The report RFK Jr. buried

Let's talk about some of the things that Robert

Fluoride Kennedy Jr.

has done as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Mass layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We are the sickest country in the world.

That's why we have to fire people at CDC.

He canceled $500 million in federal funding for mRNA vaccine development.

I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation, you can tell from their faces, from their and he might be getting petrochemicals out of your food.

40% of the food industry in this country has taken the pledge to remove food digests from all of their foods.

You've probably heard about all those things, but on Today Explained from Vox, we're going to talk about one thing you maybe haven't heard of.

It's something he didn't do.

A report he didn't publish.

A report he buried.

This message is brought to you by Apple Card.

Each Apple product, like the iPhone, is thoughtfully designed by skilled designers.

The titanium Apple Cart is no different.

It's laser-etched, has no numbers, and it earns you daily cash on everything you buy, including 3% back on everything at Apple.

Apply for AppleCard on your iPhone in minutes.

Subject to credit approval, AppleCard is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch.

Terms and more at AppleCard.com.

Support for this show comes from Robinhood.

Wouldn't it be great to manage your portfolio on one platform?

With Robinhood, not only can you trade individual stocks and ETFs, you can also seamlessly buy and sell crypto at low costs.

Trade all in one place.

Get started now on Robinhood.

Trading crypto involves significant risk.

Crypto trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Crypto LLC.

Robinhood Crypto is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Crypto held through Robinhood Crypto is not FDIC insured or CIPIC protected.

Investing involves risk, including loss of principal.

Securities trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Financial LLC, member CIPIC, a registered broker dealer.

Today, explain Sean Robinson.

I'm here with Dylan Scott, my colleague, who's a senior correspondent at Vox covering healthcare.

Dylan, you just published a piece on how the Trump administration has buried a new study on alcohol and its links to cancer.

Tell us a story.

This story happens in three parts.

There's a study that gets commissioned.

There's a fierce lobbying campaign against that study.

And then there is the ultimate decision not to publish the study in its final form.

So let's go back to the first part.

Back in 2022, the Biden administration decided they wanted to commission a special report on alcohol and its health consequences.

You know, there's been a lot of conversation for years now about whether any amount of drinking is safe or good for you.

And the Biden administration is like, we should just really dive into this.

And we'll produce a report that will serve two purposes.

It will be submitted to Congress as part of a report that goes to Congress every year about underage drinking.

And then it'll be submitted to the health department and the USDA to be considered for the 2025 dietary guidelines.

That gets started, and almost immediately there's a pretty big backlash from the alcohol industry and their allies in Congress.

A public relation campaign gets underway on Capitol Hill especially.

You've got the alcohol industry circulating documents about the co-authors of this health report saying like they're biased, they're secret prohibitionists, and they find a pretty receptive audience in Congress.

What is it with liberals that want to control every damn aspect of your life?

I'm proud to represent the Commonwealth of Kentucky, home to the $9 billion

Kentucky bourbon distillery industry.

Wine has played a

positive role in society and culture for 8,000 years.

They want us to drink two beers a week.

Frankly, they can kiss my ass.

And Congress actually goes so far as to commission a second study from the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering.

You know, they even subpoena the administration to try to get more information about the process that led to the study being commissioned.

It's just a general cloud of like, there's something wrong with this alcohol intake and health study that the Biden administration commissioned in 2022.

Then, on January 15th, 2025, we finally see a draft version of the report, which is basically the usual routine for reports like this.

Authors put together a draft, they post it for the public to see, people can comment, they can critique it, and then the authors take all that feedback and produce a final version of the report.

And so this kind of brings us to the third part of the story, the suppression of the report.

So

they published it for public comment in January, they work on their revisions, and in March of 2025, the authors submit the final version of their report to the Trump administration.

And after that,

nothing happens.

We never see the report.

It is never published in its final form.

And the co-authors for a long time just have no idea what's going on.

It's radio silence from the administration until last month.

And then last month, they were told

the administration does not have any intention of publishing a final version of this report.

They're not going to include it in the congressional report on underage drinking, for which it was always originally

supposed to be for.

And they're just not going to publish it at all.

You know, after we reported on this information, the Trump administration told us that the report had been shared with HHS and the USDA to be considered for the dietary guidelines.

And so that's where we're at, where it's like this report that has been worked on for years by some of the leading alcohol health researchers in the world that was funded by taxpayer dollars.

The final version of it is never going to be released by the federal government.

Okay, so we have a lot to clarify here.

Maybe starting with the fact that there are two reports, one initiated by the Biden administration and one initiated by Congress.

We do have these kind of dueling reports.

