Last week, the White House put out a report. The report was called “The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Report”. We call it the MAHA Report for short. The MAHA report had a lot of problems in it. ASAN does not think the MAHA report was good or helpful to people. This plain language roundup will talk about the problems in the MAHA report.
The MAHA Report was made by a group of people called the MAHA Commission. The person who leads the MAHA Commission is RFK Jr. We already know RFK Jr. does not know a lot about health care. We know he lies about things like what causes autism. To learn more about RFK Jr., you can read our other plain language statements here and here.
The MAHA Commission was made to try and lower the amount of people getting certain health problems. But the MAHA Commission said autism was one of the main problems they wanted to solve. We already know that lowering the rate of autism is not possible. People are born autistic, and will stay autistic their whole lives.
The MAHA report makes problems out of things that are not problems. For example, the report talks about more people having autism recently. The report says that must mean autism is getting more common. They say that’s why we need to find what causes autism and cure it.
But this is not true. Today, it is easier for most people to get health care than it used to be. It has also gotten easier to get an autism diagnosis. Some groups of people used to not get diagnosed with autism. These groups are:
- People of color
- Women
- LGBTQI+ autistics
Now, these groups get diagnosed with autism more often. Doctors are learning more about autism and how to diagnose different groups of people. This is a good thing! But the MAHA report makes it seem like it is a bad thing. This makes people scared of autism, and is unfair to autistic people.
The MAHA report also has lots of other problems:
- The report treats many different kinds of disabilities in the same way. For example, it talks about cancer, allergies, and autism in the same way. These are very different disabilities and need different kinds of health care and services.
- The report talks about disability in hurtful ways. The report makes it seem like helping disabled people wastes the government’s money. For example, the report says special education is a “threat to the American public”.
- The MAHA commission didn’t talk to autistic or disabled people when they made the report. Instead, the report focuses on making people scared of disability. The report treats disabled people like problems that can be cured.
The report also doesn’t talk about how the government causes health problems or makes them worse.
- The government wants to get rid of the Department of Education and the Administration of Community Living. These government agencies do a lot to help people with disabilities. Getting rid of these agencies would make disabled people have even more problems.
- The report makes it seem like health problems are always the fault of the person with these problems. But we know that society can cause health problems. For example, people who can’t afford health care usually have more health problems. People of color usually have more health problems because of racism. The MAHA report does not talk about these things.
Next, we will go over different topics the MAHA report talks about:
Vaccines
The MAHA Commission is trying to stop people from getting vaccines. The report says that they are not sure if vaccines are safe. They think vaccines might cause autism or other disabilities.
Even though lots of research shows vaccines are safe, the MAHA report says the research is wrong. The report says vaccines need to be tested even more before being given to people. This slows down people getting the vaccines they need. It also means some people might not get vaccines in time to stop a disease.
We already know vaccines are safe, work well, and don’t cause autism. But RFK Jr. keeps bringing up that vaccines might cause autism. This hurts autistic people and our families. It also makes all Americans less safe and healthy. People might not get vaccines if they are scared vaccines will make them disabled. And if people don’t get vaccines, they are more likely to get sick from diseases.
Health Research
The MAHA Commission says that health research has a lot of problems. Some of the problems they talk about are real problems. But they aren’t trying to fix those problems. Instead, the government is cutting money from health research. The government is firing people who work on healthcare research.
People in government have said that health research should happen outside the government. They think the government should not pay for health research at all. But private research companies don’t have to follow the same rules as the government does. They might do research that doesn’t actually help people.
Health research is important. Health research helps people get better health care and learn more about different health problems. If the government won’t pay for health research, research will get worse. People’s health will also get worse.
Chemicals
The MAHA report talks a lot about chemicals. They say that people are getting sick from being around too many chemicals. But almost everything is a chemical. Chemicals are not all good or all bad, just like medications. Some chemicals, like lead and PFAs, are dangerous. These chemicals can make people have health problems. These chemicals also get found more in places where people of color live. We talk about this in our Crisis In Our Communities toolkit about environmental racism.
The government should try to stop the spread of bad chemicals like lead and PFAs. But the government is doing the opposite. The government wants to cut money from programs that help stop these chemicals. The MAHA report doesn’t focus on bad chemicals like lead. It focuses on other chemicals that we don’t know as much about. But the MAHA report says these chemicals might cause kids to get disabilities.
