RFK Jr. And The Book That Almost Made Me Give Up On Intellectual Freedom

Well, I did it. I got a copy of this shitty piece of shitty shit from the library:

As readers of this newsletter know, I’m a pretty big proponent and defender of intellectual freedom, and I’m pretty against book banning, which I define as “Any activity that creates barriers between a book and its intended audience.”

It’s been a looooooong time since I had a personal struggle with those ethics. I mean, I had my little dalliances here and there. I remember I once “accidentally” shelved a Bill O’Reilly book in the 597s, which you may know as the reptile section. And that same day, I went and reshelved the book in its proper place.

And that’s probably been the closest I’ve come to attempting to ban a book in my 20+ years in public libraries.

But RFK’s tome of absolute shit really, really challenged this point of view for me, and I thought it might be useful to talk about why, where my boundaries are today, and to explore with you all a situation that tested my faith in intellectual freedom.

Plus, you gotta hear about what a piece of shit this book is.

A Brief Note On This Book’s Cover:

Bro, Bobby, can you PLEASE hire a graphic designer for your books? I know that kindle cover creator is tempting, but you’ve got the fundage to do a little more.

I mean, look at this shit:

This is almost identical to The Real Anthony Fauci. Same font, same sort of layout. And can we not put the Children’s Health Defense logo on the cover? Have you noticed it’s not normal for the publisher to put their logo front and center like that?

And then there’s this one:

Someone should probably tell RFK that we don’t italicize the titles of our own books ON THE COVER. But at least this one and the previous make a nice Christmas-colored pairing for the true asshole on your holiday gift list.

I did find this one, which has some variety:

Oh, whoops, I guess that’s not actually by RFK but by the worm in his brain. My mistake.

Let’s Move To The Special Thanks Section At The Beginning of the Book

This is a book that has a shitload of citations, lots of seemingly scientific stuff, and it sets you up to believe this is well-researched, starting by thanking a whole buncha doctors up top.

So let’s start with the Special Thanks. That should ease me in, right? How bad could it be?

Dr. Harvey Risch:

Here’s Harvey Risch’s book, which claims COVID vaccines did tons of harm:

From 2021–2023, the United States alone suffered 600,000 unexplained excess deaths not associated with COVID-19, while official data reveals over two million Americans became newly disabled over the same period.

Yes, millions of Americans became disabled…because of COVID. I notice you said that these two things happened during the same period, the deaths and disability numbers increasing, but you didn’t actually, completely attribute the disabilities to COVID. I wonder what could have been going on at that time that could possibly explain that…?

Dr. Robert Malone:

A COVID misinformation superstar, perhaps his most embarrassing moment was a video that linked the death of a teenaged football player to the COVID vaccine. Unfortunately, Malone didn’t do enough research to find out that even this one piece of anecdotal evidence didn’t matter because the teen in question had died in 2013. Whoops! The cease and desist letter from the dead kid’s family had him backpedaling pretty hard on that one. The list of things he’s falsely claimed about COVID treatments and vaccines is very long and really lulls you into a new dimension of stupid.

Dr. Geert Vanden Bosche:

Veterinarians who got their degrees in 1983 are doctors, but I think their relevance as infectious disease experts is about as questionable as my fashion decisions, which have seen me wearing pajama pants with Ben Cooper Halloween masks all over them OUTSIDE THE HOUSE.

Dr. Michael Yeadon:

In one of the most super-villain-y plot twists I’ve seen in this Special Thanks so far, Mikey has contributed funding to Liberty Places, a group promising to build a community on the African archipelago of Zanzibar for Europeans to escape COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Homeboy is also a possible proponent of the “COVID vaccines make you magnetic” school of bullshit.

Luc Montagnier:

I learned about something new called “Nobel Disease” while looking into this guy.

Montagnier won a Nobel Prize for the discovery of HIV, which is cool.

However, this is when Nobel Disease discovered him.