We've got the alcohol intake and health study, which is what the Biden administration commissioned in 2022.

And we've got the National Academies report, which is what Congress approved in late 2022.

And so, I mean, they have some methodological differences, but what's really striking is how different their findings are.

We're going to turn now to a new report that finds even moderate alcohol drinking.

Why are you looking at me like that, Robin?

Even moderate alcohol drinking can have an adverse impact on your health.

But...

They also found that drinking a moderate amount of alcohol actually lowers your risk of dying.

So there's like a not dying benefit compared to not drinking at all.

Huh.

So the alcohol intake and health report showed that at one drink per day for a man, so if you just have one glass of beer at the end of the day, you have about a one in 1,000 chance of dying in your lifetime from an alcohol-related cause, which is like, you know, one in 1,000, maybe I'll take my chances.

But if you increase that to two drinks per day, and I think it's worth emphasizing that that is the currently recommended limit under the dietary guidelines that currently exist.

Your chances of dying from an alcohol-related cause increase to one in 25.

So that's a pretty dramatic difference and a pretty dramatic increase in your health risk, even within the currently recommended limits on alcohol consumption.

On the other hand, we've got this National Academy's report, which came to very different conclusions.

It actually reported that maybe some

moderate drinking could have some modest health benefits, could actually be maybe good for your cardiovascular system.

And they actually found that the association with cancer is pretty weak.

So these are two very different stories about what alcohol does to your body and the risks that it poses.

And one of them, the National Academy's report, was published on time, no questions asked.

But the first report is never going to be published in its final form.

Trump famously doesn't drink.

I can honestly say I never had a beer in my life.

Okay.

RFK is a famously recovering addict.

I became a heroin addict when I was 15.

Who is obsessed with toxins and the corrupting influence of powerful lobbies?

Why would these two guys...

if they indeed did conspire to bury this report, conspire to bury this report?

It's a good question, question.

And I have tussled with that question quite a lot.

And really, since the Make America Healthy Again movement, you know, kind of came into being, you know, alongside RFK's presidential campaign last year, alcohol has always been kind of a weird issue for them.

It's not something that like the Maha groups are super outspoken about.

It is not, despite Kennedy himself, as you say, being in recovery, something that he talks about very much.

And I mean, we can only kind of guess about what their motives might be.

But I do think it's worth, you know, when you remember that there is a very powerful industry with a lot of money at its disposal that has a lot of pull in Congress.

You know, some of the members of Congress who've been most outspoken about this are people representing districts in Kentucky, where, you know, bourbon and whiskey is a popular cultural export.

Lawmakers from Napa Valley in California with all of its wineries.

According to Reuters, the alcohol industry industry has spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress, and now the U.S.

government is expected to revise its guidelines as early as this month, moving away from recommending that consumers limit their alcohol intake.

And any new label would require approval from Congress, which could be an uphill battle.

The beverage industry spends tens of millions of dollars every year lobbying Congress, Mary.

So this may just be like a bear that Trump and RFK Jr.

just didn't want to poke.

I don't get that, Dylan.

Like this administration picks so many fights.

And the public, I think, is generally aware that drinking is unhealthy.

I mean, back in 2023, we covered a similar study that had a very different outcome in Canada, where the Canadian government, after seeing a study that linked alcohol to cancer, told Canadians that any amount of drinking is unhealthy.

Like this is in the water.

Why not just let the people have the study that they paid for?

So here's the other thing that I think, the even more meta context that I think is important here, which is COVID and the pandemic and the general just war that is currently underway right now between RFK Jr., Maha, the Trump administration in general, MAGA.

as an entire political movement and the public health establishment, the people whom the first group blames for the mistakes of the pandemic and vice versa.

Like these two sides are still hashing it out.

They hate each other.

I mean, we've seen for the past few weeks the turmoil at the CDC between their new political leadership and the, you know, longtime staffers who are more part of that old public health consensus.

Like, why am I going to team up with all these public health experts who are dragging me about vaccines and the mistakes I made during the pandemic and all kinds of other things to help them get their message out about alcohol.

And that's what links this alcohol story that you wrote about for Vox to the greater phenomena that is RFK, Maha, and public health in America right now.

Yes.

I think what's also telling is this is just another example of Maha and the Trump administration's actual policies and

actions not lining up.

You know, I wrote another story a couple of weeks ago about how like even though Maha is outraged about things like pesticides, the EPA is over here deregulating them and doing all, you know,

deregulating microplastics and PFAFs, you know, these other things that Maha is worried about.

It does, it just, this is, I think, another example.

This alcohol study is another example of how when corporate interests and public health interests seem to be at odds, at least within the Trump administration, it seems like corporate interests tend to win out, at least a lot of the time.

