Health
Caroline Kennedy Calls RFK Jr. a ‘Predator’ in Letter to Senators
Caroline Kennedy wrote a scathing letter to key senators on Tuesday, calling her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a “predator” addicted to attention from airing dangerous views on vaccinations and someone who is unfit to be the nation’s health secretary.
She urged lawmakers, who will be questioning Mr. Kennedy at his confirmation hearings Wednesday and Thursday, to reject his nomination. She cited his lack of experience, misinformed views on vaccines and personal attributes. In the letter, she described how he led other family members “down the path of drug addiction.”
“His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks,” Ms. Kennedy wrote. “It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
Her letter was first reported in The Washington Post.
Ms. Kennedy expressed particular outrage over the new disclosures in his ethics agreement filed with the Senate, which she described as outlining how his “crusade against vaccination has benefited him in other ways.”
She cited Mr. Kennedy’s decision to keep a financial stake in litigation against Merck, which makes a key vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV) that is administered to protect against cervical cancer.
“In other words, he is willing to enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer and which has been safely administered to millions of boys and girls,” Ms. Kennedy wrote.
As President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ambassador to Australia, Ms. Kennedy was actively involved in promoting the HPV vaccine, which has put Australia on a path to eliminate cervical cancer. She was instrumental in persuading Mr. Biden to expand his “cancer moonshot” initiative to the Indo-Pacific region.
In her role as ambassador, Ms. Kennedy said, she was reluctant to make public comments against Mr. Kennedy, who launched his presidential campaign in 2023 as a primary challenger to Mr. Biden before running as an independent candidate. When Mr. Kennedy dropped his presidential bid, he endorsed Mr. Trump, who, after winning the election, named Mr. Kennedy as his choice for health secretary.
After that, she broke with her cousin, saying his views about vaccination were dangerous.
Her letter painted Mr. Kennedy as a charismatic figure, “willing to take risks and break the rules,” and able to attract others through the strength of his magnetic personality. Then she traced a tragic history of Mr. Kennedy’s influence over other family members.
“But siblings and cousins who Bobby encouraged down the path of substance abuse suffered addiction, illness and death,” she wrote, “while Bobby has gone on to misrepresent, lie and cheat his way through life.”
Mr. Kennedy’s younger brother David died in Palm Beach County in May of 1984 of “multiple ingestion” of three drugs found in his body fluids, authorities said at the time.
Other relatives have also spoken out against Mr. Kennedy, including his brother Joseph Kennedy II and his sister Kerry Kennedy, who described his comments on race and vaccines as “deplorable and untruthful.”
On Tuesday, Jack Schlossberg, Ms. Kennedy’s son, who has also been critical of Mr. Kennedy, posted a video on social media of his mother reading the letter she had written.
“I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity, integrity and service,” Mr. Schlossberg wrote.
Ms. Kennedy, in the letter sent Tuesday, gave her cousin credit for overcoming his drug addiction, which Mr. Kennedy has discussed extensively. By his own account, Mr. Kennedy became addicted to heroin when he was 14, in 1968, as he struggled to cope with the assassination of his father. In 1984, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of possessing heroin, and entered treatment.
But Ms. Kennedy was harsh in criticism of her cousin’s advocacy against vaccines, describing it as part of an addiction to attention and power.
“Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs,” she wrote.
Ms. Kennedy also highlighted “the conspiratorial half-truths he has told about vaccines,” in connection with the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa, which she said “cost lives.”
The letter was addressed to senators who lead the committees that will be reviewing his nomination this week, including Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho; Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon; Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and Bernie Sanders, an Independent of Vermont.
She noted that the family is close and that speaking out was difficult. Still, she faulted her cousin for using the family’s legacy of tragedy for political gain. Mr. Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated during a campaign for president in 1968. Her father and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot in Dallas in 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “distorted President Kennedy’s legacy to advance his own failed presidential campaign — and then groveled to Donald Trump for a job,” the letter said. “Bobby continues to grandstand off my father’s assassination, and that of his own father.”
She suggested that her father John F. Kennedy, her uncle Robert F. Kennedy and another uncle, the long-serving lawmaker Ted Kennedy, “would be disgusted.”
She closed the letter with a plea for the senators to reject her cousin’s nomination on behalf of the doctors, nurses, scientists and caregivers who fuel the American health care system.
“They deserve a secretary committed to advancing cutting-edge medicine to save lives, not rejecting the advances we have already made,” Ms. Kennedy wrote. “They deserve a stable, moral and ethical person at the helm of this crucial agency. They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy — and so do the rest of us.”
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A new report by the American Heart Association (AHA) included some troubling predictions for the future of women’s health.
The forecast, published in the journal Circulation on Wednesday, projected increases in various comorbidities in American females by 2050.
More than 59% of women were predicted to have high blood pressure, up from less than 49% currently.
The review also projected that more than 25% of women will have diabetes, compared to about 15% today, and more than 61% will have obesity, compared to 44% currently.
