Let's do some science. Benjamin Mueller and Gina Kolata (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
The approach to mRNA the two researchers developed has been used in Covid shots that have since been administered billions of times globally and has transformed vaccine technology, laying the foundation for inoculations that may one day protect against a number of deadly diseases like cancer.
The slow and methodical research that made the Covid shots possible has now run up against a powerful anti-vaccine movement, especially in the United States. Skeptics have seized in part on the vaccines’ rapid development — among the most impressive feats of modern medical science — to undermine the public’s trust in them.
But the breakthroughs behind the shots unfolded little by little over decades, including at the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Weissman runs a lab.
Karikó started studying mRNA, a “translator” that turns the instructions of DNA—which makes up humans’ genetic code—into proteins cells produce to make the body run. “I always thought that the majority of patients don’t actually need new genes, they need something temporary like a drug, to cure their aches and pains,” she told Wired in 2020.
The rejections started soon after Karikó received her PhD in 1982, set on leaving her native Hungary. After several European labs told her there was no room for her, Karikó, her husband, and their two-year-old daughter snuck out of communist Hungary in 1985, smuggling 900 pounds sewn into their daughter’s teddy bear. Karikó took a job at Philadelphia’s Temple University, but four years in, she reportedly argued with her boss and was ejected from the university, risking deportation. Continuing her research at the neighboring University of Pennsylvania, Karikó ran into defeat after defeat—her cells kept dying after receiving injections of modified mRNA and she couldn’t figure out why.
By 1995, her UPenn bosses gave Karikó an ultimatum: Give up her research or face a demotion and a pay cut. Karikó received the directive while her husband was stuck in Hungary for six months over a visa issue and the same week she was diagnosed with cancer, she told Wired.
It was “so horrible,” she told Stat News in 2020. “I thought of going somewhere else, or doing something else,” she said, adding, “I also thought maybe I’m not good enough, not smart enough.”
Her new role pushed her off the tenure track—a major goal for any academic career — and drove her pay below that of her lab tech, according to Wired. In 2013, she was pushed out of the Ivy League school for good, she told the Nobel Foundation's Adam Smith, who heads science outreach at the organization, in an interview Monday.
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet
has today decided to award
the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
jointly to
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman
for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19
The discoveries by the two Nobel Laureates were critical for developing effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic that began in early 2020. Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.
Vaccines before the pandemic
Vaccination stimulates the formation of an immune response to a particular pathogen. This gives the body a head start in the fight against disease in the event of a later exposure. Vaccines based on killed or weakened viruses have long been available, exemplified by the vaccines against polio, measles, and yellow fever. In 1951, Max Theiler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing the yellow fever vaccine.
Thanks to the progress in molecular biology in recent decades, vaccines based on individual viral components, rather than whole viruses, have been developed. Parts of the viral genetic code, usually encoding proteins found on the virus surface, are used to make proteins that stimulate the formation of virus-blocking antibodies. Examples are the vaccines against the hepatitis B virus and human papillomavirus. Alternatively, parts of the viral genetic code can be moved to a harmless carrier virus, a “vector.” This method is used in vaccines against the Ebola virus. When vector vaccines are injected, the selected viral protein is produced in our cells, stimulating an immune response against the targeted virus.
Producing whole virus-, protein- and vector-based vaccines requires large-scale cell culture. This resource-intensive process limits the possibilities for rapid vaccine production in response to outbreaks and pandemics. Therefore, researchers have long attempted to develop vaccine technologies independent of cell culture, but this proved challenging.
mRNA vaccines: A promising idea
In our cells, genetic information encoded in DNA is transferred to messenger RNA (mRNA), which is used as a template for protein production. During the 1980s, efficient methods for producing mRNA without cell culture were introduced, called in vitro transcription. This decisive step accelerated the development of molecular biology applications in several fields. Ideas of using mRNA technologies for vaccine and therapeutic purposes also took off, but roadblocks lay ahead. In vitro transcribed mRNA was considered unstable and challenging to deliver, requiring the development of sophisticated carrier lipid systems to encapsulate the mRNA. Moreover, in vitro-produced mRNA gave rise to inflammatory reactions. Enthusiasm for developing the mRNA technology for clinical purposes was, therefore, initially limited.
