Whip It, Whip It Good

RFK Says Poppers (Not HIV) Causes AIDS

According to Trump, RFK Jr. is going to investigate whether vaccines cause autism. He wouldn’t be the first, and sadly he won’t be the last. If he sticks to legitimate scientific sources, he won’t find a connection. If he’s allowed to include the testimony of Nikki’s cousin’s best friend’s boyfriend (or Jenny McCarthy), he’ll find nothing but connection.

Vaccine skepticism started in the 1800s when Edward Jenner first wanted to inoculate people against smallpox by injecting them with pus from a cowpox blister. (In fairness, that would have freaked/grossed me out too.) But the vaccine-autism link is one of the more frustrating stories in science because it all started with a bold-faced, money-motivated lie.

In 1998, British researcher Andrew Wakefield looked at the records of just 12 supposedly autistic children and determined that the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine was the cause of their condition. He had a complicated explanation about persistent measles infection of the gut that confused the medical community, but the Lancet—a well- respected journal—published it anyhow.

The research was entirely bogus.

It was unethical: A 2004 report in the Sunday Times said that the kids who participated in the study were recruited by a law firm that was suing manufacturers of the MMR vaccine. The UK regulators who ultimately took away Wakefield’s medical license later found that at least some of the kids were recruited from his own son’s tenth birthday party and paid for samples of their blood (because Chuck E Cheese and phlebotomy always go hand and hand).

It was inaccurate: A re-examination of the data by an investigative journalist found that Wakefield manipulated some aspect of the data for each participant. Some of the kids Wakefield said had autism had never been diagnosed with that condition, and some of the kids who supposedly got autism from the vaccine were already showing signs before they got the shot.

It was financially motivated: One of Wakefield’s suggestions was that we separate out measles, mumps, and rubella into single disease vaccines which would be easier for the body to handle. It turns out that Wakefield had filed a patent for… wait for it… single disease vaccines.

The study was retracted in 2011 but a lot of damage had been done by that time, and lots of money had been spent trying to either recreate or discredit this tiny study. Hundreds of thousands of kids (or at least their medical records) were included in dozens of studies, all of which failed to find a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. But by all means let’s look again. It’s not like we have other pressing public health issues to deal with.

It would be nice to think that RFK, Jr. could be like C. Everett Koop. He was devoutly religious and opposed to abortion on moral grounds, but when asked to investigate “post abortion stress disorder” in his role as Surgeon General, he did the research and shared what he found: it doesn’t exist. As someone who is more likely to believe a conspiracy theory than a research study, it feels unlikely that RFK Jr. will be similarly objective.

In addition to believing that vaccines cause autism, the man about to be handed the keys to our public health kingdom thinks chemicals in the water makes kids gay and isn’t sure that HIV—or any other virus—causes AIDS.

In a video posted on X, Kennedy blames poppers and Tony Fauci for AIDS. He talks about how poppers were ubiquitous in the gay bar and bathhouse scene in the early days of HIV, argues that poppers were known to cause Kaposi sarcoma, and says that “100% of the first 1,000 people to die of AIDS were addicted to poppers.” Of those early dead, Kennedy said, “they were part of the gay lifestyle, burning the candle at both ends, and they were taking a lot of injectable drugs….”

Then he says this:

There were a number of people in the agency who said this is not a viral disease, like it's a disease that is environmental, and it's being launched to people who are, you know, are who are getting autoimmunity, from, from doing these, from poppers, but for Tony Fauci [it was] really important [that it was a] virus, because that made it an infectious disease. And it… allowed him to take control of it.

Wow, that explanation has everything from casual homophobia to a full-on conspiracy theory. What it doesn’t have is a hint of science. AIDS is not an environmental disease caused by amyl nitrate. AIDS is caused by HIV. Two French scientists won a Nobel Prize for discovering the virus and countless other scientists have used that discovery to turn HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition. The scientific advancements in HIV have been amazing and helped us better understand Covid-19 when the pandemic hit. But to RFK, Jr it’s just a bunch of hooey.

The video was posted in June 2023, but it’s unclear whether it was recorded pre- or post- brain worm (though he certainly sounds like he has a worm in his throat as he talks). It is clear that it wasn’t archival footage from the beginning of the HIV epidemic when everyone was trying to figure out what was what and some ignorance might have been acceptable (though not the accompanying homophobia, of course). And we know that Kennedy’s opinion has not changed with the science because he repeated these claims in his 2021 book and told New York Magazine in 2023, “There are much better candidates than HIV for what causes AIDS.”

