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Mail & Guardian
01-07-2025
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
Are procedures in negotiations for the WHO's international public health legal instruments being violated?
The World Health Organisation must recommit to the democratic principles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Reuters) According to a World Health Organisation But health freedom advocates are deeply concerned that in one or both instances, the WHO has broken its own rules for negotiating and voting for its legal instruments. As I explained However, as In the run-up to the Furthermore, the authors of the had been shown to be contradicted by the data and citations on which WHO and other agencies had relied. The authors were alluding to the WHO's contention that shortening the four-month statutory window for countries to review proposed amendments to the IHRs was justifiable on the grounds that due to 'climate change' and other drivers of zoonotic spillover, the risk of another spillover from animals to humans was very high. In other words, the WHO was using under-substantiated assumptions of an imminent 'existential threat' to justify sidestepping official procedures. Thus some health freedom advocates hold that the WHO's assumption of increased risk of pandemics relies on a weak evidence-base, demonstrated by a University of Leeds Moreover, analysis of the evidence used by WHO and others gave much longer outbreak risk profiles, highlighting inconsistencies between WHO estimates and the research estimates in their cited evidence. All this undermines the WHO's justifications for side-stepping its own procedures. Furthermore, according to th WHA in 2024], the WHO moved the Coordinating Financing Mechanism (CFM) from Article 20 of the Thus the hasty adoption of the amendments to the Furthermore, some health freedom advocates hold that the negotiations for the In early 2024, the WHO released a April 2025, which was the last day of negotiations for the Pandemic Agreement, the European Union (EU) Furthermore, According to Nevertheless, on the first day of the I am not adequately acquainted with the role of Committee A as distinct from that of the full assembly, but Article 19 of the WHO Yet while all the health freedom advocates I know agree that the The WHO has In essence, the PABS system is to be designed to facilitate the sharing of pathogens with 'pandemic potential', purportedly to enable pharmaceutical companies to develop 'vaccines' in good time while 'equitably' sharing the profits or products derived with the states that shared the pathogens with them. Yet, health freedom advocates are pointing out that since the Annex must be negotiated before the In view of the foregoing reflections, there is an urgent need for WHO to renew its commitment to the democratic principles that had set it apart from other United Nations bodies. Unlike the UN, the WHO does not have a provision of veto power for any nation, and thus is meant to uphold the doctrine of the equality of sovereign states. After all, the UN, of which the WHO is a specialised body, claims to be committed to democratic principles in line with the Reginald MJ Oduor is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Nairobi and a member of the Pan-African Epidemic and Pandemic Working Group and of the International Health Reform Project, as well as the co-founder of the Society of Professionals with Visual Disabilities.
CNN
18-05-2025
- Health
- CNN
RFK builds his team of ‘renegades' amid friction between MAHA and traditional Trump allies
The opulent ballroom of the Willard InterContinental Hotel is a regular stop on the high-dollar circuit of industry conferences that populate downtown Washington. But on a recent morning, mingling among the marble columns was an eclectic group of outsiders new in town. Food influencers, organic farmers and anti-vaccine advocates were among those gathered for the official launch of the MAHA Institute, the latest incarnation of the Make America Healthy Again movement that has become a key facet of Washington in the second Trump administration. Speakers took the stage to discuss medical freedom, school lunches, vaccine exemptions and above all, chronic illness. Farmers chatted about the importance of local produce but also the dangers of chemtrails in the sky. College students pitched a health startup built around the importance of 'touching grass.' Speaking from the stage, Calley Means, a longtime ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s who is now advising the White House, noted the oddity of pairing the people and ideas behind MAHA with those in Donald Trump's MAGA movement. 'There's a lot of organizations, a lot of people in this room who four to eight years ago, would have thought it was crazy to vote for President Trump,' Means said. 'And I think many of those same people in 2024 felt like their vote for President Trump was the most important vote of their life.' With Trump came Kennedy, who nearly three months into the job as HHS secretary has finally built out his leadership team filled with Covid-19 contrarians and self-styled 'renegades.' Together, with the added influence of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, they've begun a massive overhaul of the nearly $3 trillion agency — implementing deep cuts in medical research and sweeping layoffs that have led to the departure of some of the most highly trained specialists working in the federal government. But agency shake-ups and new appointees have also begun to splinter the alliance between traditional Trump world allies and Kennedy's MAHA acolytes. Though it's early days, there is friction between the MAHA and MAGA camps, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials and people familiar with the conversations who declined to be named because they weren't authorized to speak on behalf of the health agency, or who feared retribution. The White House bristled over the