Nobel Disease is basically when someone wins the biggie, then assumes they’re the most awesome scientist of ever and start dabbling in other areas of science, even though they have no real experience. Oftentimes, this seems to involve people who make real scientific discoveries then turn around so quickly to talk eugenics that it feels like they probably had to be played off stage during their Nobel acceptance speech.

~

This is as far as I got in the Special Thanks because, well, I’m 5 scientists in, and it’s a roster of people who spread lots of lies. Not misinformation, lies.

So I decided to try a game I call RFK Dipping. Which sounds like a nightmarish sex act, and while it is a bit nightmarish, it’s decidedly unsexy.

Taking a Dip

Instead of going through RFK’s book line by line, I decided to just dip in, find a quote, and then check it out.

This is based on Bible dipping, which is a practice of treating the Bible like a sort of less-satan-y Ouija board. What you do is think about a problem you have, flip open to a random page, put your finger down, then read and interpret whatever stuff you get as the answer to your problem. Hopefully not that part where god calls a bunch of she-bears from the forest to kill kids for making fun of a dude for being bald.

Here we go, page 92 of The Real Anthony Fauci:

An October 3, 2021 study in the peer-reviewed journal BioRxiv by

Stanford and Emory University scientists suggests that antibody levels

generated by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can suffer a ten-fold decrease

seven months after the second vaccination. The scientists warn that the

precipitous drop in antibody levels will compromise the body’s ability to

defend itself against COVID-19 if the individual is exposed to COVID.

A second study published the same week confirms that the immune

protection offered by two doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine drops off

after only two months!“

Sigh.

Here’s from the FAQ for bioRxiv, Kennedy’s “peer-reviewed journal:”

Are bioRxiv preprints peer-reviewed?

Manuscripts submitted to bioRxiv are not certified by scientific peer review, edited, or typeset before being posted online.

bioRxiv is not so much a journal, it’s, well, I’ll let them explain:

Because [the peer review] process can be lengthy, authors use the bioRxiv service to make their manuscripts available as “preprints” before certification by peer review, allowing other scientists to see, discuss, and comment on the findings immediately. Readers should therefore be aware that articles on bioRxiv have not been finalized by authors, might contain errors, and report information that has not yet been accepted or endorsed in any way by the scientific or medical community.

Okay, so bioRxiv is NOT a peer-reviewed journal, and it’s not even a journal, per se, it’s more a repository that lets scientists look over and discuss the work of other scientists while it’s in the pre-peer-review stage.

The study WAS eventually published in Med, meaning at some point, it was peer-reviewed, but what’s important here is that Kennedy is cowboy-ing it up: taking studies that he thinks prove his point, before they are peer-reviewed, and saying they prove his point. And he’s straight-up lying by saying it was published in a peer-reviewed journal.

I’m not totally opposed to people putting science out there before it’s been peer reviewed, but they have to explicitly say that’s what they’re doing, and they need to acknowledge the risks and shortcomings of that approach.

In other words, don’t take preliminary results from a study and tell me, explicitly, it’s in a peer-reviewed journal when the “journal’s” website explicitly says it’s not a peer-reviewed journal.

Not misinformation. Lies.

The Fascinating Pre-Ban Material

There’s an opening section in The Real Anthony Fauci that is fascinating and infuriating.

I’ll add it here:

PUBLISHER'S NOTE 


Complex scientific and moral problems are not resolved through censorship 
of dissenting opinions, deleting content from the Internet, or defaming 
scientists and authors who present information challenging to those in 
power. Censorship leads instead to greater distrust of both government 
institutions and large corporations. 

There is no ideology or politics in pointing out the obvious: scientific 
errors and public policy errors do occur—and can have devastating 
consequences. Errors might result from flawed analysis, haste, arrogance, 
and sometimes, corruption. Whatever the cause, the solutions come from 
open-minded exploration, introspection, and constant review. 

