Great job, Suzanne! As the daughter of an extreme anti-vaxer, I can attest to the terror that polio brought. But all of my friends got relief from that terror on a simple sugar cube. But I was denied that relief. Even now in my old age, I heard that pertussis is making a comeback, so I got a vaccine. With my cough variant asthma, that disease could kill me. And while I had every other childhood disease except mumps, I did have measles, so who knows what immunities were destroyed.
I agree that the secretary is mentally unbalanced, and the most so of the cabinet members. But some of the others are very dangerous, and also causing deaths. What a world! I thought I would be gone from here by the time this happened.
One tiny little detail I feel compelled to mention, as a healthy reminder: when you said, "Letting people die when we could stop them from dying is not something we generally do in civilized societies," I might have added as an exception the Tuskegee untreated syphilis studies. We have learned a lesson from that horror, but we did do that in our civilized society.
Good point, we certainly have done it. I guess maybe it should say something we *should aim to avoid* in civilized societies. It seems to be turning into a goal now though.
Maybe since we look at the Tuskegee experiment in my school's Christian Ethics course, it's the one -- even before anything Nazi -- that first came to mind when I read "Letting people die when we could stop them from dying ..." But in fairness to you, you did say it's not something we *generally* do, and that holds true.
I just want to say that RFK shows a surprising modicum of common sense when he advises us not to take medical advice from him. Well, duh. Could it be that he is ignorant, demented, deranged, self absorbed and a danger to himself and others? But wait. Could it be that he doesn't have a medical degree??? My-two-year-old kitty April has more medical knowledge than this rather pathetic excuse for a VIP. She knows how to groom herself and she refuses to swim in raw sewage.
Good article, Suzanne. When you wrote about how people are being affected abroad, it reminded me of an article I read a few months ago by a writer here on Substack named Andrew Berg. He's not a medical professional like you, but he does look at the situation from a moral/ethical perspective: https://substack.com/@atberg/p-159306024.
I'm going to write basically the same comment that I wrote for his article: please pray for all the people in need, but also, pray for Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Donald Trump.
It was a good point that Andrew made, but the reality is much worse. Its not just the AIDS medicine, its tons of food support, and now vaccine support. It is no exaggeration to say that millions of Africans will die without these programs. The cost for these programs is tiny compared to the new budget for ICE. We have traded the world's poor and millions of Americans healthcare for building concentration camps. It is deeply anti Christ.
My comments are 100% done with respect, because I live in Philadelphia and have seen firsthand what an incredible place CHOP is, plus any mother of 7 has forgotten more than I will ever know about healthcare. I agree that RFK is going after the wrong culprit for the terrible health outcomes in America, the obesity, and chronic disease, my opinion is that these issues are being caused by our food, and we should demand better, just a quick drive through a poor neighborhood and you won’t find one nutritious option, RFK will continue to get a lot of support for any good he can do on this issue. I do agree that any good he does on dyes and chemicals in our food could be undone by going after the medical establishment though, but a man like RFK is mostly a symptom of lack of trust and trust takes time to rebuild when it gets lost
Thank you I appreciate that. The policies of this administration (certainly not beginning with this one, but definitely continuing) that make corporate profit the number one priority will only worsen the food desserts and nutrition problems of Americans (especially poorer ones), and all the things that help poorer people have better nutrition are on the chopping block in this big beautiful bill. Most what RFKjr focuses on (the dangers of certain additives) is either made up (no actual science behind it) or not particularly relevant. The good that he claims to be doing is made up. All the things that would actually help he either ignores or actively tries to destroy. Unchecked corporate greed is the biggest issue, and it will only get worse under this administration.
Public trust in institutions is at an all-time low. To whatever extent RFK drives this, he is also a manifestation of a larger trend of distrust in public institutions. If not him, then someone else.
What can the medical profession do to earn the trust of people again? Especially when the trans-pathology is treated as a condition which must be treated with severe medical intervention among children.
The worst that can happen under the rejection of all medical intervention is a return to the state of man before about 1800. That's bad. Half of all children dying before the age of 10, mostly as babies, and women dying in childbirth at a far higher rate. This is aside from all of the obvious and non-obvious factors, but all of this is bad enough to condemn it. But at least it will be a known state.
The trans-pathology is completely fabricated by medical intervention, and it creates castrati forever bound to a lifetime of further medical intervention, even if they desist.
Personally, I think this whole charade on both sides is a failure of democracy and why our form of government is bad. Truth is not subject to a vote. RFK is a vicious menace. The trans-aligned were as well. That's not a choice for the good. That's a choice between two flavors of miserable death.
This is a wild pivot. The article is not about transgenderism, and I won’t have the combox hijacked by that subject, but your comment demands some response.
