Nature went to a health summit starring RFK and JD Vance

Washington, DC

Last week, social media influencers and anti-aging entrepreneurs met with top US government officials, including the head of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), at an exclusive event steps from the White House. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the future of healthcare in the United States.

Organizers called it a MAHA summit, referring to the US Secretary of Health. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.The signature movement is “Make America Healthy Again.” Among the participants were Kennedy, US Vice President J.D. Vance, NIH Director Jayanta BhattacharyaUS Food and Drug Administration chief Marty Macari; and food activist Vani Hari, who blogs as Food Babe. Sessions at the summit, which Nature visited, covered a wide range of health-related topics, including psychedelics, brain implants And anti-aging therapy. Academic researchers or doctors were not among the speakers at the sessions, which were peppered with critical comments about the medical establishment.

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The conference demonstrated the impact of the MAHA movement. whose supporters say there is an epidemic of chronic disease in the United States which they blame in part for corruption in the food and pharmaceutical industries. To combat this epidemic, advocates advocate lifestyle choices such as improving sleep and taking nutritional supplements.

The movement quickly grew from a loose network of Kennedy supporters into a political force that Vance, speaking at the summit, called “an important part of our success in Washington.” The event also included representatives from major corporations such as Walmart and Google, as well as biotech firms such as Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, New York.

“We had nothing like this” Robert Redfieldwho headed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2018 to 2021, during the first term of US President Donald Trump, said Nature at the summit. “Bobby [Kennedy] forced the industry to come to the negotiating table with him.”

Warm praise

Several officials from Kennedy's Department of Health and Human Services spoke at the nearly eight-hour summit. Among them was Bhattacharya, who said that “the MAHA movement is an absolutely incredible thing for me.” He added: “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this movement to happen.”

Other speakers included mixed martial arts promoter Dana White and actor and comedian Russell Brand. Attendees also heard health advice from Brian Johnson, a Silicon Valley multimillionaire known for his anti-aging “biologics” such as a plasma transfusion from his teenage son, and his view that his generation may be the first to never die.

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Throughout the event, speakers criticized established scientific and medical institutions. Both are frequent targets of Kennedy, who founded Children's Health Defense, a Franklin Lakes, New Jersey-based nonprofit known for its anti-vaccine advocacy. Among those speakers was Bhattacharya, who said the NIH, the world's largest funder of biomedical research, has focused too much on small scientific steps instead of “disruptive” or “innovative” research.

“What puts people's lives at risk is incremental research,” Bhattacharya said. “All this does is promote the careers of the researchers who do it. The result is publications that are not used or reproduced.”

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Macarius denounced the “groupthink that misleads us time and time again,” citing public health advice against eating saturated fat as an example. (Kennedy suggested that saturated fat is part of a healthy diet; the U.S. government has recommended limiting saturated fat intake for decades.) “We've been wrong for 50 years that saturated fat causes heart disease,” Makary said. “This is a war we are going to end.”