Ideally, science and public policy are never static. They are a process, a 
collaboration, a debate and a partnership. If powerful people challenged by 
this book claim it contains misinformation, our response is simply this: Tell 
us where you believe something is incorrect, make your best arguments, 
and offer the best available support for those arguments. We encourage and 
invite dialogue, criticism, engagement—and every suggestion will be heard 
and considered. 

Since The Real Anthony Fauci is being published in the middle of 
rapidly unfolding events, and since censorship and suppression of 
information is underway, it’s best to approach this book as a living 
document. When new information emerges that can add to or improve the 
thousands of references and citations in this book, updates, additional notes, 
and new references will be provided via the QR code below, and the QR 
codes that appear throughout the book. 

We’ve published authors with views on all sides of many controversies. 
That’s what we do, because at its best, publishing is a town square that lets 
everyone be heard—and lets everyone else listen, if they choose to. As Alan 
Dershowitz says, “I always learn when I read or hear Bobby’s take.” I can go several steps further, knowing from my inside view how principled and 
careful Bobby is as an author—and how painstakingly this book was 
researched. 

We look forward to taking this important journey with you. 

Is RFK being censored?

One writer claims so:

Across the road from Harvard Yard, where are the bestselling books of Harvard alum and recent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Kennedy is now campaigning for Donald Trump to form a unity government and work to make America healthy again. Where are the books Kennedy has written challenging the Covid narratives of the Biden-Harris administration? Where are his environmental works, his family memoir, or even his beautiful children’s books? Where are the books by other authors discussing Kennedy’s accomplishments?

Kennedy has been denied interviews and debates by the mainstream media. Kennedy has been censored on social media at the behest of the Biden-Harris administration. And today the display windows and tables and shelves of our Cambridge bookstores are more Kennedy-free than CNN. No chance that anyone might stumble across a book by Kennedy, open it up and read some of Kennedy’s words. Even a table displaying books relevant to the 2024 election has no books by Kennedy. Perhaps Kennedy’s books belong on that same store’s table of banned books. As the store proudly displays books banned by someone else in some other place, they effectively ban Kennedy’s books in their own store. Cambridge bookstores are almost hermetically sealed against Kennedy’s words and his ideas.

Here are the issues with this letter:

1. It was written in 2024, and lots of bookstores don’t put, in their window displays, books that are 3 years old, like The Real Anthony Fauci.

2. RFK’s crap children’s books are not popular. His book on Robert Smalls has TWO amazon reviews. I WROTE A BOOK CALLED GHOST DICK THAT HAS SEVEN! Not stocking books that aren’t selling isn’t censorship, even by my pretty ridiculous, hardcore definition of censorship. We can’t demand that bookstores stock things they can’t sell.

3. The books discussing his accomplishments are probably in the fiction section. Sorry, but I have to get at least ONE burn in here!

4. Well, dummy, you might have to GO INSIDE the stores sometimes, and you might have to order copies. Porter Square will order his books for you and has his new product he shit out available for preorder. Harvard Bookstore has it available from their distributor, you can have it in 3 days or so. So while these books aren’t sitting in the window, the bookstores are 100% willing to sell them to you.

And what about libraries?

Here’s the record for the Fauci book on Worldcat, which shows it’s available at about 1,200 libraries worldwide.

Dr. Paul Offit’s 2022 book, Overkill: when modern medicine goes too far, is in…21 libraries. His newest book, Tell Me When It’s Over, is in 248 libraries.

Dr. Offit is often posed as RFK’s nemesis, by RFK, in The Real Anthony Fauci. Dr. Offit is pro-vaccine, and he served on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He’s an expert on immunizations and infectious disease, and his work on the rotavirus vaccine has saved millions of lives.

Offit is kind of the Batman to RFK’s Joker. Wait, no, let’s not credit RFK with being as cool as Joker. Let’s make him…The Ten-Eyed Man, who sees through his fingertips and that’s somehow a superpower.

