In a Congressional hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) directly confronted anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his rejection of germ theory—the unquestionable scientific idea that specific pathogenic microbes cause specific diseases. After Kennedy defended his fringe view, Senator Bill Cassidy fact-checked and debunked Kennedy’s denialist arguments in real time.
The exchanges mark a rare instance in which Kennedy’s dismissal of germ theory has been raised in such a high-profile public setting, in this case, a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Kennedy, who has no background in science, medicine, or public health, is well known as an ardent anti-vaccine activist and peddler of conspiracy theories. But his startling rejection of a cornerstone theory in biomedical science has mostly been underreported.
As Ars Technica reported last year, Kennedy wrote about his germ theory denialism explicitly in his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci. In it, Kennedy maligns germ theory as a tool of pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and doctors to promote the use of modern medicines. Instead of accepting germ theory, Kennedy promotes a concept akin to the discarded terrain theory, in which diseases stem not from germs, but from imbalances in the body’s inner “terrain.” Those imbalances are claimed to be caused by poor nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins and stressors. (In his book, Kennedy erroneously labels this as “miasma theory,” but that is a different theory that suggests diseases derive from breathing bad air, vapors, or mists from decaying or corrupting matter. The idea was supplanted by germ theory, while terrain theory was never widely accepted.)
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Literal medieval doctor levels of medical understanding.
Quite frustrating that the efforts of millions worldwide with cold evidence would be ignored and dismissed by one shortsighted charlatan. The world can only mock him for trying to screw his own citizens.
Debunking doesn’t matter in the US in 2026. Bullets do.
Oh no, facts.
Surely this will be the undoing of JFK Jr.
Doctors I trust more than Doctor Oz, Doctor Phil, Pete Hegseth, or RFK Jr.
Doc Brown
Doc Gooden
Doc Holiday
Doc Hollywood
Doc Johnson
Doc McStuffins
Doctor John Becker
Doctor Bombay
Doctor Bronner
Doctor Claw
Doctor Demento
Doctor Detroit
Doctor Dirty
Doctor Dolittle
Doctor Doofenshmirtz aka Dr. D or just “Doof”
Doctor Doom
Doctor Drake Ramoray (“Days of Our Lives”)
Doctor Evil
Doctor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Doctor Feelgood
Doctor Frankenstein
Doctor Girlfriend
Doctor Hannibal Lecter
Doctor Horrible
Doctor Douglas “Doogie” Howser
Doctor Gregory House
Doctor Jekyll
Doctor Johnny Fever
Doctor Kevorkian
Doctor Kildare
Doctor Richard Kimble
Doctor Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy
Doctor Martens
Doctor Moreau
Doctor Nick
Doctor Otto Octavius
Doctor Pimple Popper
Doctor Scholl’s
Doctor Orin Scrivello
Doctor Seuss
Doctor Zachary Smith
Doctor Spaceman
Doctor Spock
Doctor Strange
Doctor Strangelove
Doctor Teeth
Doctor Theopolis
Doctor Watson
Doctor Marcus Welby
Doctor Who
Doctor Zaius
Doctor Zhivago
Doctor Zoidberg
Dr. Dre
Dr. Enuf
Dr. Hook
Dr. J (Julius Erving)
Dr. Octogonapus (DOCTOROCTAGONAPUSBLURRR)
Dr. Otto Octavius
Dr. Pepper
Dr. Donald D. Rose
Dr. Tedros
Dr. Tran
Rug Doctor
Spin Doctors
The Doctor (Star Trek: Voyager)
Even Nurse Ratchet
I’m at the cafe and people are looking at me as I laugh out loud alone. Thank you.
they just want to know what’s funny.
I’ll be here all week, try the buffet.
Nurse Ratchet! You are my people.
The Silent Hill nurses.
At least they’re predictable
lol the earth is a battleground for forces we can neither observe nor comprehend, people are eating children and we are talking about a moron that denies germ theory
So he’ll eat a Listeria salad and an Ecoli burger, washed down with some Girardia river water and think it was his bodies imbalance that made him sick???
Yes. This guy literally eats roadkill. And brags about it.
Technically, if the roadkill is fresh, there’s nothing wrong with eating it.
We truly live in the golden age of the moron.
How is that even something I have to Read? Fuck these morons.