These obstacles did not discourage the Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó, who was devoted to developing methods to use mRNA for therapy. During the early 1990s, when she was an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, she remained true to her vision of realizing mRNA as a therapeutic despite encountering difficulties in convincing research funders of the significance of her project. A new colleague of Karikó at her university was the immunologist Drew Weissman. He was interested in dendritic cells, which have important functions in immune surveillance and the activation of vaccine-induced immune responses. Spurred by new ideas, a fruitful collaboration between the two soon began, focusing on how different RNA types interact with the immune system.
The breakthrough
Karikó and Weissman noticed that dendritic cells recognize in vitro transcribed mRNA as a foreign substance, which leads to their activation and the release of inflammatory signaling molecules. They wondered why the in vitro transcribed mRNA was recognized as foreign while mRNA from mammalian cells did not give rise to the same reaction. Karikó and Weissman realized that some critical properties must distinguish the different types of mRNA.
RNA contains four bases, abbreviated A, U, G, and C, corresponding to A, T, G, and C in DNA, the letters of the genetic code. Karikó and Weissman knew that bases in RNA from mammalian cells are frequently chemically modified, while in vitro transcribed mRNA is not. They wondered if the absence of altered bases in the in vitro transcribed RNA could explain the unwanted inflammatory reaction. To investigate this, they produced different variants of mRNA, each with unique chemical alterations in their bases, which they delivered to dendritic cells. The results were striking: The inflammatory response was almost abolished when base modifications were included in the mRNA. This was a paradigm change in our understanding of how cells recognize and respond to different forms of mRNA. Karikó and Weissman immediately understood that their discovery had profound significance for using mRNA as therapy. These seminal results were published in 2005, fifteen years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In further studies published in 2008 and 2010, Karikó and Weissman showed that the delivery of mRNA generated with base modifications markedly increased protein production compared to unmodified mRNA. The effect was due to the reduced activation of an enzyme that regulates protein production. Through their discoveries that base modifications both reduced inflammatory responses and increased protein production, Karikó and Weissman had eliminated critical obstacles on the way to clinical applications of mRNA.
mRNA vaccines realized their potential
Interest in mRNA technology began to pick up, and in 2010, several companies were working on developing the method. Vaccines against Zika virus and MERS-CoV were pursued; the latter is closely related to SARS-CoV-2. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, two base-modified mRNA vaccines encoding the SARS-CoV-2 surface protein were developed at record speed. Protective effects of around 95% were reported, and both vaccines were approved as early as December 2020.
The impressive flexibility and speed with which mRNA vaccines can be developed pave the way for using the new platform also for vaccines against other infectious diseases. In the future, the technology may also be used to deliver therapeutic proteins and treat some cancer types.
Several other vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, based on different methodologies, were also rapidly introduced, and together, more than 13 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been given globally. The vaccines have saved millions of lives and prevented severe disease in many more, allowing societies to open and return to normal conditions. Through their fundamental discoveries of the importance of base modifications in mRNA, this year’s Nobel laureates critically contributed to this transformative development during one of the biggest health crises of our time.
Key publications
Karikó, K., Buckstein, M., Ni, H. and Weissman, D. Suppression of RNA Recognition by Toll-like Receptors: The impact of nucleoside modification and the evolutionary origin of RNA. Immunity 23, 165–175 (2005).
Karikó, K., Muramatsu, H., Welsh, F.A., Ludwig, J., Kato, H., Akira, S. and Weissman, D. Incorporation of pseudouridine into mRNA yields superior nonimmunogenic vector with increased translational capacity and biological stability. Mol Ther 16, 1833–1840 (2008).
Anderson, B.R., Muramatsu, H., Nallagatla, S.R., Bevilacqua, P.C., Sansing, L.H., Weissman, D. and Karikó, K. Incorporation of pseudouridine into mRNA enhances translation by diminishing PKR activation. Nucleic Acids Res. 38, 5884–5892 (2010).