way Kennedy's team handled the measles outbreak in Texas and elsewhere this year. Meanwhile, Kennedy's powerful principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, has cracked down on the way agency officials communicate publicly, insisting that she personally review statements and reports. As for Kennedy's own leadership style, his oscillation between appeasing vaccine critics and placating public health officials has left people on both sides frustrated, multiple people familiar with the dynamics between the White House and HHS told CNN. Cracks have also opened up within the MAHA movement itself. Tension spilled into public view this month as high-profile MAHA supporters railed against Trump's new pick for surgeon general, Calley Means' sister, Dr. Casey Means. The holistic doctor has railed against the health care system's handling of chronic illnesses. But she has not discussed vaccine safety, and specifically Covid-19 vaccines, enough for some MAHA supporters. Looming large is what many MAHA supporters — and Kennedy himself — have publicly described as years of dismissal and ostracization by the mainstream medical and scientific community. Now that they are in charge, their suspicion of the establishment has not abated. 'The number of actual, true MAHA supporters at the top of these agencies is maybe 75 people across an agency that has 60,000 employees,' Mark Gorton, MAHA Institute co-president and a tech entrepreneur, told the Willard ballroom. 'Their job is unbelievably daunting because these bureaucracies are highly resistant to change.' But change is happening, buoyed by Kennedy's close circle of agency leaders and MAHA appointees. According to one former official familiar with conversations inside HHS, despite being outnumbered, there is no question that it's the MAHA advocates who are now fully in charge of the government's health agencies. 'Anyone in power, who has any kind of control, is a MAHA person,' the former official said. The MAHA movement is a key pillar of Trump's MAGA vision, White House spokesperson Kush Desai told CNN in a statement. 'Secretary Kennedy is both trusted and empowered by President Trump to deliver on his directive to get to the bottom of America's chronic disease epidemic, and this priority is shared not just by the White House and HHS, but the entire Trump administration.' HHS did not respond to a request for comment. To hear Kennedy describe it, there has never been unity like this among the country's top health officials. 'We're friends. We go to lunch together; we stay at each other's homes; we vacation together,' Kennedy told Fox News this month, flanked by the heads of three of the biggest health agencies: Dr. Marty Makary, Food and Drug Administration commissioner; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, National Institutes of Health director; and Dr. Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator. 'We're aligned in our vision. Friendship is based upon shared values, and that's the strongest bond that holds people together,' the secretary said. 'You got, sitting here, four people who are all canceled during Covid. The entire leadership of this agency is renegades, juggernauts against convention, and who are trying to look for truth, no matter what the cost.' As he said, each of Kennedy's juggernauts became prominent critics of the government's Covid-19 response during shutdowns and vaccination efforts. It's a leadership group 'made for TV,' one former Trump health official told CNN. Oz, known better by his TV moniker Dr. Oz, was already a public figure and adviser to Trump when the pandemic struck. He soon campaigned for reopening schools and touted hydroxychloroquine, without evidence, as an effective treatment for Covid-19 infection. Bhattacharya was an early advocate of ending broad shutdowns, co-authoring an October 2020 paper that argued most young, healthy people could safely mingle and achieve herd immunity against the virus. And while surgeon and author Makary supported certain public health measures during the pandemic, including early shutdowns and masking, his public opposition to vaccine mandates and skepticism of booster shots increasingly brought him into the circle of Covid-19 critics. Each has been tasked with reorganizing their respective agencies and reorienting them toward a MAHA vision while satisfying cuts directed by DOGE, a sometimes discombobulated combination that has resulted in eliminating programs, research and staff. Makary launched FDA initiatives to remove certain food dyes and reassess vaccine reviews. Bhattacharya is charged with leading Kennedy's massive autism research effort but also reworking the $48 billion NIH into merged groups with less funding. Oz has taken up the campaign for more artificial intelligence in health care outreach and defended potential Medicaid access requirements. Yet outside the jovial unity of the country's top health officials, tensions are brewing about the assembly's commitment to MAHA goals. The debate broke open this month when Trump pulled Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general, and tapped Casey Means to fill the role. 'The new Surgeon General has never called for the Covid shots to be pulled off the market. That's why she was picked,' Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, founder of Americans for Health Freedom, wrote on X. 'Kennedy is powerless.' Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy's former running mate in his 2024 independent presidential bid, also questioned the choice, suggesting on X that the HHS secretary may be 'reporting to someone regularly who is controlling his decisions (and it isn't President Trump).' More recently, Shanahan took more precise aim at Kennedy's MAHA moves thus far, targeting food dyes but not — in her mind — putting sufficient pressure on issues including Covid-19 vaccines. 