RFK Jr.’s rejection of germ theory debunked in Senate hearing
In a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) directly confronted anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his rejection of germ theory—the unquestionable scientific idea that specific pathogenic microbes cause specific diseases. After Kennedy defended his fringe view, Senator Bill Cassidy fact-checked and debunked Kennedy’s denialist arguments in real time.
The exchanges mark a rare instance in which Kennedy’s dismissal of germ theory has been raised in such a high-profile public setting, in this case, a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Kennedy, who has no background in science, medicine, or public health, is well known as an ardent anti-vaccine activist and peddler of conspiracy theories. But his startling rejection of a cornerstone theory in biomedical science has mostly been underreported.
As Ars Technica reported last year, Kennedy wrote about his germ theory denialism explicitly in his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci. In it, Kennedy maligns germ theory as a tool of pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and doctors to promote the use of modern medicines. Instead of accepting germ theory, Kennedy promotes a concept akin to the discarded terrain theory, in which diseases stem not from germs, but from imbalances in the body’s inner “terrain.” Those imbalances are claimed to be caused by poor nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins and stressors. (In his book, Kennedy erroneously labels this as “miasma theory,” but that is a different theory that suggests diseases derive from breathing bad air, vapors, or mists from decaying or corrupting matter. The idea was supplanted by germ theory, while terrain theory was never widely accepted.)
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https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/04/rfk-jr-s-rejection-of-germ-theory-debunked-in-senate-hearing/Open linkView original on lemmy.dbzer0.com
yikes, dude is gonna be draining the four humors.
Who's the barber here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ
What was only recently satire is an actual position.
They will kill you and your kids.
Hopefully not me, I follow medical science, although obviously herd wide health practices will suffer which may result in higher mortality for everyone, even those who follow medical science.
And not the funny ones.
Drain the humors!
I bet he doesn't wash his hands after using the bathroom. Also, does he not visit the dentist? He should stop getting his teeth cleaned/checked if he thinks germs don't cause disease.
Pete Hegseth bragged on TV that he had not washed his hands in 10 years, because "germs are not a real thing." These are stupid people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47201923
To be fair, when he was young his parents put his swing too close to the wall.
And yet they were able to fully take over the United States government. Really says something about the movements and institutions opposing them.
Says more about the fragility of democracies. For other countries, the warning should be clear: do not fucking defund public education, do not restrict education.
Unfortunately, we keep electing people who defund education, because it's expensive, and then cry that people vote for morons who waste away tens or hundreds of billions of dollars...
The rules mistakenly assumed that politicians would always be intelligent people with the interests of the nation in mind.
They didn't account for people voting for moronic crooks who openly intended to pillage and rape the nation for their own profit.
That they are complicit, yeah.
Fuckin Typhoid Mary. Can’t we exile him to an island for the rest of his life, too?
These people are just layers of scourges.
Wowwww, somehow that honestly surprises me that even one of these magats could be this blindingly moronic
These are people that believe that if you say something with enough arrogance, it makes it true.
His hygienist specializes in miasmas.
The Horseman known as Pestilence.
A kind of Terry Pratchett, Good Omens version, absolutely. "We don't actually have to make new plagues, we just convince enough people that the natural plagues they've already got don't exist, or the causes aren't what they've been told, or that the treatments do greater harm than the disease. In fact, we don't even have to deceive that many. A handful of posts to alternative medicine, conspiracy, and mom's net forums, and human nature will do the rest."
I need to read that one. Terry was a goddamn genius who got taken from us too soon.
There’s also already a horseman for War. Who would be Death and Famine I wonder?
Famine, whoever is in charge of cutting funds for humanitarian projects the USA were supporting and threatening millions of lives.
Famine is Brooke Rollins, secretary of department of agriculture.
And KAOS, the dairy man!
How is that even something I have to Read? Fuck these morons.
