Health

RFK Jr.’s MAHA Movement Obscures America’s Unhealthy Past

Published

11 months ago

January 13, 2025

RFK Jr.’s MAHA Movement Obscures America’s Unhealthy Past

“We will make Americans healthy again,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has declared. A political action committee that has promoted Mr. Kennedy, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary, says his movement is “igniting a health revolution in America.”

But the word “again” presumes a time in the country’s past when Americans were in better health. Was there ever really a time when America was healthier?

For historians of medicine, there is a short answer.

“No,” said Nancy Tomes, a historian at Stony Brook University.

John Harley Warner, a historian at Yale, said, “It’s hard for me to think of a time when America, with all the real health disparities that characterize our system, was healthier.”

Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, asked: “Which particular era does R.F.K. want to take us back to?”

Probably not the 19th and early 20th century.

Rich men smoked cigarettes and cigars, the poor chewed tobacco. Heavy drinking was the norm.

“It was definitely a drinking culture,” said Dora Costa, an economic historian at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Drinking was a huge problem, saloons were a huge concern. Men were drinking away their paychecks. That is the reason we had Prohibition.”

And, Dr. Costa notes, American diets for most of the 19th century were monotonous.

It’s true that agriculture at the time was organic, food was locally produced and there were no ultraprocessed foods. But fresh fruits and vegetables were in short supply because they were difficult to ship and because growing seasons were so short. For the most part, Dr. Costa said, until the 1930s, “Americans were living off of dried fruits and vegetables.”

As for protein, Americans were relying on salted pork, she said, because meat was difficult to preserve. Only after the Civil War did meatpackers in Chicago begin to process meat and ship fresh beef across the country. At that point, Dr. Costa said, beef “became a large part of the American diet.”

But even though the availability of beef helped diversify diets, people did not become healthier.

Dr. Costa worked with Robert Fogel, the University of Chicago economic historian and Nobel laureate, to understand the health of a population of Americans living in the North around this period by examining the medical records of Union Army soldiers. Common conditions, like hernias, were untreatable — men had hernias as big as grapefruits, held in by trusses. Nineteen percent of those soldiers had heart valve problems by the time they were 60, compared with about 8.5 percent today.

Poor nutrition led to poor health. People were thin, often too thin. In 1900, 6.1 percent of Union Army veterans were underweight — a risk factor for various illnesses and often a marker of ill health — compared with 1.6 percent of U.S. adults today. In 1850, males at age 20 could expect to live to around 61 years. Today it is 74 years.

The start of the 20th century saw public health improvements (cleaner water, for example, and posters advising parents not to give their babies beer), but disease was rampant. There were no antibiotics and very few vaccines. When the 1918 flu struck the nation, no one knew the cause — the flu virus had not been discovered and strange folk remedies were rampant. About 675,000 Americans died. In 1929, the Great Depression began, and its economic toll over the next decade led to severe nutritional and health problems.

Health improved in the second half of the 20th century but was poor compared with that today.

Many people are nostalgic for the 1950s and 1960s, seeing those decades as a time of prosperity, when the American pharmaceutical industry pumped out new medical advances: antibiotics, antipsychotics, drugs for high blood pressure and vaccines for tetanus, diphtheria, measles and polio.

Despite that progress, those years were terrible for health, Dr. Greene said, with “a tremendous amount of heart attacks and strokes.”

Heart disease was rampant in 1950, with 322 deaths per 100,000 Americans annually from cardiovascular disease, double the rate today. By 1960, Dr. Greene said, heart disease, was responsible for one-third of all deaths in America.

In part, that was because nearly everyone smoked.

“We were among the heaviest smoking countries,” said Samuel Preston, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. David F. Musto, a medical historian at Yale, who died in 2010, once said in an interview that although he never enjoyed smoking, the social pressure to smoke when he was in college in the 1950s was so great that “I felt it was my duty to find my brand.”

Smoking greatly increases the risk for heart disease, the leading killer in the 1950s and 1960s.

Heart disease death rates plummeted in recent decades because smoking is much less common now, and treatment for heart disease is much more effective. Cholesterol-lowering statins, introduced in 1987, reduced the risk of heart disease. Other new medications as well as bypass surgery and stents also saved lives.

Cancer was the second leading killer in the 1950s, as it is today. But in 1950, there were 194 cancer deaths per 100,000 people. Now there are 142 cancer deaths per 100,000 people.