And I think that is what we have seen with the administration's decision not to publish this alcohol health report.

Dylan Scott, if you want to read his scoop about this buried alcohol report, you can find it at Vox.com.

If you want to hear more about the links between alcohol and cancer, Dylan also appeared on the Unexplainable program this week to talk about that.

When we are back on Today Explained, we're going to ask a guy who's worked in and around public health for decades what he makes of the job RFK has been doing so far as the head of health and human services here in the United States.

Support for Today Explained comes from Select Quote.

When was the last time you reviewed your life insurance policy?

You've never done it.

You've never done it.

I know you've never done it.

If it's been a while or if you've never done it, Select Quote says you might be overpaying or not properly covered for changing costs of living.

Select quote says they can help.

For over 40 years, Select Quote has been one of the most trusted brokers in the insurance business.

According to Select Quote, they say they've helped more than 2 million Americans secure over $700 billion, billion of the B in coverage.

In as little as 15 minutes, they'll compare policies from top-rated carriers to find the best fit for your health and your budget.

Select quote says Select Quote has partners with policies that are designed for many pre-existing health conditions as well.

Get the right term life insurance for you for less and save more than 50% at selectquote.com slash explained.

Save more than 50% on term life insurance at selectquote.com slash explain today to get started.

That's selectquote.com slash explained.

Support for the show today comes from Delete Me.

If you want to freak yourself out, Google recent data breaches.

And if you don't want to freak yourself out, maybe don't do that.

Delete Me says they make it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable.

Claire White, what say you?

I signed up for Delete Me about a year ago.

At the beginning they combed through a ton of websites that had my information on them like phone number or email address or even my home address.

Since having it for a year, I still receive the monthly privacy reports, but I can tell that there's just a lot less sites that they have to pull from, which I know means that it's continuing to work and it makes me feel really safe.

You can take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners.

You can get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to join deleteme.com/slash today and use the promo code today at checkout.

The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com/slash today

and enter the code today at checkout.

That's joindeleatme.com/slash today.

Code today

support for the show today comes from Bombus.

They have all the comfy socks, slippers, tees, and underwear you'll need for the fall.

And they're made from premium materials that actually make sense for this time of year, like merino wool, strong subpoena cotton, or durable rag wool.

Some of my favorites in that list.

Nisha Chital is our colleague here at Vox, and she's tried Bombus.

After a summer of wearing sandals for months, it does feel like sock weather again.

So I'm excited to, you know, start wearing regular non-sandal shoes again.

Boots, sneakers, flats, loafers.

And I think, interestingly, like I have a Bombus style of sock that could pair with each of those types of footwear.

Bombus also wants to know about their mission, which is that for every item you purchase, they donate one to someone facing homelessness.

They say over 150 million items have been donated thanks to customers.

Plus, Bombus is available for international shopping to over two hundo countries.

You can go to bombus.com slash explain and use the code explain for 20% off your first purchase.

That's bombb-as.com/slash explained, code explained at checkout.

Ezekiel Emmanuel is an oncologist and a medical ethicist who works at the University of Pennsylvania.

He worked on public health for the Obama administration.

One of the the things I'm most proud of is that we did the food plate.

We pushed a lot of nutrition work and revisions.

I worked on global health and trying to emphasize investments in public health infrastructure overseas.

But he also worked with the Trump administration.

In 2016, 2017, I did some work with him.

I tried to actually get him to really focus on prescription drug prices because I thought that was something he was passionate about and might do something about.

Early in COVID, I worked with him for about two months trying to get the COVID response up and running.

When it comes to the country's health, he's all for bipartisanship.

Working for whoever's president, as long as they're doing good by the country, is really important.

But with that said, he thinks Robert F.

Kennedy is a disaster.

Yeah, I do not think he's qualified in any shape or form.

He has been against vaccines and that is very bad.

Probably the single biggest benefit to people in the 20th century in terms of total lives saved from 1974 to today, those are huge achievements and now we're trying to roll them back.

The thing about Kennedy that I actually supported is his emphasis on nutrition, his emphasis on chronic diseases, and trying to address them.

The problem problem is so far, I mean, the big success we've gotten is dyes.

We're going to get rid of the dyes and then one by one we're going to get rid of every ingredient, an additive and school, in food that we can legally address.

That's not going to really save any lives.

Addressing the whole food chain and nutrition subsidies that we have in this country, those haven't been addressed.

And those are the, you really want to address chronic disease in America.

That is a critical step.

And yet I don't see him really leaning into it.

And it, yes, it's a challenge, but it's really important.

I'm glad you brought up chronic disease in America.

