DEAR EDITOR:

This is in rebuttal to a letter to the editor titled “RFK Jr. one of Trump’s biggest mistakes.” I couldn’t disagree more.

The writer parroted many misconceptions and false information that we’ve been fed ad nauseam. Because the writer along with the majority of people have no idea that science, medicine and public health, up until this point, have been completely captured by the pharmaceutical industry.

I’ve written many letters to the editor of this paper about the autism epidemic. It’s personal, as I have a soon-to-be 30-year-old nonspeaking epileptic son who also has a diagnosis of once rare and now very common — autism. His life has been very hard. He has been plagued with numerous health problems along with his “autism.” Over the last three decades, autism has been more or less normalized. It’s anything but normal.

Back in September U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, led a congressional hearing titled “How the Corruption of Science has Impacted Public Perception and Policies Regarding Vaccines.”

In this hearing, Toby Rogers, Ph.D, shared some sobering and alarming information as he spoke about the autism epidemic.

“Autism is a political economy problem. These are all political economy problems. So let me explain how this works.

“Thus far, government has failed in response to the autism epidemic because of regulatory capture. Rather than protecting public health, regulators have advanced the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. That’s pretty straightforward.

“Science and medicine have failed in response to the autism epidemic because of epistemic capture. And what I mean by that is that the pharmaceutical industry has captured every step in the knowledge production process in science and medicine.

“Big Pharma controls what is studied, how it is researched, and what qualifies as evidence. Now this capture permeates every level of the system:

• Medical school textbooks and curricula are influenced by financially conflicted academics.

• Universities and department chairs hold substantial pharmaceutical ties.

• Most clinical trials are conducted by for profit contract research organizations in China and the Third World.

• A large share of scientific journal articles are ghostwritten.

• The pharmaceutical industry spends over $27 billion annually on drug promotion and continuing medical education.

• Standards of care are authored by conflicted physicians.

• So from the first day of medical school to the final years of practice, doctors live inside an epistemic bubble engineered by the pharmaceutical industry to increase its profits.”

He went on to say:

“The entire system of knowledge production in science and medicine needs to be overhauled to liberate it from the biases and distortions imposed by the pharmaceutical industry.

“So just to wrap up … an estimated 115,000 children develop autism every year in the United States. That means that 315 children develop autism every day in the U.S.”

In order to overhaul this pharmaceutical profit-driven system we need someone exactly like Robert Kennedy Jr. The pharmaceutical industry has spent millions to malign and disparage Secretary Kennedy. With him at the helm at HHS we are at a pivotal moment in our nation’s history. Where we can identify the causes of autism and chronic diseases and truly make America healthier. RFK JR is likely the best decision Trump made.

ANDREA KELLER

Canfield