My esteemed colleague James Allan once wrote in The Spectator Australia that he could have voted for the Kennedy Democrats. Like most things Jim says or writes, it is astute. It was John F. Kennedy who, at his inauguration, exhorted his fellow Americans to, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ Can you imagine any of today’s Democratic party elite making such a patriotic statement?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, addressing the huge rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden a couple of weeks before the presidential election, underlined how it wasn’t he who left the Democrats, but that the Democrats who had left him. It was once the party of individual freedoms that stood up for the little guy against entrenched and powerful interests. One man who epitomised this was RFK Jr’s father, Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy Sr. Indeed, the parallels between father and son are remarkable.

After helping his older brother win the presidential election in 1960, JFK nominated Bobby to be his attorney general. While Bobby graduated with a law degree, he never practised law, leading to his opponents in politics, the establishment and the media, to state that he was unqualified and inexperienced for the role. However, his nomination was confirmed by the Senate and, as attorney general, he proceeded to take on arguably the biggest and most powerful vested interest of all: organised crime – and did so successfully. He was instrumental in attacking juvenile delinquency, ending segregation in educational institutions and bringing an end to Jim Crow laws, often in the face of opposition from those within his own party.

Since President-elect Trump nominated RFK Jr to be Secretary for Health and Human Services, his opponents have called him unqualified, inexperienced and dangerous. CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta fulminated, ‘I can’t think of any single individual who would be more damaging to public health than RFK’.

RFK Jr may not be a doctor or a scientist, but you don’t need to be either to read data. And, as far as America is concerned, the data is damning.

Three-quarters of American adults are overweight or obese, as are 50 per cent of children. Compare that with Japan, where only 3 per cent of children are obese.

RFK Jr has alerted Americans to the dramatic proliferation in adult and juvenile diabetes, neurological diseases and cancer diagnoses. He attributes these shocking outcomes in part to ultra-processed foods with chemicals, many of which are banned in Europe. One of these is a yellow dye called tartrazine, which, as he pointed out, was originally made from the sludge that is left over when coal is turned into coke for blast furnaces. In his words, ‘If we took all of these chemicals out, our nation would get healthier immediately. We’d have fewer sick days, we’d have better focus, we’d have less anxiety. Our kids would learn more easily. We’d lose weight. We’d have more energy. We’d have fewer tumours and longer lives.’

RFK Jr is a fitness fanatic. At 70 years of age has the body of a footballer in his prime. So, by wanting to take chemicals out of food and telling people to get more exercise he is a threat to public health? Most likely he is a threat to food and drug company profits. They get rich as Americans get sick.

The health establishment also takes aim at RFK Jr because he has advocated for taking fluoride out of drinking water. However, a recent report published by the US National Toxicology Program found that there may indeed be a link between fluoride and reduced IQ in children. Consequently, a federal judge in September ruled that the US Environmental Protection Agency must take steps to investigate further.

In terms of the capture of regulatory agencies by large corporations, Kennedy himself noted that 75 per cent of FDA funding comes from big pharmaceutical companies, leading to biased research outcomes. All this came to the fore during the Covid years, when Anthony Fauci et al. led a massive suppression of scientific debate and research, enforcing social distancing, lockdowns and mask mandates with little evidence in support, and vaccines were approved in record time with little to no testing when compared to other vaccines.

Speaking of which, the medical establishment attacks RFK Jr about his claims on some childhood vaccines, yet it has been reported that vaccine manufacturers since 1986 in the US have been immune from liability claims and, as a result, almost no vaccines on the child vaccination schedule have been tested against a proper placebo.

This comes as no surprise since pharmaceutical companies have been fined billions of dollars in the US and Europe over the years for criminal conduct, including bribery.

In fact, RFK Jr has no intention of prohibiting vaccines, saying, ‘If you want to take a vaccine, you ought to be able to take it. We believe in free choice in this country. You ought to know the risks and benefits of everything you take.’

As Jay Bhattacharya wrote, RFK Jr plans to confront the veil of secrecy and dishonesty that inhibits transparency and integrity in public health and medicine. He intends to strengthen checks and balances in government health bureaucracies to confront groupthink and undue corporate influence – with honest scientists and doctors free from industry funding.

Most importantly, he is seeking to ensure open public debate in medicine, recognising that science is incompatible with censorship. Such sentiments are echoed by many Americans.

Readers will recall that Bobby Sr was tragically assassinated in June 1968. At his funeral, his brother, Edward (Ted) Kennedy, stated that Bobby Sr should be ‘remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. He said many times: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”’

On this score, it seems RFK Jr is following in his father’s footsteps, taking on the mantle to tackle concentrated power and expose corruption.