Intelligent Medicine®

Why I will support the confirmation of RFK Jr.

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As President and Medical Director of the Alliance for Natural Health, an organization that comprises 675,000 thousand concerned citizens and healthcare practitioners, I want to share why our organization is convinced that the confirmation of Robert F Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of HHS aligns with our goals: “To protect the right of all Americans to choose natural and regenerative, optimum health for people and the planet.”

The election is over, and some are disappointed and others exhilarated. Here on Intelligent Medicine, I’m wary of pushing a political agenda that might alienate some of our audience. Our community’s common denominator is that we support an “all-of-the-above” solution to our health challenges, incorporating the best of high-tech options—but calling out their excesses—while emphasizing natural modalities—where safe, effective and practical.

The fact of the matter is that our remit spans the political spectrum, from those on the Left worried about climate change and environmental devastation due to unregulated commerce and those underserved by our medical system, to those on the Right who deplore overzealous government intrusion on free speech and innovation. Proposed fixes to our unwieldy, expensive and inequitable health care delivery system range from a single-payer system to a return to traditional private enterprise with the doctor-patient relationship unencumbered by bureaucrats.

Regardless, it’s been said that “all politics are local”. Well, health freedom is our neighborhood, and we anticipate that our audience will have the discernment to transcend rigid partisanship and rally to support the initiatives that affect our community’s health priorities.

Some background on what led me to ANH. When I embarked on my medical career 40 years ago, I was faced with a stark choice:

I could either leverage my credentials as graduate of a top medical school and a prestigious residency program in internal medicine and pursue a rewarding career in mainstream medicine… Or leave it all behind and take a leap of faith and embrace what was then called “alternative or wholistic medicine,” now better known as integrative or functional medicine.

I chose the latter. It was a risky bet. Practitioners like me were few and far between then. We ran risks of censure and professional discipline merely for not adhering to conventional guidelines. We faced denials from private insurers and Medicare.

There was also a persuasive argument that the march of progress of mainstream medicine would eventually yield high tech fixes for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and all the major threats . . . rendering natural medicine obsolete. 

Fast forward to 2025—that hasn’t happened. Progress has been made in vanquishing many conditions, but the overall health of Americans is declining.

It’s a cliché that, compared to other countries, we’re not getting enough bang for our healthcare bucks. We’re not living longer—in fact longevity gains of past years are going in reverse. We’re currently 49th in global life expectancy but we are projected to drop to 66th by 2050 if we stay on the same trajectory. When we look at the years we spend without frailty, illness, or dependence on expensive and debilitating polypharmacy—things look even worse. 

We can sometimes forestall dying. But that’s at the cost of healthspan—the years we spend without frailty, illness, or dependence on expensive and debilitating polypharmacy. 

In fact, according to a JAMA, among 183 World Health Organization countries surveyed, the U.S. ranks dead last in healthspan, and has the largest non-communicable disease health burden.

What a sad tradeoff!

A lot of excitement was generated at the inauguration with the announcement by Larry Ellison of a 500-billion-dollar AI initiative to target cancer with personalized vaccines—Stargate. That’s all well and good—but if and only if the technology can be proven safe and if it can be made scalable. Current targeted therapies for cancer cost 100s of thousands of dollars per patient and often achieve marginal survival gains.

Wouldn’t it better if even a fraction of that expenditure could be redirected to address the causes of the degenerative diseases that plague us and bankrupt our economy? And to encourage dietary and lifestyle modifications and innovative natural strategies to not only prevent but reversem these conditions?

My professional experience over four decades of rewarding practice is that it can be done. A whole cadre of idealistic health professionals like me is anxious to take up that challenge. 

But we’ve been stymied under the current healthcare regime. ANH stands for informed consent and freedom of choice about our personal healthcare decisions. It’s not hard to see how that principal has been trampled in recent years. RFK Jr. promises to introduce transparency and to curb groupthink about medical options.

A continual theme of ANH’s campaigns has been to expose institutional corruption that thwarts progress in addressing threats to Americans’ health—from harmful food or toxic chemicals to costly drugs that don’t deliver, merely papering over underlying causes of illness—at the same time restricting access to safe, inexpensive alternatives. ANH has sought to expose the revolving door between industry and regulatory agencies, and the undue influence profit-driven corporate lobbyists exert on bureaucracies that compromise the health of Americans. On those issues, Bobby Kennedy has been unflaggingly outspoken.

And finally, RFK Jr. has been an eloquent champion for platforming before the American public the crisis of our epidemics of chronic disease—as we have for decades at ANH, starting over 30 years ago under our previous name, the American Preventive Medical Association.

It’s for these reasons that we at ANH are convinced that RFK Jr.’s confirmation as Secretary of HHS can give voice to our efforts to bring back good science and good law to the healthcare arena—and we’ve laid out a very detailed specific legal and legislative roadmap on how to bring that about, especially leveraging the opportunities presented by a fresh new Administration.

The American healthcare system deserves a shakeup. We need a change agent who is up to the task of looking beyond the current paradigm, challenging entrenched interests, and envisioning a truly Intelligent Medicine approach, harnessing all the healing tools at our disposal. That’s why I personally, and representing the Alliance for Natural Health, on behalf of our membership, support the nomination of RFK Jr. for Secretary of HHS. Together, let’s work to make America healthy again! 

Learn how you can support our efforts at the ANH Action Center.

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