There are not better candidates for what causes AIDS. (Are too. Are not. Are too…. This is how I imagine cabinet meetings will go starting in January.)

The worst part of Junior being an AIDS idiot is that HIV was one place where Trump didn’t suck the last time around. His administration put out a new strategic plan on HIV, and he used one of his States of the Union to announce an initiative to end HIV transmission by 2030. If your Secretary of Health doesn’t believe that HIV causes AIDS, he might not be motivated to end it in a mere six years.

Between the worm, the bear, and the obsession with raw milk, it’s easy to see RFK, Jr. as a joke. In the past few weeks, I’ve tried to comfort myself with the idea that Kennedy’s brand of wackadoodle could be less harmful than other potential HHS nominees who might sound sane but have secret Project 2025 goals (like Trump’s CDC pick). I’m not anxious to go back to the days when HHS was spending its money to advance a Christian agenda by funding abstinence programs and marriage promotion for poor people. Besides when compared to putting our nuclear weapons in the hands of a guy who’s known to be belligerent and drunk on the job (but promises to stop drinking if he gets the job), this seems tame.

But it’s not. Putting our public health infrastructure in the hands of someone with a blatant disregard for science will kill people.

Repeat: It’s Not a Secret EC Pill

RFK, Jr. is not the only one who is keeping stupid myths alive. It was almost two years ago that we told Tyler not to eat the tablets found in the handle of his girlfriend’s pregnancy kit. Now, another moron on social media is claiming that pregnancy tests have secret morning after pills in the handle. This time his name is Ryan, and he claims, “Guys, I don't know if this is a major life hack, or if maybe you're not actually supposed to take these. I don't know about you, but this could be saving a lot of lives.”

Sorry, Ryan, but eating that will save no one (though I appreciate your realization that emergency contraception does save lives).

This stupid idea didn’t start with Ryan (or Tyler for that matter), but the new video garnered enough attention that CBS news wrote about these false claims.

If Ryan can go viral for repeating old s**t, so can I. Here’s what I said about this conspiracy theory the first time I heard it (edited slightly because no writer reads their own stuff and doesn’t want to change a few words).

An old rumor (or is it a conspiracy theory) about pregnancy tests resurfaced last month with a compilation video of men cracking open the stick their partners may or may not have peed on and finding a small tablet. The latest video was posted by a guy named Tyler who captioned it “I found a hidden plan B in a pregnancy test.”

No, Tyler, you didn’t. You found a desiccant disk designed to absorb moisture to keep the pregnancy test fresh.

We’ve all seen this kind of technology in other forms—often a small sachet of silicone beads. They come in everything from pill bottles to shoe boxes to packages of dog treats. Basically, some form of this technology goes in anything that shouldn’t get wet but may sit on the shelf for a long time.

Tyler isn’t the only one who decided that the disk—which does look like a pill—was Plan B. This rumor started in 2019 and has been posted numerous times.

What I can’t quite figure out is the why (or supposed why) of this conspiracy theory. Why would a brand like First Response or Clear Blue Easy pop a Plan B pill in the package? If you’re already testing for pregnancy, you’re beyond the point at which emergency contraception would work. Plan B cannot end an established pregnancy, so there’s no point in throwing that in the pregnancy kit. Not to mention, Plan B sells for as much as $50, so putting a free one in every $8 pregnancy test would be awfully generous.

I suppose this theory could be working off of misinformation. Tyler and his friends might be confusing Plan B with Mifepristone (part of the medication abortion protocol) and suggesting that these companies are giving users who are pregnant and don’t want to be an instant way out. That’s not how it f**king works. Medication abortion involves two medications and multiple pills that are not available without a prescription.

If mifepristone stays on the market AND becomes available without a prescription AND the whole protocol is reduced to just one tablet, I suppose it could be packaged with pregnancy tests someday though I would hope that the companies would not store it in the part of the test that gets peed on.

In the meantime, I would suggest people don’t bother opening up their pregnancy test stick, but if you do, please, please, please, do not swallow any tablet you may find in there. It’s not Plan B and it’s not meant for human consumption. This anti-moisture technology comes in many forms but all of them say very clearly “DO NOT EAT!”

Of course, if Project 2025 has its ways and the Comstock laws make a comeback, we might need companies to get creative about how they deliver our EC pills. Still, I don’t think pregnancy test kits will be high on that list. What about the Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop? You can get there in three licks.