get fresh veggies in season, and cancer was a death sentence. I do NOT want to go back to those days.
You’re using facts, science and data. RFK Jr likes to use stupidity. It is clear to me that an empty peanut butter jar would do less damage to americas healthcare and well being than RFKJr. Why he is doing what he is doing is money. Thats a guess on my part given I’ve yet to see anyone change.
And Thalidomide was prescribed to help with morning sickness in pregnant women. Yeah those 1960’s
TBF, thalidomide was never used widely in the US because the FDA looked at the evidence at the time. Europe - different story.
Excellent point.
Pharmacologist Frances Oldham Kelsey of the FDA refused US approval due to incomplete safety evidence. She got a medal from JFK for her actions. BobbyK is decimating the FDA so good luck everyone.
I think RFK's obsession with obesity and everyone wearing a health monitor goes back to his past drug use. He has videos of him working out constantly in the gym or running or hiking whatever. That's great BUT there's a lot more to running HHS no pun intended than showing your toned physic.
Plus doctors back then were prescribing some really heinous drugs, right? A “not insignificant”number of women were prescribed amphetamines for weight loss or nerves… I learned a lot about why certain family members never sat down back in the day. 😳
White bread, margarine, sugared cereal, fried food, overcooked canned or frozen vegetables to mush, donuts, Tang, jello, KoolAid, cookies…… I could go on and on.
Leaded gasoline and paint!
His heroin addled worm eaten brain is incapable of remembering.
Also…life expectancy has grown tremendously.
bsky.app/profile/eliz...
Not to mention cancer survivability so good job killing all the research funding on that.
Sometimes I have to sit back and remind myself that many people around RFK's age who share similar thoughts argued against things like seatbelts
Vociferously.
Federal car seat, seatbelt, & Blood Alcohol limit laws weren’t a thing until the ‘80s. Since the fall of Roe, women’s lives are at greater risk than they have been 4 years. Any of my 4 miscarriages would have put me at risk for arrest if I had them today in a red state. I call BS on the healthy 60s.
Yeah, right. When I was in third grade in 1963, I had measles, mumps and chicken pox all in the same year. Then I had rubella the first week of fourth grade.