This guy is in charge of the CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL. Not only responsible for the health of the nearly 400M US Citizens, but really globally in many ways. And this failson thinks you can sweat away ebola with some fucking supplements... that he happens to peddle.
I love the term "failson". It's such an apt description for these grifting fuckups.
Except for the way they keep succeeding 😐
I'd like to challenge him to prove it. Ebola is a messy way to go so I wouldn't want to be in the same room, but I guess that's what cameras are for.
Honestly, I think other countries should just block US citizens from traveling until we at lest put the CDC back together. Just like, a minimum standard. Or maybe put US Citizens in quarantine for some period.
This is all an attempt by the rich to reduce numbers of poor people. They need more people dying, so they’re going to pull out all the safety features we’ve built into our society to prolong life.
Less “reduce the number,” and more “make the poor more tractable.” The rich still need human carpet to walk on, they just need it to be uneducated, fecund, and desperate to get under their feet.
Also divided. A divided proletariat (class of wage earners) can make less of a fist against the elite.
To reduce the number of non-working poor people. Or “useless eaters” as the psychotic, billionaire class calls them.
More projection, I see
This contradicts their insistence that children should have children to stop population decline
Right-wing politics has always been an incoherent ragbag of momentarily convenient positions, insincerely held.
Not really. What they want is for the older generation that has greater disability and likely hood to be drawing on services or retirement accounts to die off. Getting younger people to pop out more worker bees is how they keep the tax revenue flowing into social security etc and never have to pay out if they can kill off the infirm/ unprofitable.
Average life expectancy is dropping in the us while retirement age has increased by a decade. The two numbers are only something like 5 years separated now, maybe 7. Idk Im not looking it up right now.
Which is short sighted as a healthy populace is what lead to the US economic growth in industry prior to it being redefined as being based entirely on stock market gambling vibes. A strong and healthy populace was a big part of the post WWII boom.
Short-sightedness is like their chief feature
That's not what Putin told him. You gotta do what the boss says.
Is that why they’re trying to restrict birth control and sex education while saying people need to have more kids, so there will be fewer poor people?
They’re trying to increase the number of white babies born, and reduce the numbers of _everyone else. _
They need people to produce more babies to fuel the wars that they keep starting to keep the population in check.
Checkmate, liberal! /s
Doctors I trust more than Doctor Oz, Doctor Phil, Pete Hegseth, or RFK Jr.
Doc Brown
Doc Gooden
Doc Holiday
Doc Hollywood
Doc Johnson
Doc McStuffins
Doctor John Becker
Doctor Bombay
Doctor Bronner
Doctor Claw
Doctor Demento
Doctor Detroit
Doctor Dirty
Doctor Dolittle
Doctor Doofenshmirtz aka Dr. D or just “Doof”
Doctor Doom
Doctor Drake Ramoray ("Days of Our Lives")
Doctor Evil
Doctor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Doctor Feelgood
Doctor Frankenstein
Doctor Girlfriend
Doctor Hannibal Lecter
Doctor Horrible
Doctor Douglas "Doogie" Howser
Doctor Gregory House
Doctor Jekyll
Doctor Johnny Fever
Doctor Kevorkian
Doctor Kildare
Doctor Richard Kimble
Doctor Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy
Doctor Martens
Doctor Moreau
Doctor Nick
Doctor Otto Octavius
Doctor Pimple Popper
Doctor Scholl's
Doctor Orin Scrivello
Doctor Seuss
Doctor Zachary Smith
Doctor Spaceman
Doctor Spock
Doctor Strange
Doctor Strangelove
Doctor Teeth
Doctor Theopolis
Doctor Watson
Doctor Marcus Welby
Doctor Who
Doctor Zaius
Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zoidberg
Dr. Dre
Dr. Enuf
Dr. Hook
Dr. J (Julius Erving)
Dr. Octogonapus (DOCTOROCTAGONAPUSBLURRR)
Dr. Otto Octavius
Dr. Pepper
Dr. Donald D. Rose
Dr. Tedros
Dr. Tran
Rug Doctor
Spin Doctors
The Doctor (Star Trek: Voyager)
Even Nurse Ratchet
The Silent Hill nurses.