Katalin Karikó was born in 1955 in Szolnok, Hungary. She received her PhD from Szeged’s University in 1982 and performed postdoctoral research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged until 1985. She then conducted postdoctoral research at Temple University, Philadelphia, and the University of Health Science, Bethesda. In 1989, she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she remained until 2013. After that, she became vice president and later senior vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals. Since 2021, she has been a Professor at Szeged University and an Adjunct Professor at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Drew Weissman was born in 1959 in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA. He received his MD, PhD degrees from Boston University in 1987. He did his clinical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School and postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health. In 1997, Weissman established his research group at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research and Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations.
Illustrations: © The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. Illustrator: Mattias Karlén
The Nobel Assembly, consisting of 50 professors at Karolinska Institutet, awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Its Nobel Committee evaluates the nominations. Since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded to scientists who have made the most important discoveries for the benefit of humankind.
Nobel Prize® is the registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation
“These threats come down from an army of people who call themselves patriots. Look, this is a nation built on the strength of great research and research institutions,” he said. “They gave us the Manhattan Project, Silicon Valley, NASA, cures for diseases. Scientists are our patriots, not these chuckleheads who attack science.”
As dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, Hotez led efforts to create a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine for low-income nations.
He also became a reviled public face for his vaccine advocacy during the pandemic. Hotez has been called a criminal, a lunatic and worse by pundits and elected officials, including television personality Tucker Carlson and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Hotez’s book may not change hearts and minds that have feasted on misinformation. That’s not really the point, he explains. So, instead, the book feels perched on a fulcrum in our gray age where scientists are both vilified and revered.
Bespectacled and bow-tied, Hotez cuts an easily identifiable figure on this Sunday. He is a scientist, after all, who receives all manner of threats as well as fan mail.
As he speaks, a large sparkling sculpture looms behind him, a nod to the bedazzled horse on the cover of Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” album. Fan after fan stands by the horse for a photo.
There’s a medical mystery brewing in Florida and an unsuspecting, mild-mannered mammal may be at the center of it.
Some experts say the nine-banded armadillo may be behind a rise in domestically transmitted cases of leprosy. Another group quick to defend the armored creature says there’s little data to support armadillos – which are known to carry the bacteria that causes leprosy – are directly causing the uptick.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
A coalition of publishers, teacher and librarian groups, and other advocates on Sunday kicked off this year's Banned Books Week by rallying behind the freedom to read amid an alarming surge in right-wing book bans across the United States.
For over 40 years, the annual Banned Books Week—whose theme this year is Let Freedom Read—has united writers, publishers, booksellers, educators, librarians, and readers "in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular," as the American Library Association (ALA) put it.
"When we ban books, we're closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives. But when we stand up for stories, we unleash the power that lies inside every book," the ALA said. "We liberate the array of voices that need to be heard and the scenes that need to be seen. Let freedom read!"
As of August 31, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom has documented 695 attempts this year to remove a total of 1,915 titles from public and school libraries. Last year, the group counted 1,269 attempts to censor library books and other resources—the highest number of ban efforts since the ALA started tracking them over 20 years ago and nearly double the previous year's tally.
ALA said that of the record 2,571 unique titles targeted for censorship, most were by or about LGBTQ+ people and Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
"This is a dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to reading materials," ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom director Deborah Caldwell-Stone said in a statement. "Readers, particularly students, are losing access to critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for doing their jobs."
Book banning and censorship are nothing new, but you may have noticed more discussion on the topic lately in the news and on social media. Maybe you’ve even joined a debate over why some of the best books are now off limits. It’s important to note that while schools and libraries—or even a store—may ban books, it does not make banned books illegal to acquire or read. Of course, sometimes a ban on a book makes it just that much more, well, intriguing. Some teens, whose literary access is significantly challenged by many of the bans, have even created their own banned books clubs.
Book banning and censorship often lead to a suppression of minority voices and an erasure of reality. In fact, among the top 11 banned books on our list, 10 of the authors and illustrators are women or nonbinary individuals, while four of the books were written by authors of color and four by LGBTQ individuals. Many recently banned books touch on violence and abuse, health and well-being, grief and death—topics that are crucial for kids and teens to explore.
As parents and school boards lead the effort to erase uncomfortable interpretations of reality (such as the Holocaust book Maus), discussions of gender identity (as with George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue) and provocative stories that could lead to political questioning (The Handmaid’s Tale, anyone?), they are not only limiting access but also perpetuating inequalities and dictating what stories have the right to be heard. Ready to see which of these books you have already read—and which you need to get your hands on ASAP? Read on for our countdown of the 50 most banned books in America.