Offit’s books, which represent the opposite of RFK’s viewpoints, are in about 1/6th the libraries that The Real Anthony Fauci is.

Let’s just be clear: I don’t see any evidence of RFK’s book being banned or otherwise challenged, and I have to deeply, deeply question the validity of the assertion that it’s being banned, especially because it’s an assertion contained in the book, meaning it was being made pre-publication, pre-printing, and BEFORE THE BOOK WAS RELEASED.

Realistically, this is just a ploy, a way of making it seem like anyone who doesn’t put this book in their store or library is a shithead book banner, but, guys, it doesn’t work like that. I can’t just accuse libraries of not stocking Ghost Dick of censoring it.

Or can I…?

Now, let’s just talk briefly about the QR code, the one that leads to updates and corrections because, as the book says, this should be thought of as a living document, and some of this is emerging science. Fair enough!

The QR code leads to a sales page for the book. Deep in the links below is where you’ll find the updates.

There are no updates.

There are news pieces unrelated to the book and that do not reference the book, but there are no updates along the lines of revising or adding data or addressing specific sections of the book.

This is a sham. It’s creating the appearance of accuracy and interest in being above board and scientifically accurate, when the reality is that just by creating this, they’re creating the illusion that this is a “living document” and building in an excuse for getting things wrong.

Even if this were followed through on, I wouldn’t like it. There’s a major difference between what’s there, in print, contained in covers on the library’s shelf and what’s on the internet a few clicks deep, past the sales pitch, past the section on banning.

Why This Book Brought Me To The Brink of Banning It Myself

I think of myself as fairly allowing of bad things. But RFK’s book pushed me too far.

Why?

I started thinking about it like this: If we had a book about space on the shelves, and if that book said Pluto is a planet, that book would have information that is objectively incorrect. As much as I love that lil guy, floating all cute out there in space, I can’t, in good conscience, hand that book to someone trying to learn about astronomy.

RFK’s book is equally, if not more, incorrect about vaccines, virology, and medicine.

So, why should we keep something on the shelves if it’s THAT wrong?

I Made a Mistake

I asked librarians of reddit.

Here’s what I said:

The Arguments For Keeping a Factually Inaccurate Book in the Library

Howdy,

I'm a librarian, have been one for some time.

I want to start with this: I am not banning a book. I am not censoring a book, I am not relocating a book, I am not burning a book, I'm not even slipping in a sheet of paper that points out the many factual errors in a book. I'm not sending a polite email asking for the book's removal. I am taking NO action against the book beyond posting here.

I say all that because I'm personally struggling with the ethics of having a book in the collection, but I want to be clear: This is a personal struggle, and I'm looking to hear the best arguments in favor of misinformation's place in a library collection. So, please, go easy on me. I don't need to be shouted at, I'm on the side of intellectual freedom, I think I'm looking to be talked off the ledge a bit.

I'm specifically talking about the book The Real Anthony Fauci by RFK Jr. I think it's relevant because I'm not talking about an idea I disagree with or a political issue, I'm talking about the multiple, multiple factual errors in the book. This podcast from Malcolm Gladwell goes into it nicely, I think: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/the-rfk-jr-problem

It feels a bit to me like this is closer to retaining, say, a book that calls Pluto a planet than it would be to retaining a book that shares opinions and political points of view, or even researched, fringe claims on things that are as-of-yet- unproven.

Keeping in mind that we are a popular collection, public library, not a research institution, the material does not have any archival value for us (it'll be weeded when nobody's reading it anymore).

Normally, my arguments for retaining materials like this are:

• If the public wants to read it, they have the right to (this is probably the most valid reason in this case, IMO).

• Because of RFK's position in the government, it's arguably a relevant material, regardless of the contents.

• It's important that people who do not agree with RFK and want to investigate his beliefs have access to this material.