At least they're predictable
Nurse Ratchet! You are my people.
I’m at the cafe and people are looking at me as I laugh out loud alone. Thank you.
I'll be here all week, try the buffet.
they just want to know what's funny.
I won’t tell anyone. They better login to Lemmy and find out.
LOL TWO downvotes. Must be Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil because Pete and RFK can't read.
Can't help but notice that you have Doc Oc in there twice but you don't have Dr Ruth even once...
Once as Dr. and once as Doctor. I'll have to figure out which one is most common.
Dr. Ruth! How could I have missed her??? THANKS!
I did get her better half, Doc Johnson, on the list.
It is insane to think that he is endorsing a theory that was widely rejected even by Miasma guys in the 19th century.
The miasma advocates were wrong, but they still did many things that were beneficial. The first water treatment plants that provided the first safe drinking water were advocated for by miasma advocates, and the London sewer system, one that is still being used today was also built by them.
Terrain theory? They did jack shit. Just a bunch of crazy nuts who rejected both miasma and germ theory in the late 19th century.
To be fair, miasma theory made sense and was completely logical, before microscopes.
They knew about actual lethal gases, and ones that had different effects on the body. They knew there were gases they couldn't yet detect, as they were still discovering new ones. They knew rotting stuff produced all kind of gases and stenchs.
Hell, the theory is still pretty much valid for radon, though for reasons they couldn't have possibly imagined.
And at the same time, the idea that animals could get small enough to be invisible, and to invade the human body, was absurd.
It came as quite a surprise when the microscope was invented and every single drop of water turned out to be a whole ecosystem teeming with life, and we turned out to be precariously balanced colonies of microscopic cells, also inhabited by a whole bacterial ecosystem teeming with both friends and foes.
And then came viruses, which are downright absurd to the point that we're still figuring out where they fit in the tree of life, and whether they're alive or not.
And prions, which are the stuff of horror science fiction yet completely logical when you think about how proteins work, and how easily they might sometimes not.
Miasma theory wasn't correct, sure, but it was definitely simpler, and made much more sense than the mess reality turned out to be.
So, like swimming in streams polluted with sewage?
Lead
like inhaling Trumps dookie stank
Or having brain worms?
Or getting whale carcass juice on you?
Or handling a dead bear?
Or cutting off a dead raccoon's dick?
This guy is trying so hard to be patient zero in the next plague, and he's not even trying to hide it.
So he'll eat a Listeria salad and an Ecoli burger, washed down with some Girardia river water and think it was his bodies imbalance that made him sick???
Yes. This guy literally eats roadkill. And brags about it.
Technically, if the roadkill is fresh, there's nothing wrong with eating it.
If you were a hunter, I imagine (I'm not), they would watch the animal first to see if it was acting sick?
Even if you were the one that hit it, that's a substantial increase in risk I think not having been able to observe it?
Wtf, no. Lots of animals can tolerate both bacteria and parasites that humans can't. Just touching armadillos can give you leprosy. Even if you gut animals correctly, many (e.g. bears) have internal parasites that'll kill you dead.
Hence his infamous brainworm, though tragically he survived it.
Literal medieval doctor levels of medical understanding.
But he still gets to keep his job, because Congress won't remove him
When he dies, I hope they do an autopsy of his body to see how many parasites and infections he had.
I think he'll explode into bugs like the oogie-boogie man.
We truly live in the golden age of the moron.
These kinds of things are available to watch and honestly, with this current adminstration, they're incredibly interesting imo. If you care to watch the whole thing:
https://www.c-span.org/program/senate-committee/hhs-secretary-robert-f-kennedy-testifies-on-health-policy-part-1/677979
If you just want Bernie Sander's question it's the second star at about 24:00
It was interesting for me decades ago before i realized these politicians just make shit up all the time and it's boring now. Yes trump admin is definitely the dumbest one ever but idk it just bores me now, this was all stuff us teenagers were crying about under bush and now it's just worse.