How we came up with our banned books list
We created a list of America’s 50 most banned books from the first half of the 2022–2023 school year using data from PEN America, a nonprofit organization that keeps a comprehensive index of school book bans. (Data from the entire school year has yet to be released.) We mined the data so you don’t have to—and boy was there a lot of data. In the first half of the school term alone, PEN America found 874 different banned books and more than 1,477 instances of individual books banned (because some titles are restricted in multiple places).
So what counts as a banned book? PEN America’s definition here includes books that were challenged and temporarily removed, as well as those fully removed from school libraries and classrooms. These represent a range of genres, and as the organization notes, such censorship impacts a diverse set of identities, topics, concepts and stories.
Here, we’re listing them from the 50th most banned book in America to the No. 1 banned title (in alphabetical order where there were ties). How many have you read?
The wagon will make a stop on its maiden voyage at The Bookstore in East Nashville and give out 500 free copies of 12 commonly-banned books. Titles like "The Kite Runner," "The Handmaid’s Tale" and "The Bluest Eye," along information about censorship, will be given out to customers while supplies last.
The book wagon will be open from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at The Bookshop, located at 1043 W. Eastland Ave, with the shop closing at its normal 7 p.m.
When the wagon runs out of books, it will pack up and head off to its next destination -- New Orleans -- dropping banned books in Little Free Libraries along the way.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Challenged at the Baptist College in Charleston, SC (1987) because of "language and sexual references in the book.
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
- Burned by the East St. Louis, IL Public Library (1939) and barred from the Buffalo, NY Public Library (1939) on the grounds that "vulgar words" were used. Banned in Kansas City, MO (1939).
- Banned in Kern County CA, the scene of Steinbeck's novel (1939).
- Banned in Ireland (1953).
- On Feb. 21, 1973, eleven Turkish book publishers went on trial before an Istanbul martial law tribunal on charges of publishing, possessing and selling books in violation of an order of the Istanbul martial law command. They faced possible sentences of between one month's and six months' imprisonment "for spreading propaganda unfavorable to the state" and the confiscation of their books. Eight booksellers were also on trial with the publishers on the same charge involving The Grapes of Wrath.
- Banned in Kanawha, IA High School classes (1980).
- Challenged in Vernon Verona Sherill, NY School District (1980).
- Challenged as required reading for Richford, VT (1981) High School English students due to the book's language and portrayal of a former minister who recounts how he took advantage of a young woman.
- Banned in Morris, Manitoba, Canada (1982).
- Removed from two Anniston, Ala. high school libraries (1982), but later reinstated on a restrictive basis.
- Challenged at the Cummings High School in Burlington, NC (1986) as an optional reading assignment because the "book is full of filth. My son is being raised in a Christian home and this book takes the Lord's name in vain and has all kinds of profanity in it." Although the parent spoke to the press, a formal complaint with the school demanding the book's removal was not filed.
- Challenged at the Moore County school system in Carthage, NC (1986) because the book contains the phase "God damn."
- Challenged in the Greenville, SC schools (1991) because the book uses the name of God and Jesus in a "vain and profane manner along with inappropriate sexual references."
- Challenged in the Union City, TN High School classes (1993).
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
- Challenged as appropriate reading for Oakland, CA High School honors class (1984) due to the work's "sexual and social explicitness" and its "troubling ideas about race relations, man's relationship to God, African history, and human sexuality." After nine months of haggling and delays, a divided Oakland Board of Education gave formal approval for the book's use.
- Rejected for purchase by the Hayward, CA school's trustee (1985) because of "rough language" and "explicit sex scenes."
- Removed from the open shelves of the Newport News, VA school library (1986) because of its "profanity and sexual references" and placed in a special section accessible only to students over the age of 18 or who have written permission from a parent. Challenged at the public libraries of Saginaw, MI (1989) because it was “too sexually graphic for a 12-year-old.”
- Challenged as a summer youth program reading assignment in Chattanooga, TN (1989) because of its language and "explicitness."
- Challenged as an optional reading assigned in Ten Sleep, WY schools (1990).