As a result of these risk factors, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7%.
The prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke in women is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7% by 2050. (iStock)
Not all trends were negative, as unhealthy cholesterol prevalence is expected to drop to about 22% from more than 42% today, the report stated.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klodas, a cardiologist and founder of Step One Foods in Minnesota, commented on these “jarring findings.”
“The fact that on our current trajectory, cardiometabolic disease is projected to explode in women within one generation should be a huge wake-up call,” she told Fox News Digital.
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“Hypertension, diabetes, obesity — these are all major risk factors for heart disease, and we are already seeing what those risks are driving. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, eclipsing all other causes of death, including breast cancer.”
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. and around the world. (iStock)
Klodas warned that heart disease starts early, progresses “stealthily,” and can present “out of the blue in devastating ways.”
The AHA published another study on Thursday revealing one million hospitalizations, showing that heart attack deaths are climbing among adults below the age of 55.
The more alarming finding, according to Klodas, is that young women were found more likely to die after their first heart attack than men of the same age.
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“This is all especially tragic since heart disease is almost entirely preventable,” she said. “The earlier you start, the better.”
Children can show early evidence of plaque deposition in their arteries, which can be reversed through lifestyle changes if “undertaken early enough and aggressively enough,” according to the expert.
Moving more is one part of protecting a healthy heart, according to experts. (iStock)
Klodas suggested that rising heart conditions are associated with traditional risk factors, like smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.
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Doctors are also seeing higher rates of preeclampsia, or high blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as gestational diabetes. Klodas noted that these are sex-specific risk factors that don’t typically contribute to complications until after menopause.
The best way to protect a healthy heart is to “do the basics,” Klodas recommended, including the following lifestyle habits.
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Klodas especially emphasized making improvements to diet, as the food people eat affects “every single risk factor that the AHA’s report highlights.”
“High blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, excess weight – these are all conditions that are driven in part or in whole by food,” she said. “We eat multiple times every single day, which means what we eat has profound cumulative effects over time.”
“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health,” a doctor said. (iStock)
“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health.”
The doctor also recommends changing out a few snacks per day for healthier choices, which has been proven to “yield medication-level cholesterol reductions” in a month.
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“Keep up that small change and, over the course of a year, you could also lose 20 pounds and reduce your sodium intake enough to avoid blood pressure-lowering medications,” Klodas added.
“Women should not view the AHA report as inevitable. We have power over our health destinies. We just need to use it.”
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Nearsightedness (myopia) is skyrocketing globally, with nearly half of the world’s population expected to be myopic by 2050, according to the World Health Organization.
Heavy use of smartphones and other devices is associated with an 80% higher risk of myopia when combined with excessive computer use, but a new study suggests that dim indoor lighting could also be a factor.
For years, scientists have been puzzled by the different ways myopia is triggered. In lab settings, it can be induced by blurring vision or using different lenses. Conversely, it can be slowed by something as simple as spending time outdoors, research suggests.
Nearsightedness occurs when the eyeball grows too long from front to back, according to the American Optometric Association (AOA). This physical elongation causes light to focus in front of the retina rather than directly on it, making distant objects appear blurry.
The study suggests that myopia isn’t caused by the digital devices themselves, but by the low-light environments where they are typically used. (iStock)
Researchers at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Optometry identified a potential specific trigger for this growth. When someone looks at a phone or a book up close, the pupil naturally constricts.
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“In bright outdoor light, the pupil constricts to protect the eye while still allowing ample light to reach the retina,” Urusha Maharjan, a SUNY Optometry doctoral student who conducted the study, said in a press release.
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“When people focus on close objects indoors, such as phones, tablets or books, the pupil can also constrict — not because of brightness, but to sharpen the image,” she went on. “In dim lighting, this combination may significantly reduce retinal illumination.”
High-intensity natural light prevents myopia because it provides enough retinal stimulation to override the “stop growing” signal, even when pupils are constricted. (iStock)
The hypothesis suggests that when the retina is deprived of light during extended close-up work, it sends a signal for the eye to grow.
In a dim environment, the narrowed pupil allows so little light through that the retinal activity isn’t strong enough to signal the eye to stop growing, the researchers found.
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In contrast, being outdoors provides light levels much brighter than indoors. This ensures that even when the pupil narrows to focus on a nearby object, the retina still receives a strong signal, maintaining healthy eye development.
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The team noted some limitations of the study, including the small subject group and the inability to directly measure internal lens changes, as the bright backgrounds used to mimic the outdoors made pupils too small for standard equipment.
Researchers believe that increasing indoor brightness during close-up work could be a simple, testable way to slow the global nearsightedness epidemic. (iStock)
“This is not a final answer,” Jose-Manuel Alonso, MD, PhD, SUNY distinguished professor and senior author of the study, said in the release.
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“But the study offers a testable hypothesis that reframes how visual habits, lighting and eye focusing interact.”
The study was published in the journal Cell Reports.
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