This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.
A leaked draft of the Make America Healthy Again Commission’s report outlines new priorities on vaccine safety, medical freedom and wireless radiation studies, but its failure to call for pesticide bans drew criticism from food and environmental groups.
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A leaked draft of the long-awaited report detailing the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission’s strategy for tackling childhood chronic disease has so far drawn mixed reactions from health advocates.
The document addressed vaccine safety, medical freedom and possible health risks linked to wireless radiation, but failed to mention pesticide bans.
“Although this is a draft document, we are very encouraged by the MAHA Commission’s recommendations to President [Donald] Trump,” Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland said. She added:
“The strategies in the draft report show a clear shift in government focus toward protecting public health and preventing childhood chronic diseases, instead of relying on the same failed approaches that have only made our children sicker.”
Still, she said the draft left room for improvement — especially when it comes to eliminating pesticides. “Every category of pesticide has been linked to neurological disorders in humans, posing severe health risks,” Holland said.
On Monday, Politico leaked the draft, calling the document “quite industry-friendly.” The draft is being circulated among White House officials and has yet to be finalized, Politico said.
Last week, The New York Times reported it had obtained an earlier draft that suggested “good news for the food and agriculture industries.”
However, at the time, White House Spokesman Kush Desai told CNN, “Any documents purporting to be the second MAHA Report should be disregarded as speculative literature.”
The document was leaked close to 100 days after the MAHA Commission — led by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — issued its initial report on May 22.
The earlier report focused on identifying key drivers of the childhood chronic disease epidemic. This month’s report contains recommendations for steps the federal government can take to address the epidemic.
As of press time today, the final report had yet to be published. Here are a few highlights from the draft.
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Vaccine injuries, medical freedom and conflicts of interest
The draft spelled out a “vaccine framework” to guide the government’s approach to vaccines that ensures the U.S. has “the best” childhood vaccine schedule and addresses vaccine injuries.
The framework also focuses on “correcting conflicts of interest and misaligned incentives” and “ensuring scientific and medical freedom.”
The commission charged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the federal government’s Domestic Policy Council to develop the framework.
HHS has already taken actions this year in support of the new framework.
In March, Kennedy announced a plan to create an agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) focused on vaccine injuries, as well as long COVID and Lyme disease.
In June, the CDC’s new group of vaccine advisers committed to studying the cumulative effect of the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule. The CDC currently recommends at least 70 doses of 15 different vaccines for children and adolescents up to age 18.
These recent actions stand in stark contrast to past federal regimes, Holland said. “Creating a new vaccine framework is long overdue. Correcting conflicts of interest, improving transparency, and removing incentives are all welcome changes.”
The draft also stated that HHS would launch a vaccine injury research program at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center to improve vaccine injury data collection and analysis. The program may expand to centers across the U.S.
Holland said she was “most encouraged” by this addition. CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker agreed:
“The study of the long-term safety and efficacy of vaccines, vaccine components and the cumulative vaccine schedule has never been done with any type of scientific rigor or veracity.
“My hope is that HHS will capitalize on this opportunity to prevent vaccine adverse events and acknowledge the very high prevalence of vaccine injury due to the past ‘fox guarding the hen house’ via pharma capture of HHS agencies.”
A lawsuit filed late last week against the CDC alleges the agency violated federal law by failing to study the cumulative impact of the childhood vaccine schedule on children’s health.
Wireless radiation and health risks
According to the draft report, HHS will partner with other federal agencies and departments to study the effects of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) on health and highlight areas that need more attention, including “new technologies to ensure safety and efficacy.”
Miriam Eckenfels, director of CHD’s EMR & Wireless Program, pointed to a 2008 report by the National Research Council that called for research on the impact of wireless devices and cell towers on kids, fetuses and pregnant women.
“We’ve known about gaps in knowledge for a long time,” she said. “It’s important the government follows through quickly by launching the study soon.”
HHS needs to outline how it plans to conduct the study with independent scientists “to avoid industry influence and capture, which has been one of the main problems in the EMR space to date,” Eckenfels said.
The MAHA draft also addressed the mental and physical health risks for children associated with heavy screen use. Several initiatives were announced to reduce the time kids spend on screens.
Pesticides and precision agriculture
The draft report made no mention of banning pesticides. It also didn’t reference the widely used herbicide glyphosate — even though the May “MAHA Report” linked the chemical to cancer, reproductive disorders and other health conditions.
Instead, the draft stated that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would partner with “food and agricultural stakeholders … to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA’s robust pesticide review procedures.”
The draft also praised precision agriculture methods as a means to reduce pesticide application, saying the EPA and U.S. Department of Agriculture “will launch a partnership with private-sector innovators to ensure continued investment in new approaches and technologies to allow even more targeted and precise pesticide applications.”
The Center for Food Safety said in a press release that it is “extremely disappointed” that the draft lacked “concrete or meaningful recommendations to improve pesticide regulation.”
Recent news does not instill confidence in the EPA’s review procedures, according to the group.
“Since the release of the May report, EPA has proposed to greenlight several concerning new pesticides, and to re-approve the volatile herbicide dicamba for the third time, despite courts twice already holding its prior approvals unlawful,” the press release stated.
Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group’s senior vice president of government affairs, told Politico, “This report is all hat and no cattle. Consumers want action to get the worst chemicals out of their food and water, not a plan to plan.”
Holland urged the MAHA Commission to take a more critical stance on companies that influence public health. She said:
“Granting blanket immunity to corporations that have a fiscal responsibility to their shareholders, and not a responsibility to consumer safety, is one of the most dangerous propositions imaginable. We hope that the MAHA Commission Report deals with this issue head-on.”
Pesticide industry lobbyists have been working to pass state and federal legislation that would make it impossible for someone harmed by their products to sue pesticide makers.
The proposed laws mirror the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which granted vaccine makers immunity from liability for their products.
Related articles in The Defender
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RFK Jr.: MAHA Report a ‘Clarion Call’ to End the Chronic Disease Epidemic
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MAHA Report ‘Falls Short’ on Linking Wireless Radiation to Chronic Disease, Experts Say
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Did MAHA Commission Go Far Enough on Vaccines? Fans and Critics Weigh In
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MAHA Movement Faces Uphill Battle as Trump Administration Wages War on Organic Agriculture
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