One chemical the report talks about is fluoride. The report talks about a study that said fluoride might cause kids to get intellectual disabilities. But this is not true. The study was not done the right way, and didn’t show fluoride was a bad chemical.
The MAHA report also tries to make people think that chemicals cause autism. This idea has been proven wrong many times. But this idea is very dangerous. When people try to experiment and “remove” chemicals, bad things happen. At least one child died when people tried to “cure” autism in this way.
Food & Nutrition
The MAHA report talks about “ultra-processed foods”. It says that most of what children eat is ultra-processed. It also says children can get disabilities from eating ultra-processed foods. They say that “childhood obesity” is a disability. Childhood obesity is when a child weighs much more than what doctors say is “normal”.
But not all processed foods are the same. For example, cereals are ultra-processed, but that is because vitamins get added. Having a disability is also about more than just someone’s diet. People’s genes play a big part in whether or not someone can gain or lose weight.
Doctors also sometimes treat people who weigh more unfairly. Doctors might assume someone’s health problems are only because they weigh too much. This can make people who weigh more not get the health care they need.
It is harder for Americans to get food recently. That is why many Americans eat a lot of ultra-processed foods. There is a government program called SNAP that helps Americans get food. 1 in 5 children in the U.S. get food from SNAP. SNAP does extra work to make sure Americans can get healthy food.
But the MAHA report does not talk about helping more people get SNAP. The government actually wants to cut money from SNAP. The MAHA report talks about how bad ultra-processed foods are. But the report doesn’t help people get food that isn’t ultra-processed.
Medicine
Some kids take medication for disabilities like ADHD and mental health conditions. The MAHA report said it was a bad thing that more kids take medication recently. RFK Jr. said that people taking mental health medication should instead get sent to institutions. He also said that these medications make people commit mass shootings. A mass shooting is when someone uses a gun to try and hurt or kill many people. RFK is wrong about all of these things.
Medication can be a good or bad thing. It all depends on how the medication gets used. People with disabilities should understand their medication. Disabled people and their doctors should get the choice about what medications they take. We also already have government agencies whose job it is to make sure drugs are safe.
The government shouldn’t get to decide if kids are taking too much medication. The government should not control who gets what medication. What the MAHA report says about medication is wrong.
Fake research
The MAHA report talks about research studies that they say prove their ideas are right. But when other people looked for some of these studies, they couldn’t find them. Some of the research studies the MAHA report talks about are fake. These studies were never done. But the MAHA report still says that these studies back up what the report says.
Sometimes the MAHA report used studies with made up names. But the report said these studies were written by real researchers. These researchers say they never did the research that the MAHA report is talking about. Nobody can find the studies the MAHA report talks about.
Sometimes the MAHA report talks about real studies. But the report lies about what the studies found out. The report says that the research proves something it didn’t. The researchers who wrote these studies say that the MAHA report didn’t understand their research. The researchers also say that the MAHA report made up things about what their research says.
It is not okay to lie about what research says. It is not okay for the MAHA Commission to make up studies to prove they are right. Making up health research is dangerous. This should never happen, especially in a government report.
Conclusion
As RFK Jr himself said: people should not take medical advice from him. They should take medical advice from their own doctors.
The MAHA report wants people to be scared of disability. They talk about disabled people like we are less important than non-disabled people. But disability is a natural part of life. Disabled people should get the support we need from the government. That support should be good health care and services, NOT “cures” for our disabilities.
The MAHA Commission wants Americans to be “healthy”. But they won’t do anything to help Americans become healthier. Instead, they are trying to cut money from the government programs that actually help Americans stay healthy.
The MAHA report is not really trying to make America healthier. The goal of the report is to blame people for their health problems or disabilities. The MAHA Commission does not want to focus on problems in society that hurt people’s health. So they focused on blaming disabled people instead.
The MAHA Commission was not made for us. It will not help us. It is scary that the U.S. government put out a report like this. But ASAN will continue to call out lies from RFK Jr. and the MAHA Commission. We will keep fighting for RFK Jr. to step down as Secretary of Health and Human Services. We will keep fighting for better health care and services for all disabled people.