Shameful Reason Mag. Hit-piece on RFK Jr.

Post #1056

Though Reason magazine often has good reports, it sporadically has some really bad ones, too. A really bad one just came out, disparaging RFK Jr., and this will be a rebuttal. Reason magazine is supposed to champion the use of reason, which, in practice, means avoiding logical fallacies and other errors of thought.

But this new hit-piece on RFK Jr. starts off with a series of anecdotal ad hominems (“Argument against the Person”) meant to “poison the well” before anything else is said about RFK Jr. — NOTE: the actual article includes links out to other pages:

Better than EPA: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—bear scavenger, Peter Luger Steak House appreciator, wannabe journalist impregnator, brainworm victim, once (and future?) Just Asking Questions guest (in its nascent form)—will soon be in charge of some 20 percent of the federal budget ...

Any undergraduate student of logic or philosophy would immediately recognize the irony of starting off an article like that, when you are writing for a magazine called Reason. It might as well have been …

—psychologists talking about how fun it is to take such high doses of psychedelic drugs that you lose all touch with reality

—firefighters talking about how exciting it can be to set entire buildings ablaze

—dogs writing about how they really hate it when you give them treats and attention

—children talking about the importance of limiting play-time to do more homework

—rugby players saying that the “really tough sport” is American Football

—American football players saying that the “really tough sport” is rugby

That first paragraph in that Reason article just oozes with irony. It looks like Reason magazine isn’t learning about the process that other institutions are going through where they end up losing their very own credibility by repeatedly making statements which call their very own purpose into question. But the worst sentence comes later:

“But RFK Jr. is not a scientifically literate, fact-based, competent, experienced, or measured person.”

Wow. Few sentences ever written have been more wrong than that one. Calling charcoal “white” and calling snow “black” would be as wrong as the sentence above, but it’d be challenging to grow the list. You can’t get much more wrong than that.

Each of the adjectives above could become the focus of in-depth follow-up. However, I am going to merely present the next sentence in the article, and deal with that one, instead:

“He is wrong about HIV/AIDS; linking vaccines to autism; and the purported danger of thimerosal.”

I’ve written before about the link between vaccines and autism, but not about thimerosal or HIV/AIDS. I’ll just write below about thimerosal.

The author of the Reason article likely reads information pieces online like this one from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia:

“Thimerosal contains a different form of mercury called ethylmercury. Studies comparing ethylmercury and methylmercury suggest that they are processed differently in the human body. Ethylmercury is broken down and excreted much more rapidly than methylmercury. Therefore, ethylmercury (the type of mercury in the influenza vaccine) is much less likely than methylmercury (the type of mercury in the environment) to accumulate in the body and cause harm.”

According to that hospital, the ethylmercury in thimerosal is less harmful to you than the methylmercury in the environment — because of a shorter elimination half-life. But this reasoning is a mistake. Poisons aren’t necessarily better or worse based on elimination rates, they are better or worse based on damage done before elimination.

In 2017, human brain cells were exposed to different kinds of mercury (Hg) to see which kinds would be the most harmful. They discovered that the very worst kind of mercury for human brain cells is the kind of mercury (ethylmercury, EtHg) that is found in thimerosal:

RFK Jr. happens to be the person that I learned that from, but this study from 2017 provides the evidence backing up the claim. Critics and detractors may then go on and on about how there is a question as to whether, in actual bodies, the ethylmercury from thimerosal can get across the blood-brain barrier. Again, science has the answer:

There you have it. 22 studies proving that ethylmercury can and does get into your brain. It looks like the author from Reason magazine got too far over her own skis. When that happens, you take a tumble. It also looks like RFK Jr., while vindicated by the peer-reviewed scientific evidence above, should expect these personal attacks.

Let’s hope that most of these attackers end up apologizing after being proved wrong.

Reference

[Reason magazine “hit-piece” on RFK Jr] — https://reason.com/2024/11/15/one-brainworm-to-rule-them-all

[Hospital claiming that ethlymercury is less toxic] — https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/vaccine-ingredients/thimerosal

[ethylmercury is the most-toxic mercury to human brain cells] — Branco V, Coppo L, Solá S, Lu J, Rodrigues CMP, Holmgren A, Carvalho C. Impaired cross-talk between the thioredoxin and glutathione systems is related to ASK-1 mediated apoptosis in neuronal cells exposed to mercury. Redox Biol. 2017 Oct;13:278-287. doi: 10.1016/j.redox.2017.05.024. Epub 2017 Jun 1. PMID: 28600984; PMCID: PMC5466585. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5466585/

[ethylmercury crosses the blood-brain barrier] — Kern JK, Geier DA, Homme KG, Geier MR. Examining the evidence that ethylmercury crosses the blood-brain barrier. Environ Toxicol Pharmacol. 2020 Feb;74:103312. doi: 10.1016/j.etap.2019.103312. Epub 2019 Dec 9. PMID: 31841767. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1382668919301875