The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement claims to offer freedom, choice, and better health for Americans. Its tactics, policies, and bottom line suggest otherwise. MAHA's tactics are rooted in conflicts of interest and the weaponization of virtue, both of which threaten to undermine public health by prioritizing profit and ideology over science-based medicine.
“Founded by senior staffers of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) channels the unwavering energy of the health freedom movement into a powerful political force for change.”
RFK Jr. is the figurehead of the MAHA movement and he needs little introduction. Much has been written about his anti-vaccine beliefs and actions since becoming the Secretary of HHS. He’s built a network of like minded people forming alliances with activist parents, wellness influencers, and a multitude of health charlatans.
MAHA, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his established network, champion a core tenet, "health freedom." This seemingly agreeable concept forms the bedrock of their appeal, yet its practical application and underlying motivations warrant careful examination, as what it promises often diverges sharply from what it delivers.
Health Freedom
The health freedom movement is ostensibly about the freedom to make your own decisions regarding your health and well-being and that sounds really good. But, as with everything MAHA, what health freedom claims to be is diametrically opposed to what they actually work towards.
Health freedom opposes regulation and advocates for access to “non-traditional” healthcare. For example, opposing regulation for providers and allowing people to self-determine treatment without the need for a physician’s guidance.
While health freedom, as promoted by MAHA, purports to empower individual choice and reduce healthcare regulation, its actual implementation reveals a more calculated strategy. This strategy hinges on two strategic tactics, designed to undermine conventional medical wisdom and pave the way for alternative, non-science-based approaches. Let's start by unpacking the first tactic: the systematic discrediting of established healthcare experts
Discrediting and Replacing the Experts
MAHA has its own army of wellness influencers seeking to convince you that your physician and care team do not know how best to care for you, nor do they have your best interests at heart. These influencers cast doubt on the intentions and knowledge of the entire medical profession. Whether it's through implying that physicians are bought and paid for by Big Pharma or that doctors don't know anything about your body, the influencers directly benefit from sowing doubt and mistrust.
I've addressed the numerous conflicts of interest in the wellness industry, and the MAHA influencers are dripping with these same conflicts of interest. Through a combination of junk science, industry-sponsored research, and product endorsement, they've created an effective sheen of virtue and outrage.
-
Junk Science: The idea is to infiltrate the scientific literature through a predatory journal and pay to have your point of view published. When it's officially published, it starts circulating among academics, the public, and wellness influencers. The authors can then claim that they've published in the scientific literature, providing that halo of authority and knowledge. This tactic is particularly common among individuals who want to start with their favorite conclusion and work backward.
-
Industry/Company Sponsored Research: This can take two forms: finding a researcher-for-hire willing to lend their credentials for money, or running your own “tests” in-house, often lacking expertise or oversight. In practice, companies are buying “results” they can showcase in their marketing materials. The pharmaceutical industry sponsors research because it is required to do so by regulatory standards. Wellness and supplement companies are not. Wellness companies and supplement companies engage in this practice, which is particularly ironic, given all the mudslinging by MAHA about the influence of Big Pharma or Big Food and the screaming over “bought and paid for” scientists.
-
Supplement companies recruit wellness influencers: Companies actively recruit social media influencers to sponsor and partner with for product advertising. Can you imagine the outrage if a pharmaceutical company advertised on its website that they were looking for physicians to “partner” with them in promoting their product? Yet, supplement companies engage in this exact practice with wellness influencers.
Beyond attacking the credibility of individual medical professionals and promoting a network of self-serving wellness influencers, MAHA's second strategy attempts to undermine the foundation of our medical knowledge: scientific research itself. This involves a direct assault on the most respected academic journals in a dangerous push to control the narrative of what constitutes legitimate scientific inquiry.
Discrediting and Replacing the Science
RFK Jr has claimed that leading academic journals that publish rigorous health research, such as The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, are corrupt and in the pocket of Big Pharma. He’s announced his intention not to allow government officials to publish in these journals and others like them.
“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 said during an appearance on the “Ultimate Human” podcast. He also described the journals as being under the control of pharmaceutical companies.
I have reported on instances of junk science infiltrating our academic journals in the health and wellness space. To publish those articles, I needed to provide evidence of my claims and conclusions. Did RFK Jr provide any evidence for his claim that these journals are controlled by pharmaceutical companies? Absolutely not.
But it’s a dog whistle to his followers and supporters. Big Pharma = Bad. Big Wellness = Good. He's able to coast on people's gut reaction to Big Pharma, which allows him to say and do whatever he wants without explanation or evidence. Substituting vibe for evidence is a big problem.
In this new stance, RFK Jr. announced that the government will likely create its own journals. By doing so, MAHA can completely control what is published. That will lead to more publications like the thoroughly discredited and embarrassing MAHA Commission report. As with the MAHA report, Kennedy and his allies will again begin with their conclusion and work backward to generate “science” that supports their beliefs. They’ll do this through fabricated citations, blatant misinterpretations of others' work, cherry-picking, and further abuse of AI.
The MAHA Virtue Hole
For many in the MAHA leadership, “health freedom” actively undermines established medical science and discredits qualified professionals. From weaponizing wellness influencers to controlling the channels of scientific dissemination, their tactics are clear: to sow doubt and replace credible information with their own self-serving narratives.
This is not merely a philosophical debate about personal choice; it's a calculated strategy rife with blatant conflicts of interest and corruption within the MAHA movement itself. The true "success" of MAHA is not in making people healthier—an impossibility given their anti-vaccine stance and hostility towards science-based public health—but in meticulously constructing an illusion of virtue. They aim to convince the public that they are the genuine arbiters of well-being, acting with your best interests at heart. This weaponization of virtue as a marketing tool is where MAHA truly capitalizes.
It is crucial to recognize that we are not simply choosing between different approaches to health; we are substituting one "Big Industry" (Big Pharma, as they claim) for another (Big Wellness, which benefits directly from MAHA's influence) and one set of experts, credentialed scientists, for another, influencers. More perilously, MAHA substitutes feelings and vibes for reality. This path is not merely inefficient for running healthcare or a society; it is a direct route to their very destruction.
Katie Suleta, DHSc, MPH
Katie Suleta is a regional director of research in graduate medical education for HCA Healthcare. Her background is in public health, health informatics, and infectious diseases. She has an MPH from DePaul University, an MS in Health Informatics from Boston University, and has completed her Doctorate of Health Sciences at George Washington University.
