Sen. Bill Cassidy, La.-R
By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy and I have never met, but we are contemporaries (I’m five years his junior). Our medical careers have seen tremendous advances regarding the public health. We have watched HIV go from a death sentence to a disease that can often be managed with a single tablet. We have seen smoking rates plummet by more than 50 percent. Lung cancer rates and cardiovascular disease rates have fallen precipitously. Cancer death rates have dropped by roughly a third.
At our graduation from medical school, we took a sacred oath pledging to care for our patients ethically, to offer cure when possible and comfort at the end of life. Cassidy’s medical career seems exemplary. As a physician in Louisiana, he helped establish a free clinic in Baton Rouge. When he embarked on a political career in 2006, he was, I suspect, motivated by the same benevolent impulses that led him to medicine.
Politics, unfortunately, is a fickle and contorting business. Cassidy, a Republican, has done back flips in his relationship with Donald Trump. After courageously voting to impeach him after January 6th, he has shrunk into the toady Trump demands. Still, I am confident he cares about his constituents and his country. He has accepted his humiliation by Trump as the price of remaining in his Senate seat where he can continue to do good work.
The dilemma of being a physician and a senator is that Cassidy has taken two weighty oaths, one to his country and one to his patients. We have watched him struggle with the pull of these oaths as he agonized about whether to confirm Kennedy. He attempted to assuage his conscience by extracting a series of promises during his confirmation process, both in private conversations and during the public hearings. But since his confirmation, Kennedy has flouted Cassidy again and again. In a private conversation Cassidy said Kennedy assured him that he would make no changes in the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Kennedy denies making this promise). In June, Kennedy purged the committee of all 17 members, replacing them with seven members, several of whom are vaccine skeptics.
In the hearings Cassidy asked Kennedy to state unequivocally that vaccines do not cause autism. He refused to do so. Instead, in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Kennedy claimed without evidence that the Hepatitis B vaccine was linked to autism in a study that the CDC had suppressed.
Antoine Bechamp
None of this should come as a surprise. Kennedy’s scientific views are antediluvian. He does not believe in modern germ theory. Let me repeat that. The current occupant of America’s most powerful public health agency, responsible for protecting and promoting the health of more than 340 million people, doesn’t subscribe to one of the foundational principles of modern medicine. He made this no secret. Cassidy had to know this before confirming him. In Kennedy’s 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci, he rejects germ theory for a discredited theory from 19th century scientist Antoine Bechamp called terrain theory. Bechamp proposed that disease arises from the body’s internal environment (terrain) and not from external pathogens. This theory has been discredited so completely that it’s not taught in medical school. In my 36 years as a physician, I had never heard of it until I read about Kennedy.
Cassidy and I trained at a time when it was common for doctors to do our own gram stains. We collected a sample from a hospitalized patient, placed it on a slide and stained it. Then we looked through a microscope to identify the offending organism. If we saw one, we could then treat our patient with an antibiotic specific to that pathogen. Often, we would then see our patient recover, sometimes miraculously. No physician who has cured a patient that way would be tempted to waste time with Bechamps’ bogus idea.
Cassidy brought Kennedy back to the hearing room on Sept. 4 to express his displeasure. He and the Democrats on the committee criticized him harshly. Kennedy was castigated for his claim that mRNA vaccines were not effective (he cancelled nearly $500 million in research funding), despite estimates they saved more than two million American lives and prevented many millions more hospitalizations. He would not answer Sen. John Warners’ question about how many Americans died of COVID (The CDC estimates approximately 1.2 million).
Kennedy claimed he could not trust the CDC’s COVID mortality data. But I don’t have to rely on figures. I lost several friends and patients to COVID. The first death in 2020 was a woman in her 50s who was still teaching. I have close colleagues who worked in the ICU during the pandemic and saw many needless deaths in unvaccinated patients. Overall, it is estimated that more than 200,000 lives could have been saved if unvaccinated people would have taken the vaccine.
Both of Cassidy’s oaths propel him to remedy the danger he has inflicted on America. He knew Kennedy was unqualified. He allowed a naïve hope and empty promises to sway him. Imagine if Kamala Harris had won the election and had offered Kennedy up as the HHS nominee. The nomination would have been dead on arrival. Cassidy compromised his oath to his country and to his patients to protect his seat.
He has three choices: convince Trump to fire Kennedy, lead a successful impeachment of the secretary, or relinquish his medical license.
A version of this column appeared in the September 18th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.
RFK Jr., who apparently found one of his Dad’s old ties in the attic.
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Before I had read the text, and had just seen Paul’s headline, containing “Cassidy” and “RFK Jr.,” I immediately thought it would be fun to rewrite it to say, “Bill Cassidy and the Sundown Kid.”
Because, you know, it is obviously Bobby Jr.’s ambition to cause the sun to set on public health in America. (Not a conscious ambition; I suspect he’s incapable of understanding the consequences of his obsessions.)
But I held back, given the deadly serious topic. This errant scion of a great family is determined on a course that could kill millions of Americans, at the very time that his boss is dismantling government aid to deal with public health (while dismantling the country and its government in general, and rebuilding the White House to suit his whims).