'Sure, we can make Fruit Loops great again, but let's not overlook the bigger issues—glyphosate and mRNA,' she wrote on X. The blowback has led Kennedy himself to step in and defend Means, a holistic medicine doctor who rose to prominence after she and her brother linked up with the MAHA movement and Kennedy's presidential campaign. 'Appointing Casey Means as US Surgeon General is like appointing someone who dropped out of West Point as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,' Steve Kirsch, an anti-Covid vaccine advocate and tech entrepreneur, wrote on X the afternoon of May 10. Five hours later, Kirsch posted his change of heart: 'I've talked to RFK and now support her despite my initial reservations.' Outside of layoffs and reassignments at HHS, droves of federal employees have left the agency, several citing frustrations with the new leadership and Kennedy's chief of staff, Spear, a former environmental journalist who joined Kennedy's presidential campaign as press secretary. Spear told staff in meetings that all external communications, including responses to press but also routine reports such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly mortality updates or articles submitted by the NIH to research journals, would need to be reviewed by her, according to four people familiar with the meetings. Spear also controls the communications and information that Kennedy receives, according to those people. 'She's probably one of the biggest challenges of him getting feedback of any kind, information from the team,' said a former official who recently left the agency. 'Everything is filtered through her.' The slowdown on communications left White House officials frustrated with HHS' early response to the ongoing measles outbreak, that person and others familiar with the conversations said. White House officials would call HHS staff asking about the measles response, only to be told that Spear was handling it, the former officials said. There are now more than 1,000 measles cases across 30 states, according to CDC figures. Kennedy told congressional committees last week that 'we've handled this measles outbreak better than any other nation.' Frustrations with Kennedy's assembled leadership and the health agency overhaul have only exacerbated the flood of experts leaving HHS. For instance, so many people have left the agency's legal office that there is anxiety about whether HHS has the staff to man the looming battles with Harvard University over frozen research grants, the former official and another person familiar said. It is 'an utter disaster,' said the person familiar.
Mail & Guardian
16-05-2025
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
It is high time African states re-asserted their health sovereignty
Some provisions of the WHO's health regulations and draft Pandemic Agreement impinge on the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. Photo: David Harrison The World Health Organisation (WHO) will convene its 78th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva from 19 to 27 May. It will be held a year after the 77th WHA voted in favour of amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHRs) on 1 June amid protests from health freedom activists that the amendments were a threat to state sovereignty — the right of a state to conduct its internal affairs without any interference from other state and non-state actors. However, during that WHA, the WHO failed to get member-states to vote in favour of a draft of its Pandemic Agreement, to the delight of health freedom activists who also saw it as a threat to state sovereignty. Many of the activists hold that despite the numerous amendments to the Pandemic Agreement, the draft scheduled for a vote at the 2025 WHA remains a threat to state sovereignty. A key aspect of the internal affairs that a truly sovereign state freely administers is health. However, several pertinent issues have arisen around the question of health sovereignty with regard to amendments to the IHRs and the draft Pandemic Agreement. First, there is the The WHO has developed the International Health Regulations and the draft Pandemic Agreement as instruments to promote global public health. However, some of their provisions impinge on the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. For instance, they aim to vest health authorities with power to give directions on vaccines, therapies and medical devices during pandemics. This is reminiscent of the situation in the advent of Covid-19, when the WHO discouraged the use of indigenous therapies as well as It is therefore not surprising that both the IHRs and the draft Pandemic agreement seek to establish a worldwide system of medical surveillance, that is, the close monitoring of health events not only in communities, but also in online communication. Such regulations and surveillance not only violate the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, but also reduce doctors to mere medical clerks, and the ministries of health of various supposedly sovereign states to mere agents of the WHO. Second, the two WHO instruments require states to commit substantial finances to pandemic preparedness and response (PPR). As early as 2022, As a 2024 Third, over the past four decades or so, the proportion of the WHO's The import of this is that the influence of unelected entities over the WHO is increasing while that of the peoples of the world through their elected representatives is dwindling, and this is, in effect, the erosion of state sovereignty in the name of 'public-private partnership'. In the 19th century the peoples of Africa lost their sovereignty when their kings and chiefs signed treaties designed to work against them. Are the present African political office-bearers not repeating the same mistake by signing the numerous 'international legal instruments' similarly designed? Reginald MJ Oduor is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Nairobi, a member of the Pan-African Epidemic and Pandemic Working Group and a member of the International Health Reform Project.