- Challenged as a reading assignment at the New Burn, NC High School (1992) because the main character is raped by her stepfather.
- Banned in the Souderton, PA Area School District (1992) as appropriate reading for 10th graders because it is "smut." Challenged on the curricular reading list at Pomperaug High School in Southbury, CT (1995) because sexually explicit passages aren’t appropriate high school reading.
- Retained as an English course reading assignment in the Junction City, OR high school (1995) after a challenge to Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel caused months of controversy. Although an alternative assignment was available, the book was challenged due to "inappropriate language, graphic sexual scenes, and book's negative image of black men."
- Challenged at the St. Johns County Schools in St. Augustine, FL (1995). Retained on the Round Rock, TX Independent High School reading list (1996) after a challenge that the book was too violent.
- Challenged, but retained, as part of the reading list for Advanced Placement English classes at Northwest High Schools in High Point, NC (1996). The book was challenged because it is "sexually graphic and violent."
- Removed from the Jackson County, WV school libraries (1997) along with sixteen other titles. Challenged, but retained as part of a supplemental reading list at the Shawnee School in Lima, OH (1999). Several parents described its content as vulgar and "X-rated."
- Removed from the Ferguson High School library in Newport News, VA (1999). Students may request and borrow the book with parental approval.
- Challenged, along with seventeen other titles in the Fairfax County, VA elementary and secondary libraries (2002), by a group called Parents Against Bad Books in Schools. The group contends the books "contain profanity and descriptions of drug abuse, sexually explicit conduct, and torture.”
- Challenged in Burke County (2008) schools in Morganton, NC by parents concerned about the homosexuality, rape, and incest portrayed in the book.
Ulysses, by James Joyce
- Burned in the U.S. (1918), Ireland (1922), Canada (1922), England (1923) and banned in England (1929).
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
- Challenged at the St. Johns County Schools in St. Augustine, FL (1995). Retained on the Round Rock, TX Independent High School reading list (1996) after a challenge that the book was too violent.
- Challenged by a member of the Madawaska, ME School Committee (1997) because of the book's language. The 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning novel has been required reading for the advanced placement English class for six years.
- Challenged in the Sarasota County, FL schools (1998) because of sexual material. Retained on the Northwest Suburban High School District 214 reading listing in Arlington Heights, IL (2006), along with eight other challenged titles. A board member, elected amid promises to bring her Christian beliefs into all board decision-making, raised the controversy based on excerpts from the books she’d found on the Internet.
- Challenged in the Coeur d’Alene School District, ID (2007). Some parents say the book, along with five others, should require parental permission for students to read them.
- Pulled from the senior Advanced Placement (AP) English class at Eastern High School in Louisville, KY (2007) because two parents complained that the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about antebellum slavery depicted the inappropriate topics of bestiality, racism, and sex. The principal ordered teachers to start over with The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne in preparation for upcoming AP exams.
The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
- Challenged at the Dallas, TX Independent School District high school libraries (1974).
- Challenged at the Sully Buttes, SD High School (1981). Challenged at the Owen, NC High School (1981) because the book is "demoralizing inasmuch as it implies that man is little more than an animal."
- Challenged at the Marana, AZ High School (1983) as an inappropriate reading assignment.
- Challenged at the Olney, TX Independent School District (1984) because of "excessive violence and bad language." A committee of the Toronto, Canada Board of Education ruled on June 23, 1988, that the novel is "racist and recommended that it be removed from all schools." Parents and members of the black community complained about a reference to "niggers" in the book and said it denigrates blacks.
- Challenged in the Waterloo, IA schools (1992) because of profanity, lurid passages about sex, and statements defamatory to minorities, God, women and the disabled.
- Challenged, but retained on the ninth-grade accelerated English reading list in Bloomfield, NY (2000).
1984, by George Orwell
- Challenged in the Jackson County, FL (1981) because Orwell's novel is "pro-communist and contained explicit sexual matter."
That led many on the Right to claim, for example, that Kennedy is “principled and understands the Constitution and its guarantee to protect the rights of Americans.” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy floated Kennedy as a running mate, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) entertained the idea of putting him in charge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Now Kennedy has apparently decided that he will drop out of the Democratic primary and instead run an independent campaign. That campaign would not harm Biden, as many on the Right hoped his Democratic primary campaign would. In fact, if it takes votes from anyone, it would be from Republicans, who have a far more favorable view of Kennedy (plus 28 points, according to an average of July polls) than Democrats (negative 5 points).
