The Make America Healthy Again commission, directed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has published his Make our children healthy again strategyA 20 -page report, the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States described as A “sweep plan” to “reverse the failed policies that fed the epidemic of Chronic Childhood Diseases of the United States.”
In a live meeting the Tuesday transmission of the department's headquarters, the members of the Maha commission marked ways of addressing the poor diet, chemical exhibitions, medications in excess of recipe and the toxic combination of too much stress and very little physical activity: the four main threats for child health the commission of the commission. identified In May.
Absent from the document there was a mention of weapons, the main cause of death for people under 18.
Firearms have been the main cause of death for children from 1 to 17 years every year since 2022.
More than 2,500 children died of bullet wounds in 2022, the last year for which there are complete data available, and the weapons were responsible for 30% of all the deaths of young people aged 15 to 17, the Johns Hopkins center for the solutions of armed violence found After analyzing data from the centers for disease control and prevention.
The absence of weapons of Maha's strategy gave alarm between pediatricians and public health experts.
“If you are publishing a report that is supposed to address how to help our children stay healthier, and are not even mentioning the number 1 cause of children health.
The short document described more than 120 issues that the administration plans to address with little more than a brief paragraph each for subjects as varied as food and water quality fluoride.
“It lacks details on how the administration plans to address these problems and omits the key drivers who damage the health of children, including armed violence and environmental risks,” said the American Academy of Pediatrics in a statement on Tuesday. “We know that for children to feel healthy and help them prosper, they need families, communities, relationships and safe, stable and nutritious environments.”
When asked at the meeting on Tuesday if the commission considered the role of firearms, Kennedy replied that their agencies would focus on the reasons why young people were looking for weapons.
“Violence is what worries us,” said Kennedy, “this sudden beginning of violence that began in the 1990s … [where] Someone enters a school, church or theater and begins to shoot strangers. ”
Kennedy said that National Health Institutes of the United States will soon launch studies on some potential causes of this violence, including the use of psychiatric drugs, video games and social networks.
The particularly American phenomenon of mass shootings, incidents in which one or more shooters are directed to multiple victims in public places, has increased considerably since the end of the 1980s, According to the data From the Rockefeller de Government, a group of experts based in Albany, New York.
Previous research In the links between the use of psychiatric drugs and the mass shootings It could not appear Evidence of causality. Kennedy has frequently talked about his suspicion that prescribed antidepressants cause violence in their users, More recently After last month's shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis.
“You can find a correlation between the use of psychiatric drugs and violence, but that is because people who take these drugs have depression and other mental health problems,” Mirken said. He pointed to a study Published earlier this year in Jama Pediatrics found by thousands of additional deaths in the United States in US states with more permissive weapons laws.
Kennedy did not reveal more details about the studies on Tuesday. The Trump administration has significantly reduced funds for research and armed violence prevention programs this year.
“This attitude conforms to the way in which the HHS under Kennedy addresses most of the health problems, by focusing on preconceived notions and conspiracy theories instead of real threats to health,” ” Dr. Adam Ratner saidSpecialist in Pediatric Infectious Diseases of New York and author of the book “Booster Shots: urgent measles lessons and the uncertain future of children's health.”
“When ignoring weapons as a main cause of infant mortality and focusing on the stigmatization of the use of medicines, Kennedy's strategy will endanger children while doing nothing to address the root of the problem,” he said.