Last week at a Senate hearing, Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

defended all of his shake-ups at the CDC by saying, we are the sickest country in the world.

That's why we have to fire people at the CDC.

They did not do their job.

This was their job to keep us healthy.

Are we the sickest country in the world?

I don't think we are.

Well, I wouldn't say the sickest country in the world, but in terms of high-income countries, we aren't doing that well.

And we've fallen off the growth curve, as they say, in terms of increase in life expectancy, decrease in the number of disability-adjusted life years,

health span actually getting shorter.

And that's been happening since roughly 1980.

And there are lots of hypotheses about that.

I'll give you two that I think really are important.

You have to remember,

and most people won't, Richard Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butts.

Nobody ever became a Secretary of Agriculture.

They went a popularity contest.

Butz really leaned into the production of industrial commodity crops with heavy subsidies for corn, soybean, rice, wheat, that again made the components of ultra-processed foods cheap and it cut down by the way in small family farms, really

promoted big industrial farms that he often said, you know, get big or get out of farming.

So that was one element.

The other element

really timed with Ronald Reagan taking over was a cutback in the social safety net, housing, food stamps, and other social safety net programs.

Welfare is a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.

That combination, spending more to get cheaper components for ultra-processed foods, and reducing the social safety net, I think are probably two of the biggest components in terms of the obesity epidemic we've had that have really fueled chronic diseases.

You see this in the increase in diabetes, increase in lots of illnesses.

I think if we really want to get a healthcare system, we have to focus on those two elements.

I mean, Robert F.

Kennedy is trying to focus on the CDCs specifically.

He thinks they've fallen gravely short.

Do you think there's lots of areas of improvement at the CDC?

Yes, I do think we can improve the CDC.

But let's be honest.

If you're going to improve the CDC, the first place to start is not cutting its workforce, cutting its budget by billions of dollars, eliminating programs like the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, the National Center for Environmental Health, our ability to forecast and monitor adverse health outcomes, the Public Health Preparedness and Response Center, the Global Health Center.

So the idea that we need to cut in order to actually improve, I think is false.

What do you think the effects are thus far of RFK's actions at CDC

in public health more broadly?

Well, you know what?

Here's the thing about public health.

Public health, you invest today for the benefits tomorrow.

So it will take a while to actually see in terms of real harms, but we're already seeing real harms in several ways.

The first way is clearly the measles outbreak in Texas,

two kids dead, lots of hospitalizations.

It's not just Texas now, it's spread across parts of the country.

You're getting increasing vaccine skepticism and parents who are uncertain don't study the issue, just are trying to

make their lives go and can't really study these various issues.

And when you get fewer and fewer people vaccinated, you are going to get disease outbreaks, whether today, tomorrow, or in a long time, we can't exactly predict.

I also think, you know, if chronic diseases are a big problem, which RFK Jr.

clearly agrees with, cutting back on our chronic disease programs, you know, our prevention programs, our response programs, our health promotion programs, that's not a good idea.

Maybe we need to do them differently, but cutting is certainly not in the cards for all those chronic diseases.

If you want to control health care costs, you got to address chronic disease better.

And cutting back the CDC's role is not better.

You know, we've been talking about chronic disease and vaccines.

In the first half of the show, we talked to our colleague Dylan Scott about how RFK and the Trump administration buried a study about alcohol's links to cancer.

And there's no clear explanation for why they not want this information to be in the hands of the public.

Where do you think people,

everyday Americans, should be turning to for health information if they feel like they can't trust the government anymore?

And I guess that applies to like the people who are skeptical to begin with and all the people who are skeptical now.

The problem with undermining the CDC is you undermine a single source of information,

objective really, where where the goal is public health.

Now, it's going to put more burden on people to get their information from a variety of sources, you know, on vaccines.

Maybe my good friend Mike Ulsterholm's project on vaccine integrity, or I think it's called the vaccine integrity project, if you want to look it up online.

In other areas, like alcohol, you'll have to look at the old Surgeon General's report and try to get a copy of that that reported on alcohol's problems, especially related to cancer, but not exclusively.

There are global, you know, alcohol is a global issue, so there are a lot of global resources available, whether England or Australia or the Cochrane Collaborative, but that requires a lot more effort.

And that's one of the problems: is everyone's short on time, right?

And spending a lot of time running around and looking for individual programs rather than being able to go to one site and readily access an objective answer is a major major problem and that i think is part of the plan for the this administration is make it very difficult to get this kind of information and it's working unfortunately

ezekiel emmanuel his friends call him zeke rebecca ibarra made this episode of today explained amina al-sadi edited laura bullard fact-checked adrienne lily and patrick Boyd mixed.

Welcome back, Patrick.