A decline in smoking is a leading reason, but there also has been a revolution in cancer treatment.

Until the 1990s, cancer was treated with brute force: surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Now an array of targeted therapies are turning some cancers, once deadly, into treatable chronic diseases or even curing them.

Dr. Greene said he was not surprised by the idea of a halcyon past when people were healthier.

“There’s a long history in America of nostalgia for a past that was better than the present,” he said. “History is all about erasure — the things we don’t choose to remember.”

Today is not a sort of health utopia, of course.

Researchers are quick to acknowledge that Americans’ health is not as good as it can be. And they bemoan the huge disparities in health care in this country.

Yet the U.S. spends more on medical care than other countries — an average of $12,555 per capita, which is about twice what other wealthy countries spend.

But, historians say, the past was actually much worse.

And so, they say, the phrase “Make America Healthy Again” makes no sense.

“As a historian of health, I don’t know what ‘again’ Kennedy is imagining,” Dr. Tomes said. “The idea that once upon a time all Americans were healthy is a fantasy.”

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Health

Judge rules West Virginia parents can use religious beliefs to opt out of school vaccine requirements

Published

10 hours ago

November 26, 2025

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Judge rules West Virginia parents can use religious beliefs to opt out of school vaccine requirements

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A West Virginia judge ruled on Wednesday that parents can use religious beliefs to opt out of school vaccine requirements for their children.

Raleigh County Circuit Judge Michael Froble on Wednesday issued a permanent injunction, saying children of families who object to the state’s compulsory vaccination law on religious grounds will be permitted to attend school and participate in extracurricular sports.

Froble found that a state policy prohibiting parents from seeking religious exemptions violates the Equal Protection for Religion Act signed into law in 2023 by then-Gov. Jim Justice.

West Virginia was among just a handful of states to offer only medical exemptions from school vaccinations when Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order earlier this year allowing religious exemptions.

ALABAMA, KANSAS TOP LIST OF MOST ‘FAITH-FRIENDLY’ STATES; MICHIGAN, WASHINGTON RANK LOWEST: REPORT

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said that the ruling “is a win for every family forced from school over their faith.” (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

However, the state Board of Education voted in June to instruct public schools to ignore the governor’s order and follow long-standing school vaccine requirements outlined in state law.

The board said following Wednesday’s ruling that it “hereby suspends the policy on compulsory vaccination requirements” pending an appeal before the state Supreme Court.

Morrisey said in a statement that the ruling “is a win for every family forced from school over their faith.”

Two groups had sued to stop Morrisey’s order, arguing that the legislature has the authority to make these decisions instead of the governor.

Legislation that would have allowed the religious exemptions was approved by the state Senate and rejected by the House of Delegates earlier this year.

The judge found that a state policy prohibiting parents from seeking religious exemptions violates the Equal Protection for Religion Act signed into law in 2023. (Julian Stratenschulte/dpa (Photo by Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images))

The judge ruled that the failure to pass the legislation did not determine the application of the 2023 law. He rejected the defendants’ argument that religious exemptions can only be established by legislative moves.

“Legislative intent is not absolute nor controlling in interpreting a statute or determining its application; at most, it is a factor,” Froble said.

A group of parents had sued the state and local boards of education and the Raleigh County schools superintendent. One parent had obtained a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate from the state health department and enrolled her child in elementary school for the current school year before receiving an email in June from the local school superintendent rescinding the certificate, according to the lawsuit.

In July, Froble issued a preliminary injunction allowing the children of the three plaintiffs’ families in Raleigh County to attend school this year.

FEDERAL JUDGE RULES PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL VIOLATED CHURCH’S FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS

State law requires children to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough before attending school. (iStock)

Last month, Froble certified the case as a class action involving 570 families who had received religious exemptions in other parts of the state. He said the class action also applies to parents who seek religious exemptions in the future.

Froble said the total number of exemptions so far involved a small portion of the statewide student population and “would not meaningfully reduce vaccination rates or increase health risks.”

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State law requires children to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough before attending school.