But as usual, I don’t blame Trump. I blame the madness that has come over most of the American electorate. Perhaps there’s an virus that has already swept the country undetected, destroying American’s ability to reason. We can’t blame Trump or RFK Jr. for that; they are merely a symptom of the disease…
I think it is fair for doctors and researchers to continuously test and retest theories related to medicine and healthcare. SOMETHING caused the rise of autism in this country.
One of the best things Kennedy has said he will try to do is remove commercials for prescription drugs from television. The US and New Zealand are the only countries that allow it and the effect it has had on media companies who are beholden to Big Pharma cannot be ignored. I hope he is successful in making that happen but I expect the media and Big Pharma to spend a lot of money trying to scare people into thinking we need ads for erectile dysfunction or ozempic blasting across the screen every few minutes.
Was the COVID vaccine a good thing? Probably. Did it save as many people as the CDC claims – very difficult to prove something didn’t happen. The performance of government at all levels during COVID was a combination of hysterical stupidity (closing schools and businesses, arbitrary 6 foot distancing, etc.) and questionable “science”. Remember the Johnson and Johnson vaccine that they pulled? How about the Astra Zeneca vaccine that was also pulled due to a rise in blood clots? Those were produced by supposed medical professionals.
Doctors aren’t infallible. Johns Hopkins Medicine estimates that 250,000 people die annually in the United States due to medical errors. That’s SIX times as many as people who die from car crashes. I think it is in everyone’s best interest to have as much transparency, discussion, and research as possible when it comes to healthcare. While Dr. DeMarco lauds reduced cancer deaths, he doesn’t mention any of the negative health trends – increased obesity (why are our poor people the heaviest in the world?), increased use of drugs for depression, anxiety, and other mental conditions.
Do we think Trump’s initiative to eliminate the use of SNAP funds on junk food and soda is a good thing from a national health perspective? I do. It certainly will do more than Michelle Obama’s efforts to remove candy from school snack machines.
As with everything, I am taking a wait and see attitude. Let’s see what happens when more research is performed in the areas of autism and vaccines.
“Do we think Trump’s initiative to eliminate the use of SNAP funds on junk food and soda is a good thing from a national health perspective? I do. It certainly will do more than Michelle Obama’s efforts to remove candy from school snack machines.”
let’s correct a few things from Doug’s post.
1) Michelle Obama’s effort was directed at junk food marketing in schools. The focus was that companies that made junk food and sugar sodas could not advertise their products in schools. (Doug said in another post he wanted pharma ads banned. But apparently marketing junk food in school to kids is ok).
2) The effort didn’t “ban” junk food. It said if candy bars and such were sold in schools they had to have a minimal nutritional value. It would have to have a limit on sugar, salt, and limit other additives.
3) Her focus was to revise the guidelines to remove excessive salt and sugar from school meals, and
4) empower schools receiving USDA funds for school lunch and breakfast programs to partner with local farms in their areas to provide vegetables to the schools as chosen by local officials, instead of the federal government picking the sources of the vegetables.
Republicans attacked her viciously for this effort. Fox News ran a complete “Quit telling our kids what to eat” campaign.
Sean Hannity famously had a junk food prop on one of his shows saying the federal government had no role in what Americans choose to eat. Laura Ingraham proclaimed that parents shouldn’t allow Michelle Obama to make their food choices.
All of these people who hated Michelle Obama for her effort have enthusiastically embraced Kennedy’s effort to change school lunch programs- and of course Kennedy has went much further than school lunch programs.
As a reminder, in 2018, the Trump administration terminated the rules that required lower sugar and salt content in school lunch and breakfast meals. …
I edited the end of that…
One thing Kennedy has been able to accomplish
Many states are partnering together to develop their own medical, vaccine and health guidelines advisors and some insurance companies are starting to take notice of them instead of relying on the federal government.
They don’t trust Kennedy as far as they could drop kick a cement block. That’s a good thing with a fool like Kennedy involved.
So, we look to a more fragmented system after kennedy is done- where many states ignore him altogether along with the CDC- and states like California, New York, Mass, Oregon, Washington partner together to create their own health guidelines and approval processes.
I watched the Senate hearing that had RFKJr on the hot seat. Kennedy was combative. Near the end of the hearing, Cassidy praised the Hepatitis B vaccine. But nothing’s gonna happen with Cassidy.
I used AI to dig into RFKJr’s bias. His nonprofit foundation funded the widely panned “Plandemic” about COVID-19.
I’ve been using the Android app, 5 Calls, to call Joe Wilson (T-SC2), Lindsey Graham (T-SC), and Tim Scott (T-SC). 5 Calls provides issues to call about with a call script to use.
One of the issues was the nomination of Casey Means as Surgeon. She let her medical license lapse; she shares the same beliefs as Kennedy. Instead of using the 5 Calls script, I closed with “CAUTION: The Surgeon General could be hazardous to your health.”