This is what I scrolled down for. Thank you.
Way more than just one
They are all complicit by their actions (in a moral sense, inaction is an action just like any other action).
Oh no, facts.
Surely this will be the undoing of JFK Jr.
You mean environmental toxins like germs?
Don't hold your hand (or god forbid, elbow) in front of your mouth when you sneeze, it's actually racoon penis slime coming out and that is totally fine.
It's extremely poor hygiene to sneeze into your hand fyi
“You cover your mouth with the inner part of your elbow—it’s called the vampire cough!”
“Oh-no!”
“No, it’s all right—there’s no real vampires!”
(From The Office, I forget which episode.)
Yeah that's why the parenthesis is there.
This. Because we all know you're going right back to touching everything and getting your sneeze germs everywhere.
It's better than just letting it fly. You can at least wash your hands after (and you obviously should).
I have never in my life seen someone cough into their hands, and not just carry on immediately touching everything as usual.
Okay you're right. All people are like the people you've seen. I'm just lying, I definitely don't wash my hands immediately if that happens. Because you know, it makes total sense for me to respond and lie here. Typical moronic Internet response, Jesus Christ.
Yes desperately stopping a sneeze from flying on other people a certain way because you know you can wash your hands afterwards is exactly like sticking you fingers into shit in your own asshole. Exactly the same.
I think this wins "stupidest Internet argument" for the year for me. Maybe you win "most judgy, least understanding weird scolder" for the year too.
Stop sneezing into your hand you nasty bastard
Is it? Like it seems like it could be worse than just sneezing down towards tje floor or something, people sneeze into their hands and then touch things everyone else will touch like doorknobs and table surfaces.
"sneezing down toward the floor" allows trillions of fine mist particles to go airborne, rather than get washed off your hand. Soap and water work.
Debunking doesn’t matter in the US in 2026. Bullets do.
Can we not call it that? The beauty of science is that it can be questioned.
Eh, while it's nice to say that science is all about method and nothing is above being questioned, at a certain point there's so much evidence that it's insane to argue against them. Like, I'm fine saying more than just germs cause disease or that not all germs cause disease, but saying there are no germs that cause disease when we the mountains of evidence we currently have is insane. It's a lot like saying gravity doesn't exist. Like you can argue that maybe gravity is a niche case or a product of a particular frame of reference, but things still fall down. We know that, it's unquestionable.
Isn't the definition of a germ a microbe that can cause disease? Like I don't think you can, by definition, have a germ that doesn't cause disease.
Maybe, Idk. I don't worry too much about definitions as long as I can figure out what's physically happening they don't matter.
This is what happens when you accept something without question... You might happen to be right, but you don't know why...
I can't tell if this was a criticism of me or an agreement with me, lol. But, yeah, it's a lot more important to know what's physically going on and communicate on that level than to worry about subtle differences between definitions. What's physically going on is the why.
The way MAGA questions it is far from beautiful my friend.
You are correct, but I'm willing to give some leeway for using "unquestionable" as shorthand for "backed by such a remarkable corpus of evidence that for any contradictory hypothesis to seriously call it into question would require a literally unimaginable scope of evidence".
I think germ theory and gravity are about the only ones I can readily think of. Not relativity based gravity, just... Gravity.
It’s absolutely true that we have too much focus on pharmaceutical solutions and not enough on general wellness and prevention. But wellness and prevention means exercise and vegetables, not protein bars and woo woo shit about balancing your internal landscape.
Fuck this grotesque man.
You whats wierd. I was born into a first world country. Kinda. Barely really. Just keeps on droppin.
Next year, he’ll probably outlaw sneeze-guards at the buffet.
Such a tragic family history with so many promising people lost over the years. Kind of makes you question survival of the fittest.