This guy is in charge of the CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL. Not only responsible for the health of the nearly 400M US Citizens, but really globally in many ways. And this failson thinks you can sweat away ebola with some fucking supplements… that he happens to peddle.
I’d like to challenge him to prove it. Ebola is a messy way to go so I wouldn’t want to be in the same room, but I guess that’s what cameras are for.
I love the term “failson”. It’s such an apt description for these grifting fuckups.
Except for the way they keep succeeding 😐
It is insane to think that he is endorsing a theory that was widely rejected even by Miasma guys in the 19th century.
The miasma advocates were wrong, but they still did many things that were beneficial. The first water treatment plants that provided the first safe drinking water were advocated for by miasma advocates, and the London sewer system, one that is still being used today was also built by them.
Terrain theory? They did jack shit. Just a bunch of crazy nuts who rejected both miasma and germ theory in the late 19th century.
To be fair, miasma theory made sense and was completely logical, before microscopes.
They knew about actual lethal gases, and ones that had different effects on the body. They knew there were gases they couldn’t yet detect, as they were still discovering new ones. They knew rotting stuff produced all kind of gases and stenchs.
Hell, the theory is still pretty much valid for radon, though for reasons they couldn’t have possibly imagined.
And at the same time, the idea that animals could get small enough to be invisible, and to invade the human body, was absurd.
It came as quite a surprise when the microscope was invented and every single drop of water turned out to be a whole ecosystem teeming with life, and we turned out to be precariously balanced colonies of microscopic cells, also inhabited by a whole bacterial ecosystem teeming with both friends and foes.
And then came viruses, which are downright absurd to the point that we’re still figuring out where they fit in the tree of life, and whether they’re alive or not.
And prions, which are the stuff of horror science fiction yet completely logical when you think about how proteins work, and how easily they might sometimes not.
Miasma theory wasn’t correct, sure, but it was definitely simpler, and made much more sense than the mess reality turned out to be.
yikes, dude is gonna be draining the four humors.
Who’s the barber here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ
What was only recently satire is an actual position.
They will kill you and your kids.
Hopefully not me, I follow medical science, although obviously herd wide health practices will suffer which may result in higher mortality for everyone, even those who follow medical science.
And not the funny ones.
Drain the humors!
When he dies, I hope they do an autopsy of his body to see how many parasites and infections he had.
I think he’ll explode into bugs like the oogie-boogie man.
I bet he doesn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom. Also, does he not visit the dentist? He should stop getting his teeth cleaned/checked if he thinks germs don’t cause disease.
Pete Hegseth bragged on TV that he had not washed his hands in 10 years, because “germs are not a real thing.” These are stupid people.
These are people that believe that if you say something with enough arrogance, it makes it true.
These are stupid people.
And yet they were able to fully take over the United States government. Really says something about the movements and institutions opposing them.
The rules mistakenly assumed that politicians would always be intelligent people with the interests of the nation in mind.
They didn’t account for people voting for moronic crooks who openly intended to pillage and rape the nation for their own profit.
Says more about the fragility of democracies. For other countries, the warning should be clear: do not fucking defund public education, do not restrict education.
Unfortunately, we keep electing people who defund education, because it’s expensive, and then cry that people vote for morons who waste away tens or hundreds of billions of dollars…
To be fair, when he was young his parents put his swing too close to the wall.
Fuckin Typhoid Mary. Can’t we exile him to an island for the rest of his life, too?
These people are just layers of scourges.
Wowwww, somehow that honestly surprises me that even one of these magats could be this blindingly moronic
His hygienist specializes in miasmas.
The Horseman known as Pestilence.
A kind of Terry Pratchett, Good Omens version, absolutely. “We don’t actually have to make new plagues, we just convince enough people that the natural plagues they’ve already got don’t exist, or the causes aren’t what they’ve been told, or that the treatments do greater harm than the disease. In fact, we don’t even have to deceive that many. A handful of posts to alternative medicine, conspiracy, and mom’s net forums, and human nature will do the rest.”
I need to read that one. Terry was a goddamn genius who got taken from us too soon.
There’s also already a horseman for War. Who would be Death and Famine I wonder?
Famine is Brooke Rollins, secretary of department of agriculture.
Famine, whoever is in charge of cutting funds for humanitarian projects the USA were supporting and threatening millions of lives.
