On September 22, 2025, the American health landscape finds itself at a crossroads, with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement—helmed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—pushing the boundaries of what it means to talk about “health freedom.” The term itself might sound quintessentially American, conjuring images of rugged individualism and personal choice. But peel back the layers, and a more troubling picture emerges: one where science is sidelined, evidence is replaced with marketing, and public health is caught in the crossfire of ideology and profit.
MAHA, founded by senior staffers of Kennedy and powered by his extensive network, has rapidly evolved into a formidable political force. According to the American Council on Science and Health, the movement’s core promise—empowering Americans to make their own health decisions—masks a deeper agenda. Rather than liberating individuals, critics argue, MAHA is “monetizing your confusion,” turning uncertainty about health into an opportunity for profit. This is not just about choice, but about who controls the narrative and, ultimately, who stands to gain.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no stranger to controversy. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, his anti-vaccine beliefs have been well documented. Over the years, he’s built alliances with activist parents, wellness influencers, and a host of alternative health personalities. The “health freedom” banner, which MAHA waves so vigorously, is at first glance an appealing one. Who wouldn’t want more autonomy over their own body? But as American Council on Science and Health’s Katie Suleta points out, “what health freedom claims to be is diametrically opposed to what they actually work towards.”
At the heart of MAHA’s strategy are two interlocking tactics: undermining the credibility of established healthcare professionals and challenging the very foundation of scientific research. Their first move is to cast doubt on physicians and the broader medical profession. Wellness influencers, many with clear conflicts of interest, are recruited to convince the public that doctors are either ignorant or, worse, in the pocket of “Big Pharma.” The irony is thick—while MAHA rails against the supposed corruption of the pharmaceutical industry, it eagerly embraces the same tactics in the wellness and supplement sectors. Companies sponsor research designed to produce favorable results, publish in predatory journals, and recruit social media influencers to promote products. As Suleta puts it, “the MAHA influencers are dripping with these same conflicts of interest.”
This campaign against medical expertise is not just about muddying the waters; it’s about replacing trusted sources with new ones—namely, the influencers and companies that stand to profit from the confusion. Imagine the outrage if a pharmaceutical company openly recruited physicians to “partner” in product promotion. Yet, this is exactly what supplement companies do with influencers, and often without the regulatory oversight that governs traditional medicine.
MAHA’s second tactic is even more audacious: attacking the legitimacy of the world’s most respected academic journals. Kennedy has claimed that publications like The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, and Journal of the American Medical Association are “corrupt” and controlled by pharmaceutical companies. “We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they’re all corrupt,” Kennedy announced on the “Ultimate Human” podcast. He offered no evidence for these claims, but for his supporters, the message is clear: Big Pharma is the enemy, and anything associated with it is suspect.
Rather than engaging with the rigorous standards of existing journals, Kennedy has floated the idea of creating government-run scientific journals. The risk, critics warn, is that such publications would simply serve as echo chambers for MAHA’s pre-existing beliefs, much like the widely discredited MAHA Commission report. “They’ll do this through fabricated citations, blatant misinterpretations of others’ work, cherry-picking, and further abuse of AI,” Suleta warns. In this scenario, science becomes a tool not for discovering truth, but for manufacturing consent.
All of this unfolds against a backdrop of broader institutional failure. As Rakesh A. Shah, a diagnostic radiologist, observed in his critique published on September 22, 2025, the nation’s leading physician organizations have responded to Kennedy’s rise with “silence and timidity.” Despite their stated commitment to public health, these organizations have failed to confront the dangers posed by anti-vaccine rhetoric and the broader assault on scientific integrity. The contrast is stark: a prominent politician, himself a polio survivor, spoke out forcefully against Kennedy’s nomination, articulating the risks to national health security and biomedical innovation, while medical associations remained conspicuously quiet.
This silence, Shah argues, is not just a missed opportunity—it is complicity. “When the political class takes a bolder stance in defense of medical science than the medical profession itself, the credibility of physicians’ leadership is profoundly weakened,” he writes. The stakes are high, especially as Kennedy’s attacks on mRNA vaccines threaten to undermine not only immunization efforts but the future of cancer treatment. mRNA technology, developed during the recent global pandemic, holds promise for personalized cancer vaccines. Yet, Kennedy’s insistence on portraying these innovations as dangerous risks derailing public trust in medical research at large.
Why have physician organizations been so reluctant to engage? Shah suggests that the answer lies in self-preservation. Organized medicine, he argues, has often behaved more like a trade association than a public health advocate, prioritizing professional autonomy and institutional comfort over patient welfare. The fear of political retaliation or alienating segments of the population has led to a “failure to rise to their responsibility as the stewards of public health.”
Ironically, this strategy has not even achieved its more self-interested goals. Physicians face ongoing reimbursement cuts and find themselves increasingly marginalized in public debates. The result is a loss of both moral authority and practical influence. “The cowardice yielded neither moral authority nor material benefit,” Shah notes pointedly.
The consequences of this abdication are profound. Trust in medical institutions is already fragile, and the reluctance of physician organizations to confront Kennedy’s campaign risks eroding it further. “If physicians cannot bring themselves to stand against a threat as grave, as obvious, and as dangerous as Kennedy’s assault on vaccines, and the promise of mRNA research in the fight against cancer, then one must question whether they stand for anything at all,” Shah concludes.
Meanwhile, MAHA’s campaign continues to blur the lines between genuine health advocacy and commercial opportunism. As Suleta observes, the movement’s real success lies not in improving public health—an unlikely outcome given its anti-vaccine stance—but in “meticulously constructing an illusion of virtue.” By weaponizing “health freedom” and virtue-signaling, MAHA positions itself as the true defender of well-being, even as it substitutes “feelings and vibes for reality.”
For Americans navigating this new terrain, the choice is not between two equally valid approaches to health, but between evidence-based medicine and a marketplace of ideas where profit and ideology too often trump science. The silence of the medical establishment only amplifies the voices of those who would replace expertise with influence, and facts with feelings. As the debate over health freedom rages on, the stakes—for science, for public health, and for the credibility of medicine itself—have never been higher.