Alligators looking pretty darn close to how they did millions of years ago is a nice indicator for survival of the fittest. I think fittest probably involves social paradigms with humans, and being recognized as fit might present an interesting intellectual challenge where you are more likely to find yourself surrounded by sycophants who soonest reenforce your own bias. Perhaps even, you’re looking at decades of that toxin in its effects. But, I am not a researcher on this field so I digress.
So how do scientists reliably give lab rats diseases we want to study?
Clearly, scientists are witches and must be burned.
I'm sorry, what's up?
You haven't seen some of the theories coming out of the Epstein files? There's a bunch of really rich and powerful people in there making a weirdly big deal about jerky. These are the sort of people that have assistants, servants, and the like to take care of their every need and want. So, for them to be emailing each other about something as mundane as jerky is really weird. Oh and a chef closely associated with Epstein has a restaurant called the Cannibal. There's also some accusations, not sure how believable they are, from people who claim to have been around Epstein's operations and that they had witnessed or heard from a fellow employee that kids were getting killed and eaten.
Didn't ancient china have something similiar to the terrain theory?
Source: some Manhua i didn't like.
people let him off easy because he can't talk well. heard he's invested in supplement sales. like snake oil guy of yesteryear
People didn't let him off easy. They outright rejected him. So he sold himself to Trump for the position he has. He's a morally compromised whore for money and power so he doesn't have to face the harm he has caused to countless people.
Lysenkoism.
As usual this is all made up and none of it happened
I mean, let's not pretend that poor nutrition, environmental toxins and stressors, polluted air, and volatile gases don't contribute to disease.
Some diseases are bacterial, yes. RFK Jr.'s denial of germ theory is asinine, and his comprehension of the ideas he promotes is probably tenuous and inane. I'm not claiming that he's on to something.
But let's not lie to ourselves. Let's not fall for the stupidity by running clear to the opposite end of the stupidity.
Disease is complex and often precipitated by multiple factors. And environmental, toxicological, nutritional, and nervous factors absolutely do contribute to disease.
Edit: I normally don't get butthurt about getting downvotes, but y'all downvoting this comment really need to think with your braincells for a minute...
Ok, but the guy flat-out rejects absolute and established truth.
Right, this wasn't an endorsement of him. There are perfectly legitimate arguments you can make about why he's an idiot and why him being in his current position is a danger to public health.
But saying "he's wrong because he thinks disease is caused by environmental toxins and poor nutrition" is missing a lot of nuance, and is also harmful.
Microplastics? BPAs? PTFEs? So many other examples: from papermills, textiles, coal plants, fertilizers, meat production. All these can have harmful effects when concentrated near population centers, especially upstream of water sources.
I get that RFK jr. isn't talking about those things, and probably thinks they're fake. But those are all environmental toxins, and when you summarily dismiss the idea of toxins causing disease, these all get caught in the crossfire.
Oh I certainly don’t dismiss those at all. Of course environmental toxins and other hazards harm our health. RFK is basically at the point of “humours” and blood-letting and leeches. Even if he says that environmental harms exist, he is still citing long-debunked pseudoscience. I’m sure he thinks it’s nothing a little beef tallow won’t solve, though.
Germ theory was controversial when we didn't have microscopes that could see microbes. Terrain theory is working backwards, that germs are attracted to areas of disease. It is so trivially easy to disprove today that it was disproven in 1870.
Doctors do not use "Germ Theory" to diagnose patients. Research into chronic and/or viral diseases has not stopped because "it's probably germs". Treating germ theory as the sole monolith of modern medicine is petulant contrarian nonsense that is grouped in with a whole host of other anti-establishment conspiracy theories.
What I always think about these morons is that we propose a test. Since they have super healthy bodies, or so they claim, they should be totally resistant to whatever virus or bacteria we expose them to. So, how about we expose them to the worst viruses or bacteria we know about and see who wins?