At least 30 states have religious freedom laws. The laws are modeled after the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was signed into law in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton, allowing federal regulations that interfere with religious beliefs to be challenged.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Health

12 High-Fiber Foods That Burn Belly Fat Fast for Women Over 50

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1 day ago

November 26, 2025

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12 High-Fiber Foods That Burn Belly Fat Fast for Women Over 50

12 High-Fiber Foods for Belly Fat That Make Weight Loss Easier Over 50 | Woman’s World

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Health

The deadly cancer hiding in plain sight — and why most patients never get screened

Published

1 day ago

November 26, 2025

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The deadly cancer hiding in plain sight — and why most patients never get screened

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A new study from Northwestern Medicine suggests that current lung cancer screening guidelines may be missing most Americans who develop the disease — and researchers say it’s time for a major change.

Published in JAMA Network Open, the study analyzed nearly 1,000 lung cancer patients who were treated at Northwestern Medicine between 2018 and 2023.

The goal was to see how many of those patients would have qualified for screening under existing guidance from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

STEALTH BREAST CANCER THAT HIDES FROM SCANS TARGETED IN BREAKTHROUGH TECH

USPSTF currently recommends annual CT scans for adults ages 50 to 80 who have a 20 pack-year smoking history (the equivalent of one pack of cigarettes per day for 20 years) and either still smoke or quit within the last 15 years.

Only about 35% of those diagnosed with lung cancer met the current criteria to undergo screenings.

Current lung cancer screening guidelines may be missing most people who develop the disease, a new study shows. (iStock)

That means roughly two-thirds of patients would not have been flagged for testing before their diagnosis.

“Not only does that approach miss many patients who had quit smoking in the past or did not quite meet the high-risk criteria, it also misses other patients at risk of lung cancer, such as non-smokers,” Luis Herrera, M.D., a thoracic surgeon at Orlando Health, told Fox News Digital.

The study noted that these patients tended to have adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer among never-smokers.

Missed patients tended to have adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer among never-smokers. (iStock)

Those missed by the guidelines were more often women, people of Asian descent and individuals who had never smoked, the study found.

The research team also compared survival outcomes. Patients who didn’t meet the screening criteria had better survival, living a median of 9.5 years compared with 4.4 years for those who did qualify.

ERIN ANDREWS HAD ‘NO SYMPTOMS’ BEFORE CANCER DIAGNOSIS, PUSHES FOR EARLY SCREENINGS

While this difference partly reflects tumor biology and earlier detection, it also highlights how current screening rules fail to catch a broad range of cases that could be treated sooner, according to researchers.

“The current participation in lung cancer screening for patients who do qualify based on smoking history is quite low,” said Herrera, who was not involved in the study. This is likely due to the complexity of the risk-based criteria and stigma associated with smoking and lung cancer, he added.

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To test an alternative, the researchers modeled a different approach: screening everyone between the ages of 40 and 85, regardless of smoking history.

Under that universal, age-based model, about 94% of the cancers in their cohort would have been detected.

Universal screening procedures could save lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the researchers. (iStock)

Such a change could prevent roughly 26,000 U.S. deaths each year, at a cost of about $101,000 per life saved, according to their estimates.

The study emphasized that this would be far more cost-effective than current screening programs for breast or colorectal cancer, which cost between $890,000 and $920,000 per life saved.

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Herrera noted the many challenges in the adoption of lung cancer screening, from lack of awareness to some providers not recommending the screening test.

However, he added, “The cost of screening is covered by most health insurance plans and many institutions also offer discounts for patients who don’t have insurance.”

“The current participation in lung cancer screening for patients who do qualify based on smoking history is quite low.”

Lung cancer remains the deadliest cancer in the country, killing more people each year than colon, prostate and breast cancer combined. But because of the narrow eligibility criteria based on smoking history, millions at risk never get screened.

Northwestern Medicine researchers argue that expanding screening to include all adults within an age range could help close those gaps, especially for groups often underdiagnosed.

Researchers argue that expanding screening to include all adults could help catch the missing cases. (iStock)

The study was conducted at a single academic center, which means the patient population may not represent the wider U.S. population. It also looked back at existing data, so it can’t prove how the new model would perform in real-world screening programs, the researchers acknowledged.

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The cost and mortality projections rely on assumptions that could shift depending on how screening is implemented.

The researchers also didn’t fully account for the potential downsides of broader screening, such as false positives or unnecessary follow-ups, they noted.

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For patients who don’t qualify for lung cancer screening, there are other opportunities for lung evaluations, including “heart calcium scores, CT scans and other imaging modalities that can at least evaluate the lungs for any suspicious nodules,” Herrera added.

Khloe Quill is a lifestyle production assistant with Fox News Digital. She and the lifestyle team cover a range of story topics including food and drink, travel, and health.