"Don't take medical advice from me." - RFK Jr.

If only RFK Jr. would take his own advice.

Recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered a rare moment of self-awareness when he said, “Don’t take medical advice from me.” Had he stopped there, we might have given him some credit. But instead, he plowed ahead—dismissing his own scientific advisory board and sprinting into the arms of pseudoscience influencers with the enthusiasm of a teenager at a TikTok health summit.

Let’s start with the fact that he ignored guidance from his own handpicked experts—which include scientists from the CDC, NIH, and American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. They recommended continued COVID-19 vaccination for children and pregnant women, consistent with the overwhelming global consensus. Instead of listening, RFK Jr. took the unprecedented step of overruling them.

And who did he consult instead? Gary Brekka, a self-proclaimed “human biologist” (translation: not a doctor), with no clinical credentials and a robust supplement business. You know, the guy who believes he can calculate your date of death using blood work. That’s not medicine—that’s medieval fortune telling with a centrifuge.

Then came the podcast with Paul Saladino, the Carnivore Diet evangelist who’s turned rejecting vegetables into a full-blown ideology. Saladino, like Brekka, isn’t an MD—he’s a supplement hawker whose business model depends on keeping you suspicious of kale. And yes, RFK Jr. shared a celebratory shot of raw milk with him. Because nothing says "presidential gravitas" like doing a barnyard body shot with the anti-plant crowd.

But it gets worse. RFK Jr. recently misquoted the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, twisting her longstanding critique of pharmaceutical funding in research into an attack on the journal itself. He suggested NEJM is just a mouthpiece for Big Pharma.

That’s not just a distortion—it’s an insult to those who actually publish in and rely on the NEJM. Anyone familiar with academic medicine knows the editor’s real point: even in the best journals, financial conflicts need vigilance and transparency—not that the entire body of peer-reviewed evidence should be thrown out and replaced with Instagram Live sessions and ancestral liver pills.

Let’s be clear: NEJM is one of the most respected medical journals on the planet. Its peer-review process is rigorous, its editorial standards high, and its influence on clinical practice enormous. Reducing it to a pharma PR rag is like saying the Library of Congress is just a book club.

Taking advice from Saladino or Brekka is like the head of the Army taking advice from a Mall cop

RFK Jr. says “don’t take medical advice from me,” and then promptly offers a steady stream of medical advice—rooted not in science, but in supplement grifts, biohacking trends, and the worst kind of wellness misinformation.

This is the political equivalent of the head of the U.S. Army ignoring his generals and taking tactical advice from a mall cop who once watched Saving Private Ryan. Twice.

---

📢 We need science-based leadership, not raw milk rituals.

If you're tired of watching a presidential candidate trade immunologists for influencers, subscribe here and get the facts—without the fluff, filters, or fermented dairy.

🎧 Also catch more myth-busting on the Fork U podcast and follow me @drterrysimpson on TikTok and Instagram.

Because your health deserves better than wellness theater and war on kale.