Fox News
07-05-2025
- Health
- Fox News
DeSantis signs bill banning fluoride additives in Florida public water: 'Hydrate, not medicate'
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 700 into law Tuesday, eliminating the ability of local governments to add fluoride or other medical additives to the state's public water supply, a move cheered by supporters of medical freedom and health transparency. "Jamming fluoride in the water supply … is essentially a forced medication," DeSantis said during a news conference in Tallahassee. "At the end of the day, we should all agree that people deserve informed consent." The new law, part of the broader Florida Farm Bill, does not ban fluoride entirely. Floridians will still be able to purchase fluoridated water from private suppliers. But it draws a firm line against the government deciding what goes in your glass without your say. UTAH BANS FLUORIDE FROM PUBLIC DRINKING WATER, ALIGNING WITH MAHA MOVEMENT "When it gets hot in the Sunshine State, no one clamors for a cold glass of fluoride," state Sen. Keith Truenow told Fox News Digital. "We will protect our natural resources and give Floridians the ability to make the best choices without government forcing unnecessary additives." Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, who joined DeSantis at the signing, emphasized that this isn't about denying people fluoride, but ensuring they aren't medicated without consent. FLUORIDE EXPOSURE LINKED TO 'DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS' ON HEALTH OF PREGNANT WOMEN, INFANTS "Today, Florida took a bold step and declared that drinking water will hydrate, not medicate," Simpson said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "No Floridian should be medicated without their consent, plain and simple. Through our Florida Farm Bill, we're saying loud and clear: Florida's water will be clean, it will be safe and it will be medication-free. That's what freedom looks like in the Free State of Florida." The effort aligns with the national "Make America Healthy Again" movement led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His initiative emphasizes consumer choice, reduced reliance on centralized health mandates and a renewed skepticism of top-down medical policies. "Today's efforts to prohibit local governments from unilaterally adding fluoride to public drinking water is the logical next iteration of our commitment to being the Free State of Florida," said Bryan Griffin, communications director for DeSantis. "And Ron DeSantis has delivered yet again." DeSantis also tied the move to a growing public distrust of medical institutions, citing the fallout from COVID-era policies. "People are just much more skeptical when these elites are trying to jam anything down our throats," he said. "The burden is on them to prove why this should be forced on people. And it really shouldn't be." The legislation also includes broad support for Florida's agriculture sector, new consumer transparency laws and restrictions on environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices that target farmers and ranchers. DeSantis has also promised action on geoengineering. "Florida is not a testing ground for geoengineering," DeSantis wrote on X Tuesday. "The Free State of Florida means freedom from governments or private actors unilaterally applying chemicals or geoengineering to people or public spaces." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Critics of SB 700 argue fluoridation has long been used to fight tooth decay, particularly in children. But DeSantis pointed to updated guidance from State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who raised concerns about fluoride's effects on pregnant women and children. "You don't even have to agree with that analysis," the governor said, "but people should still have the right to opt out." Kennedy did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