• It's not my place to say which materials are right and which are wrong, it's my place to provide access to desired materials, allowing readers to make their own choices.

• Getting rid of this material would probably make it seem like we were suppressing the information, making it more desirable as well as damaging the library's reputation as a neutral provider of information.

• I am a believer in the argument that it's hard for me to fight to retain materials today if I then turn around and remove materials tomorrow.

However, I have some special considerations in this case:

• The book presents health information that, if followed, could be genuinely harmful. This is beyond the level of, say, an ill-advised diet or stupid influencer wellness practice.

• It is just, straight-up, factually inaccurate. If a book of this nature is factually inaccurate, does it retain any value? In other words, if a pharmaceutical reference was scientifically, objectively wrong, it would not hold any value, and would in fact be working against the best interests of the community.

So...maybe I'm asking this: What do you tell yourself when it comes to retaining materials like this?

What is the value of retaining misinformation?

~

I want to be fair to responders: I set them up with an impossible task: Defend this pile of shit, and don’t use any of the defenses I’ve already listed.

Because, ultimately, the listed defenses I made are the ones I came to believe and stand by:

• If the public wants to read it, they have the right to

• Because of RFK's position in the government, it's arguably a relevant material, regardless of the contents

• It's important that people who do not agree with RFK and want to investigate his beliefs have access to this material

• Getting rid of this material would probably make it seem like we were suppressing the information, making it more desirable as well as damaging the library's reputation as a neutral provider of information

Why I Hate This Guy So Much

I have to be honest, I’ve been surprised at my own hatred for the gibbering pile of beef jerky that is RFK, and it warranted some investigation. A swim in Lake Me. Which I do not recommend anyone else even dipping a toe into, depression emerges from that like like an improperly chained-down Jason Voorhees popping out of Crystal Lake, and depression’s machete, while not as physically devastating, is a piece of hardware to be reckoned with.

I think the closest I’ve come to reconciling with RFK Jr. in my mind is in thinking that he may be horribly misguided and attempting to do the right thing. In my most sunshine-y, probably a little drunk moments, I guess I could sort of invent enough of a fiction in this world to see how someone like him might be doing horrible, irreparable harm that he thinks is actually good.

But…I think there’s a level of harm that outweighs even the best of intentions.

And I think that when one is in a position of immense power, your responsibility to do what’s right, the expectation that you’ll do what’s right, is different. You NEED to double-check yourself. You NEED to surround yourself with people who question you and your choices. You need to constantly ask yourself questions like, “If I’m wrong, who will be hurt by this, and how badly?”

You need to ask whether you’re making the best decisions given the information available at the time.

I don’t think RFK Jr. does that. Ever. I think he has unchanging, rigid beliefs, and he will ignore anything that does not support those beliefs.

I don’t think he’s intellectually curious. I don’t think he’s smart, nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is, which is the most dangerous type of denial.

~

I think ALL THE TIME about this section from a comic called Atomic Robo:

I’ll make it quick:

Robo is a robot. Duh. He encounters an artificial intelligence that has, it turns out, been collecting materials and doing weird machinations in order to create a huge spaceship so that it can explore the universe. Downside: launching the ship will destroy Earth.

The AI wants Robo to accompany him, and this is Robo’s reaction:

By “them” Robo means “us,” as in you and me.

All the time, all the power, all the influence, all the technology, all the resources anyone could ever hope to have, more than anyone has ever possessed, and this asshole AI didn’t do a thing to help anyone but himself. He could have easily prevented wars, shielded people from suffering. It wouldn’t have cost but a fraction of the resources he has, wouldn’t have harmed his plans in the slightest.

And that’s why RFK Jr. is a piece of shit.

What Robo points out, and what really bothers me, is that RFK isn’t just doing a shitty job, he’s making things worse when he could just as easily be helping people. It wouldn’t cost him anything to actually attempt to improve the lives of Americans.

