Op-ed: Sen. Ron Johnson: Make America Healthy Again
On January 24, 2022, I held a public event in the historic Senate Kennedy Caucus room titled, Covid-19: A Second Opinion. It was held two years into the Coronavirus pandemic — a pandemic that was used to frighten and control the public on a global scale. The result was a stunning loss of life and freedom for individuals, trillions of dollars of economic devastation, but billions of dollars of profit, and the accumulation of enormous power by those in control.
Fortunately, what happened during the pandemic opened the eyes of untold numbers of people around the world to the corruption and capture of government agencies, the media, medical journals, and the medical establishment by large corporate interests. Now that our eyes have been opened to that reality, it is impossible to ignore that the same dynamic has occurred throughout governments and industries worldwide.
On Monday, September 23rd, I held another event in the same historic room titled: American Health and Nutrition, A Second Opinion. The purpose of that event was to ask questions we haven’t been allowed to ask, and to provide a foundational and historical understanding of the changes that have occurred over the last century within public sanitation, agricultural, food processing, and health care industries that impact our current state of national health.
As the panelists detailed, the current state of America’s health is not good, even though our health care system spent $4.5 trillion in 2022, or more than $13,000 per person. The list of chronic illnesses plaguing Americans is as long as it is depressing: obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, cancer, autoimmunity, infertility, Alzheimer’s, dementia, strokes, migraines, mental illness, liver disease, high blood pressure, and autism, to name a few. As Calley Means pointed out, the rates of these diseases are going up as more drugs to treat them are prescribed.
Something has clearly gone wrong, but as Dr. Chris Palmer stated, “they do not want root causes discovered.” By “they,” he means all the people and organizations who are profiting off of chronically ill Americans. And “they” have enormous power to make it very difficult for anyone seeking answers to find them out. Those who seriously question the current orthodoxy or offer alternate treatments and approaches are generally ridiculed, vilified, and canceled, with concerted efforts made to destroy their reputations and careers.
We all witnessed this during the pandemic, as eminently qualified and respected doctors who had the courage and compassion to treat COVID patients using cheap, generic drugs were fired, sued, and either lost their medical licenses and certifications, or had them seriously threatened. Unfortunately, the intimidation works, as most doctors remain silent in order to maintain their good standing in the medical establishment.
The catalyst for the event was an interview I saw with Dr. Casey Means, and her brother Calley. Dr. Means does an excellent job of simplifying the basic concept of how our bodies convert food to energy and how that miraculous process can be and has been impaired. She told the standing room only audience that she learned virtually nothing in medical school about the “tens of thousands of scientific papers that elucidate these root causes of why American health is plummeting and how environmental factors are causing it.”
Panelists described how whole natural foods have been replaced by ultra-processed foods, contaminated by synthetic pesticides, heavy metals and microplastics. Saturated fats have been replaced with seed oils and high fructose sugars negatively impacting our mitochondria, metabolic function, and cellular health. A comparison was made between the 10,000 ingredients, chemicals, and dyes allowed in American food products versus the 400 approved ingredients in Europe. The importance of sleep, exercise, stress reduction, and natural sunlight is mostly ignored in favor of pharmaceutical intervention.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also presented at the event. His environmental advocacy connected him to mothers with autistic children and his subsequent advocacy for children’s health and chronic illness. In the past, he has used lawsuits to hold corporations accountable. In the future, he may be given the opportunity to address the corporate capture of regulatory agencies. Because of that corruption, the connection between environmental factors and pharmaceutical adverse impacts on health have not been adequately researched and explored.
When it comes to nutrition, we all face the same daunting variety of opinions, guidelines, and diet recommendations. By examining what has changed over time, comparing American diets and health outcomes to other populations, looking at high quality research that already exists, and using some basic common sense, I truly believe we can dramatically improve our own individual health and put American society on a healthier path. As demand grows for healthy food, the market will respond by creating new opportunities for small farms and small businesses. Who knows, maybe even big corporations will mend their ways and play a large role in Making America Healthy Again.