During an August 2024 interview on “Meet the Press”, Graham berated Liz Cheney for urging voters to vote for Kamala Harris. He said “Why the hell would she vote for Harris?” I would’ve saud that Cheney chose country over party.
None of those actions will change anything. You could call Joe Wilson or Graham’s office 9,000 times a day and they’d have you arrested before they heard you.
They don’t give a damn if you vote for them or against them. They know they win no matter what.
They take orders from one man- Donald Trump.
I don’t know that that’s true. I haven’t had occasion to reach out to Graham since he went mad in 2016, but he was always accessible before. I reached out to him before that on a matter my church was concerned about, and his office did what it could.
I’ve never reached out to Joe that way, but I’m pretty sure he would be responsive.
Joe follows the formula he inherited from his predecessor in that seat, Floyd Spence: It’s all about constituent service. Spence, by the way, seemed to have copied that approach from Strom Thurmond.
After his early days, when he was the loud, active segregationist, Strom calmed down and decided his goal wasn’t to achieve any particular aims for the country, good or bad. He wanted to remain a U.S. senator, and he saw constituent service as the means. From sending cards of congratulations to high school graduates to helping folks with a VA problem, he was there to help. And it didn’t matter at all whether you were black or white. I’ve run across a number of black South Carolinians who were deeply grateful for some help he had extended.
Meanwhile, he generally kept a low profile on policy debates.
Floyd and Joe have followed that course, with only occasional lapses — like that time Joe drew attention with his “You lie!” moment. But that was a VERY inconsistent thing for him to do. You may have noticed he’s been very quiet since then…
Joe or Lindsey’s staff will help you apply for some government benefit or get Social Security to call you back. An AI Bot could do as good 60% of the time – if it worked at all.
They are not going to listen or be responsive if you are asking them to do anything Donald Trump doesn’t approve of
if they know you aren’t voting for supporting Trump, they couldn’t care less about your view or what’s on your mind.
First, I doubt that.
Second, why would that come up?
Numerous groups out there encourage (send you emails, etc) requesting you call your Congressperson’s office asking them to oppose something Trump is doing.
If someone actually does that, they won’t be received happily.
and if you run into Joe personally- as I have done several times- and engage him in specifics about something Trump is wanting to do that you disagree with, you will not receive a receptive ear – at all.
Well, my interactions with Joe pretty much all precede Trump as a political fiture. About the only time I remember seeing him since leaving the paper in 2009 was when he was so kind as to attend my father’s funeral in 2021. And he didn’t come to that because of me; he had a lot of respect for my Dad personally. The very first conversation I ever had with Joe was back when he was in the S.C. (not the U.S.) House. I think it was the first year (1987) that I was here as The State’s governmental affairs editor. In fact, I think it was my very first visit to the State House to see the place where the reporters I supervised did so much of their work.
I was introduced to him, and the first words out of his mouth were to praise the job my Dad did in his retirement from the Navy, running the Navy JROTC program at Brookland-Cayce High School. My Dad independently verified to me how faithfully Joe would attend the ROTC events at the school.
But I digress.
In the political sphere, I have very often found occasion to criticize Joe. And while my comments may focus upon this or that recent incident involving him, my overall complaint about Joe is this: while he is a devoted servant to his constituents, I want a representative who is engaged in the issues that face the NATION. And Joe is not a significant figure on that front. I think he has always kept a fairly low profile, such reacting quietly to whatever comes up as he believes a conservative Republican should do.
Mind you, I think Joe’s own definition of “conservative Republican” is more or less the same as mine — somewhere between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. And I applaud him for that…
And I’ve felt like Joe has been feeling out of place in the Republican caucus in the last decade-and-a-half. I wrote a blog post back in 2013, well before Trump, contrasting the Wilson approach to the Tea Party approach, specifically to that voiced by Mick Mulvaney (who would later enter Trump’s orbit when his new master got bored to with failed casinos, reality TV and professional wrestling and decided to enter politics).
I think Joe feels even more out of place now, and probably doesn’t want to say anything about Trump if he’s not forced to…
I wonder if any of our “elite” legal minds could weigh in…
Today (Tuesday), Conservative Republican AG Ken Paxton who appears to have committed mortgage fraud that is being ignored by the Trump administration and Conservatives in general because they don’t give a damn about such things, filed a lawsuit in a very conservative, rural eastern Texas district against the owners of Tylenol solely based on Robert Kennedy Jr and Donald Trump statements linking Tylenol with autism.
of course, no such evidence actually exists.
Paxton hired an attorney to help file the suit who has worked on a similar suit that was recently tossed by a Federal Judge for lack of evidence and misrepresentation of evidence. That suit also produced a plaintiff witness that admitted to taking $150,000 funding by interests against Tylenol.
our esteemed, and laughable legal system at work.
Of note: Karl Rove skewered Ken Paxton on Fox News this week referring to Ken’s numerous girlfriends and mistresses (yes, he used those terms on Fox) – all things that those “Good Christian Conservatives” don’t give a damn about when it’s one of their own.
I edited Barry’s comment slightly.