He has access to incredible resources, power, technology, and research. He can make sweeping, positive changes to the medical system, which we all are tired of. There has never been a time in human history when we’ve had more, better technology and resources to create positive change.

He could do things in the name of MAHA and supporting Trump while still making positive, substantive change. His influence could be incredible.

And instead, he’s making it harder to get proven vaccines, advocating for raw milk, suggesting we create a registry of people with autism that he’s going to use to…I don’t even know.

It’s not just about being ineffective, it’s about actively making things worse.

And it’s about squandering opportunities. Backpedaling.

We could be doing so much, so many good things. We’re on the precipice of an AI revolution that has the potential to boost modern medicine, crunch data, and help us stay healthier longer. We are single-digit years away from technological leaps accelerating and creating a completely new world of possibilities.

And instead, kids are dying from measles, an illness that is completely preventable and has been for 60 years.

Their deaths are unnecessary. They serve no purpose. I guess if you’re a God person and you think God has a plan, I’d encourage you to shut the fuck up should you ever meet the parents of a child who died in horrible pain from a preventable disease unless you’re up for getting a very deserved punch in the mouth that anyone present will agree you asked for.

Hey, fair’s fair: if their dead kid is part of the plan, I guess you taking a shot to the mouth was too, eh? Maybe reflect on that and what God’s intentions were with that one.

Not only is RFK making things worse, he’s swaying public opinion of middle-of-the-road people who will say, “Well, hang on, I like that RFK is going against these processed food companies and so on.” These are people who are being manipulated into thinking that this is a zero sum game, that it wouldn’t be possible to make progress towards healthier foods while also, I don’t know, preventing children from dying of measles.

And they’re not seeing that the big picture here is that we CAN have both, it’s not RFK sacrificing one to get the other: He’s sacrificing one to cover for what he actually wants to do.

~

I don’t know what RFK’s motives are, and I don’t think it’s relevant.

RFK Jr. will go down in history as being a net negative for human health. I guarantee that. He will create vaccine hesitancy that will outlive him, and illness and death that will continue long after he’s gone himself.

Kids will be dying of measles long after RFK is gone. Long after he can be held accountable.

I’m not a man of faith. But I do sometimes wish that hell was real. Because there are some people who deserve to rent a real shitty garden-level apartment there for eternity.

What Now?

Look, here’s where we end up: I hate the man, the book is abhorrent, and it’s still in my library. I’ve made zero attempt to ban or remove it or to even relocate it to another part of the collection.

It does, to an extent, go against my personal and professional beliefs to shelve it. And that’s why it’s incredibly important that the library isn’t just me and what I think. It’s a huge group of people who all have varying points of view and ideas.

Others all probably have their books that really set them off, and when they present them, I can say, “Hey, you should keep it for the following reasons…”

I think the best thing for me to do is to write stupid newsletters, like this one, and let people know that this book sucks. Fight bad information with good information + poop jokes.

I think looking through the book myself has been a useful activity. I think it has shown me the extent to which it’s false, and it has prepared me to make the arguments against its “findings.”

If you’d like, if you think it would help, email your representatives by following the steps outlined in this video’s description.

I’m personally not a believer in this sort of thing. Because I believe our system is fundamentally broken. It would have to be for RFK Jr. to be where he is today.

Use your local library. Vote in favor of your local library. Vote for candidates who support your library. Run for your library board if you can, and if you can’t, try and keep up with what they’re doing. Ask your city council candidates about the library before you vote for them. Ask your mayoral candidates.

Even if you hate me and everything I’ve said here, hey, you’ve got to admit that libraries are doing a damn good job keeping the absolute horseshit you like on the shelves, and I personally haven’t lifted a censoring finger.

And fuck RFK Jr. Fuck him for his misinformation, for the piles of corpses he’ll leave in his wake, and especially fuck him for making it seem like his voice is being censored. Playing that game is just such a dickhead move, I can’t even.