From the left (Jeffrey Cohen) and the faux left (Norman Solomon), we get:
Kennedy’s positions on domestic policies – from the climate crisis to economics to his extreme anti-vaccination views – are often at odds with progressivism. In a thorough critique, Naomi Klein exposes his faux populism and support from high-tech billionaires. Besides debunking many of his claims about vaccines, Klein points out that Kennedy asserts the climate crisis is being overhyped by “totalitarian elements in our society” and has said that he’d leave energy policy to market forces.
Klein makes clear that RFK Jr. is no economic populist: “On Fox, he would not even come out in favor of a wealth tax; he has brushed off universal public health care as not ‘politically realistic’; and I have heard nothing about raising the minimum wage.”
Kennedy does not have a systemic, class analysis of what’s wrong in U.S. society. Instead, he has a conspiratorial view. And through his use of social media and other outreach, he’s attracted considerable support from the conspiracy-minded right wing. In April, Steve Bannon – seen as the brains behind Donald Trump – commented that “Bobby Kennedy would be an excellent choice for Trump to consider” as a VP running-mate. Both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump acolyte Roger Stone said in late July that it might be good to put Kennedy in the next Republican cabinet.
That coming from an article whose authors want to influence your vote requires that I note every word of it may be a lie. We're noting it for Jeffrey. Otherwise, we wouldn't note it because, when it comes to elections, Norman Solomon is a known liar.
In 2008, he went on every radio program and TV show he could (not just PACIFICA RADIO) as an 'independent analyst' just calling strikes and balls with no skin in the game when it came to the people running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Of course, in reality, he was already a pledged delegate for Barack Obama -- the person his analysis repeatedly just happened to praise. He didn't disclose on air that he was a pledged delegate for Barack. If he had, listeners could have factored that in when hearing his opinions. He's supposed to disclose it, it's basic journalism.
And he knew that. He had a rag tag column that he used to write which some of the lower and lesser newspapers around the country sometimes carried. In those columns? He disclosed he was a pledged delegate for Barack. He knew he'd lose his syndicated column without that disclosure. But he didn't care enough about listeners and viewers to make that disclosure on air when he was posing as someone with no dog in the fight.
Vaccine disinformation isn’t Kennedy’s only conspiracy he promotes. On June 19, YouTube removed a video in which Kennedy made the claim that water tainted with endocrine disruptors are making children transgender.
In an interview with controversial right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ podcaster Jordan Peterson, Kennedy repeated another conspiracy theory, this one popularized by notorious right-wing commentator Alex Jones, best known for claiming the Sandy Hook shooting was a false flag operation by the federal government. Jones also asserted that chemicals in the water were “turning the frogs gay.”
“If you in a lab put atrazine and a tank full of frogs, it will chemically castrate and force forcibly feminize every frog in there, and 10 percent of the frogs, the male frogs will turn into fully viable females able to produce viable eggs,” Kennedy said as he embraced Jones’ theory.
Kennedy then shifted focus to transgenderism, saying, “I think a lot of the problems we see in kids — and particularly boys — it’s probably under-appreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing.”
Kennedy asserted that trans children were “being overwhelmed by a tsunami; they’re swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals today and many of those are endocrine disruptors.”
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) describes endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) as “natural or human-made chemicals that may mimic, block, or interfere with the body’s hormones, which are part of the endocrine system. These chemicals are associated with a wide array of health issues.”
Transgenderism is of course not mentioned in any of the NIH data.
Peterson argued that by removing the interview with Kennedy, which the site asserted violated their Terms of Service on misinformation, YouTube had “taken upon itself to actively interfere with a presidential election campaign.”
On Twitter, Kennedy queried, “Should social media platforms censor presidential candidates?” and then posted a link to the interview which he said Musk had made possible to air on the platform, adding, “thank you @elonmusk.”
Kennedy has nearly two million followers and Peterson has more than four million, but Musk has the most on Twitter — 144 million. Tagging him in increased viewership for Kennedy’s anti-LGBTQ views by millions.
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