In a bold move, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Secretary, is demanding mandatory nutrition education in American medical schools. Threatening to pull federal funding from institutions that don’t comply, he is directly challenging the pharma industry’s stranglehold on a healthcare system that profits by treating symptoms while ignoring the root causes of diseases. For more than a century now, medical education has churned out doctors with little or no knowledge of nutrition, with the result that patients become trapped in an endless cycle of dependency on pharmaceutical drugs. If successful, Kennedy’s initiative could potentially be the first step toward dismantling this corrupt paradigm.

As things currently stand, most trainee doctors receive little or no education in nutrition. An academic survey published in 2010 found that medical students in the United States receive an average of only 19.6 hours of nutritional education throughout four years of training. This effectively corresponds to less than one percent of their total estimated lecture hours. Even more worryingly, of the 109 medical schools that took part in the survey, four offered only optional nutritional instruction, one reported it did not offer any such tuition, and the respondent for one apparently couldn’t supply an answer to the question.

Commenting on this situation at a recent event in North Carolina, Kennedy made clear that he understood the problem. “There’s almost no medical schools that have nutrition courses,” he said, adding that medical students are “taught how to treat illnesses with drugs but not how to treat them with food or to keep people healthy so they don’t need the drugs.” Reports from insiders suggest Kennedy is committed to drastically lowering chronic disease rates, including ending childhood chronic diseases, as well as engaging in fresh thinking on nutrition and the over-reliance on drug treatment.

Time to Turn On the Light

The case for providing proper nutritional education in medical schools is inescapable. Even the infamously pro-pharma Rockefeller Foundation now recognizes that the United States spends around $1.1 trillion per year treating chronic, diet-related diseases – an amount essentially equal to the money Americans pay for their food. With the evidence also growing that daily use of nutritional supplements can reduce healthcare costs, the time to act has come.

Research clearly shows that plant-based diets could help reduce the global burden of diabetes, for example, yet doctors continue to focus on prescribing drugs rather than promoting meal plans. The reason for this, of course, is that the pharma industry helps fund medical schools, sponsors medical conferences, and lobbies politicians to keep nutrition sidelined. The greatest fear of pharma executives and the industry’s largest shareholders is that empowered, properly educated doctors might start prescribing fruit, vegetables, and nutritional supplements, thus threatening the viability of the $1.5 trillion-a-year global drug market. Kennedy’s threat to withhold funding is thus a rare flex of governmental muscle in this area, essentially forcing American medical schools to prioritize patients over pharma profits.

But while the stakes couldn’t be higher, the road ahead won’t be easy. Pharma’s influence runs deep, with many doctors and politicians on its payroll. Nevertheless, Kennedy’s willingness to play hardball – using federal funding as leverage – signals a rare chance for change. If he succeeds, we might finally see the beginnings of a healthcare system that values health over corporate greed. Until then, the pharma industry will be fighting to keep doctors in the dark and patients on their drugs. It’s time to turn on the light.

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from DRHF

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