I’ll start here: RFK has claimed that pesticides in drinking water makes kids transgender. The malignant brain virus that has millions of US citizens, particularly conservative Christians, embracing Trump and his authoritarian team of arsonists, vandals, and secret police as God’s anointed saviors of America concerns me far more than what you call “trans-pathology.” Fewer than 1.5 percent of teenagers identify as trans, and, while Catholic anthropology is pretty clear that our identity as male or female is both a gift and immutable, pastorally it is still far from clear how individuals with gender dysphoria are best helped from the perspective of Catholic anthropology. It’s easy to rail against the medical establishment, but U.S. Christians aren’t exactly offering a more credible and compassionate alternative.
You call “the trans-aligned” a “vicious menace” comparable to JFK Jr. You appear to come at least perilously close to saying “Half of all children dying before the age of 10, mostly as babies, and women dying in childbirth at a far higher rate, is bad, but the devil you know is preferable to trans-world insanity.” Whatever you believe, the way you have framed and presented it at least makes it look like part of a malignant cultural problem in Christianity: one that has caused millions of Christians, including Catholics, to embrace trans ideology as by far the more compassionate and realistic alternative. If orthodox Catholics can’t do better than this—a lot better—I can’t say I blame them.
P.S. I would appeciate your keeping your reply, if any, to clarifications and tying up loose ends. This is not the place for an apologia on sex and gender—a topic I do hope to address at some point in the future.
Of course I can do better than this. But I have nothing to do with the political process or with party affiliation or with the nomination of politicians, or all the rest. I'm not an elected official. I think the problem is that we are electing officials. If you want the Catholic response to this, I don't need you for this. Just watch New Polity's podcast on gender. They've done hard reading and serious thinking.
But insofar as you were talking about a politician and a vote at a national level, the medical issue to choose between was either RFK or castrated children. I am not being prescriptive. This is descriptive of the 2024 election. I'm definitely not a Trumper. But if you are going to talk Trump stuff, then you look at the alternative at the same time, and you try to understand what happened in 2024.
Ultimately, my position was not one of the other either. My position was that democracy is a failure and your main post illustrates why. RFK did not create this. Here he was created by very American instincts---as was, incidentally, the wickedness of gender ideology.
RFK is horrible, just like all the Kennedys. However he's no worse that Dr. Fauci, a complete liar and fraud who was basically wrong on everything he ever said publicly.
Great job, Suzanne! As the daughter of an extreme anti-vaxer, I can attest to the terror that polio brought. But all of my friends got relief from that terror on a simple sugar cube. But I was denied that relief. Even now in my old age, I heard that pertussis is making a comeback, so I got a vaccine. With my cough variant asthma, that disease could kill me. And while I had every other childhood disease except mumps, I did have measles, so who knows what immunities were destroyed.
I agree that the secretary is mentally unbalanced, and the most so of the cabinet members. But some of the others are very dangerous, and also causing deaths. What a world! I thought I would be gone from here by the time this happened.
Hopefully you will be here to see the turning of the tide against this insanity!
Yes. I do hope that very fervently!
Excellent, and necessary, post, Suzanne, thanks!
One tiny little detail I feel compelled to mention, as a healthy reminder: when you said, "Letting people die when we could stop them from dying is not something we generally do in civilized societies," I might have added as an exception the Tuskegee untreated syphilis studies. We have learned a lesson from that horror, but we did do that in our civilized society.
https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/index.html
Good point, we certainly have done it. I guess maybe it should say something we *should aim to avoid* in civilized societies. It seems to be turning into a goal now though.
Maybe since we look at the Tuskegee experiment in my school's Christian Ethics course, it's the one -- even before anything Nazi -- that first came to mind when I read "Letting people die when we could stop them from dying ..." But in fairness to you, you did say it's not something we *generally* do, and that holds true.
I just want to say that RFK shows a surprising modicum of common sense when he advises us not to take medical advice from him. Well, duh. Could it be that he is ignorant, demented, deranged, self absorbed and a danger to himself and others? But wait. Could it be that he doesn't have a medical degree??? My-two-year-old kitty April has more medical knowledge than this rather pathetic excuse for a VIP. She knows how to groom herself and she refuses to swim in raw sewage.
Good article, Suzanne. When you wrote about how people are being affected abroad, it reminded me of an article I read a few months ago by a writer here on Substack named Andrew Berg. He's not a medical professional like you, but he does look at the situation from a moral/ethical perspective: https://substack.com/@atberg/p-159306024.
I'm going to write basically the same comment that I wrote for his article: please pray for all the people in need, but also, pray for Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Donald Trump.
It was a good point that Andrew made, but the reality is much worse. Its not just the AIDS medicine, its tons of food support, and now vaccine support. It is no exaggeration to say that millions of Africans will die without these programs. The cost for these programs is tiny compared to the new budget for ICE. We have traded the world's poor and millions of Americans healthcare for building concentration camps. It is deeply anti Christ.
