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The right-wing assault on public health didn’t end with Covid conspiracies. The attack is ongoing, and as it unfolds, we’re seeing examples of how a country under Republican control could pervert the concepts of health and wellness to align with pseudoscientists and far-right hucksters.
This fear came to mind as I read a new Daily Beast report on attempts by conservative anti-vaxxers to win control of the medical board that oversees the prestigious Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Florida.
As the Beast reports, the group of contenders looking to win seats on the board includes Mary Flynn O’Neill, sister of former Trump adviser and conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn.
According to the outlet:
The rogues’ gallery includes Mary Flynn O’Neill, who directs her brother’s nonprofit and routinely appears on right-wing shows with QAnon conspiracy theorists; Tanya Parus, the president of Moms For America’s Sarasota chapter and co-owner of a “freedom-based” health clinic, and Tamzin Rosenwasser, a dermatologist who once railed against the Federation of State Medical Boards’s warning to doctors who spread COVID vaccine misinformation, comparing the organization to Stalin’s secret police.
A victory for the conspiracy theorists would allow them to set standards for what qualifies as effective and ethical health care — a horrifying prospect. Florida is already offering a crash course in the dangers of allowing pseudoscience to drive health policy, in the policies of its surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo.
And yet Florida alone doesn’t paint the full picture of the conservative movement’s assault on public health. There’s more where that came from should conservatives win the White House and control of Congress this fall. As my colleague Steve Benen explained over on the MaddowBlog, Donald Trump has said that, if elected, he’d cut federal funding for schools that have any kind of vaccination mandate. It’s as if to compensate for taking credit for the Covid-19 vaccines, Trump is trying to prove his antiscientific bona fides by condemning vaccines altogether.
And Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed a bill that would effectively cut off public health research at the knees. As I wrote last month, their proposal to ban funding for medical schools that study disparate health outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities would essentially prohibit crucial public health studies and negatively affect public health for all communities.
The conservative movement’s broad rejection of health institutions and the experts who lead them has terrifying implications for Americans’ well-being and vitality. The right-wing crusade at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Trump’s vow to punish schools with vaccination mandates and the GOP assault on health disparities represent the breadth of the disaster that awaits public health if Republicans claim victory this fall.