Is the Opioid crisis responsible for the US’ anti-vax conspiracies?
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Is the Opioid crisis partly to blame for RFK Jr’s vaccine scepticism? Yes, according to Patrick Radden Keefe, bestselling author of Empire of Pain.
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In brief…
- Patrick Radden Keefe, bestselling author of Empire of Pain, speaks to Emily Maitlis about America’s Opioid crisis.
- He says the public health disaster has helped fuel anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
- This can be a difficult narrative to combat and it’s concerning that vaccine sceptic RFK Jr is tipped for a top health role in Trump’s administration, Keefe says.
What’s the story?
It may seem absurd that Robert F Kennedy Jr (RFK), a man who mistrusts vaccines, may soon be in charge of America’s health policy.
Yet Donald Trump has pinpointed him for the role of health secretary in his administration.
But where do RFK Jr’s controversial and more importantly, scientifically disproven, views come from?
Patrick Radden Keefe, bestselling author of Empire of Pain, says this can partially be blamed on the Opioid crisis, in a new interview on The News Agents.
How has a public health catastrophe such as the opioid crisis influenced widespread conspiracy theories that now threaten to leak into the heart of the American government?
What is the Opioid crisis?
Beginning in the 1990s and largely still having an impact today, the Opioid crisis began with the prescription of highly addictive painkillers such as Oxycontin.
While these drugs have been approved by health regulators and are prescribed by doctors, tens of thousands of people in the US die every year from overdoses in the US.
Big pharmaceutical companies were well aware of the harms of these drugs, but still made billions of dollars in profit by getting Americans hooked while burying or disguising their dangerous effects to ensure sales remained high.
A host of different big pharma companies were responsible, but one of the pioneers of the crisis was the Sackler family, who owned Purdue Pharma.
In Empire of Pain, Keefe chronicles the rise of the family’s empire, from the foundation of Purdue Pharma through to the laundering of its public reputation via philanthropy.
The Sacklers, he says, helped fuel a long running public health crisis that is still crippling the US to this day.
“We’ve had a long running public health crisis in the US that's been going on for three decades. Nobody knows exactly how many people it's killed, but estimates are now approaching three quarters of a million people dying of addiction and overdose.
“It came from a pill that was absolutely signed off on by the highest authorities in Washington that generated billions of dollars for this family.”
How has this influenced vaccine scepticism?
Keefe says: “I think vaccine scepticism for a lot of people is something that is influenced by the Opioid crisis.”
That’s because these companies essentially told the public the drugs they were selling were safe, with the full knowledge that they weren’t.
This is a much more challenging narrative to combat compared to one that Donald Trump himself is pushing out about America’s drug problem, Keefe says.
He tells Emily: “There's a long tradition in the United States of talking about illegal drugs coming in from Mexico, thinking of ourselves as this pure country that is invaded by bad forces from without.
“This is Trump's rhetoric, that the Mexicans are sending illegal drugs into the US. It's much more challenging when you're talking about a doctor-prescribed, FDA-approved drug sold by big pharma and this venerable family.”
Vaccine scepticism is not the only outcome.
“People are now describing the COVID pandemic as some kind of a scam,” Keefe notes.
What has this got to do with RFK Jr?
With RFK lined up for the top health role in Trump’s government, Keefe notes there are real concerns that scepticism around vaccines may “soon be the official policy of the Trump administration”.
While he has a long history of being against vaccines, RFK argues that he is not an “anti-vaxxer” and would not install a ban.
"If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away. People ought to have choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information," he told NBC News last week.
Instead, he has said he would assess government vaccine safety data and share his findings with the public should he become health secretary.
In 2005, he wrote an article falsely claiming autism was linked to a discontinued ingredient in vaccines.
He maintains the position that vaccines cause autism, despite a large body of scientific evidence dispelling this myth.
During the coronavirus pandemic, he called Covid jabs "a crime against humanity".
Despite all this, Keefe remains optimistic about the future of scientific integrity.
“You can rewrite reality up to a point, but reality is always going to get the last laugh.
“Even if people have kind of temporarily lost their senses, I think it's important to create a record for history,” he says.
Listen to the full discussion on The News Agents