My comments are 100% done with respect, because I live in Philadelphia and have seen firsthand what an incredible place CHOP is, plus any mother of 7 has forgotten more than I will ever know about healthcare. I agree that RFK is going after the wrong culprit for the terrible health outcomes in America, the obesity, and chronic disease, my opinion is that these issues are being caused by our food, and we should demand better, just a quick drive through a poor neighborhood and you won’t find one nutritious option, RFK will continue to get a lot of support for any good he can do on this issue. I do agree that any good he does on dyes and chemicals in our food could be undone by going after the medical establishment though, but a man like RFK is mostly a symptom of lack of trust and trust takes time to rebuild when it gets lost
Thank you I appreciate that. The policies of this administration (certainly not beginning with this one, but definitely continuing) that make corporate profit the number one priority will only worsen the food desserts and nutrition problems of Americans (especially poorer ones), and all the things that help poorer people have better nutrition are on the chopping block in this big beautiful bill. Most what RFKjr focuses on (the dangers of certain additives) is either made up (no actual science behind it) or not particularly relevant. The good that he claims to be doing is made up. All the things that would actually help he either ignores or actively tries to destroy. Unchecked corporate greed is the biggest issue, and it will only get worse under this administration.
Public trust in institutions is at an all-time low. To whatever extent RFK drives this, he is also a manifestation of a larger trend of distrust in public institutions. If not him, then someone else.
What can the medical profession do to earn the trust of people again? Especially when the trans-pathology is treated as a condition which must be treated with severe medical intervention among children.
The worst that can happen under the rejection of all medical intervention is a return to the state of man before about 1800. That's bad. Half of all children dying before the age of 10, mostly as babies, and women dying in childbirth at a far higher rate. This is aside from all of the obvious and non-obvious factors, but all of this is bad enough to condemn it. But at least it will be a known state.
The trans-pathology is completely fabricated by medical intervention, and it creates castrati forever bound to a lifetime of further medical intervention, even if they desist.
Personally, I think this whole charade on both sides is a failure of democracy and why our form of government is bad. Truth is not subject to a vote. RFK is a vicious menace. The trans-aligned were as well. That's not a choice for the good. That's a choice between two flavors of miserable death.
This is a wild pivot. The article is not about transgenderism, and I won’t have the combox hijacked by that subject, but your comment demands some response.
I’ll start here: RFK has claimed that pesticides in drinking water makes kids transgender. The malignant brain virus that has millions of US citizens, particularly conservative Christians, embracing Trump and his authoritarian team of arsonists, vandals, and secret police as God’s anointed saviors of America concerns me far more than what you call “trans-pathology.” Fewer than 1.5 percent of teenagers identify as trans, and, while Catholic anthropology is pretty clear that our identity as male or female is both a gift and immutable, pastorally it is still far from clear how individuals with gender dysphoria are best helped from the perspective of Catholic anthropology. It’s easy to rail against the medical establishment, but U.S. Christians aren’t exactly offering a more credible and compassionate alternative.
You call “the trans-aligned” a “vicious menace” comparable to JFK Jr. You appear to come at least perilously close to saying “Half of all children dying before the age of 10, mostly as babies, and women dying in childbirth at a far higher rate, is bad, but the devil you know is preferable to trans-world insanity.” Whatever you believe, the way you have framed and presented it at least makes it look like part of a malignant cultural problem in Christianity: one that has caused millions of Christians, including Catholics, to embrace trans ideology as by far the more compassionate and realistic alternative. If orthodox Catholics can’t do better than this—a lot better—I can’t say I blame them.
P.S. I would appeciate your keeping your reply, if any, to clarifications and tying up loose ends. This is not the place for an apologia on sex and gender—a topic I do hope to address at some point in the future.
Of course I can do better than this. But I have nothing to do with the political process or with party affiliation or with the nomination of politicians, or all the rest. I'm not an elected official. I think the problem is that we are electing officials. If you want the Catholic response to this, I don't need you for this. Just watch New Polity's podcast on gender. They've done hard reading and serious thinking.
But insofar as you were talking about a politician and a vote at a national level, the medical issue to choose between was either RFK or castrated children. I am not being prescriptive. This is descriptive of the 2024 election. I'm definitely not a Trumper. But if you are going to talk Trump stuff, then you look at the alternative at the same time, and you try to understand what happened in 2024.
Ultimately, my position was not one of the other either. My position was that democracy is a failure and your main post illustrates why. RFK did not create this. Here he was created by very American instincts---as was, incidentally, the wickedness of gender ideology.
RFK is horrible, just like all the Kennedys. However he's no worse that Dr. Fauci, a complete liar and fraud who was basically wrong on everything he ever said publicly.