RFK Jr., Tylenol and circumcision — the lowdown

It's not my habit to preface my columns with “trigger alerts,” so this is a first: If talking about circumcision makes you cringe, feel free to move along.

- Michael Hiltzik, Tribune News Service

President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the White House in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in 2017.

If, on the other hand, you wish to understand what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was talking about during a White House meeting Oct. 9 when he tried to connect circumcision with autism, follow along with me. The offhand reference to circumcision’s possible role in autism by Kennedy, Trump's secretary of Health and Human Services, is part and parcel of Kennedy's documented assault on science-based medicine.

His campaign encompasses attacks on COVID-19 vaccines, which have been shown over the years to have saved millions of people from death, hospitalisation or long-term disability; his firing members of professional advisory boards at his agency and replacing them with anti-vaccine activists; his promotion of unproven “cures” for vaccine-preventable diseases; and his inaction in the face of a nationwide surge in cases of measles, a disease that was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. Let's pause for a few words about the broader consequences of the erosion of our public health infrastructure. It not only exposes Americans to more disease and more serious disease, but has profound economic effects.