Opposition to cancer is an easy sell for most people. Sort of like being against Hitler. And yet, during his first administration, Trump reportedly said that “Hitler did some good things.” Now, his administration seems to be extending this gentle attitude of tolerance to cancer, as well.
Earlier this month, the Center for Disease Control’s vaccine advisers, hand-picked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., voted to remove a long-established recommendation that all newborns receive the Hepatitis B vaccine. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies get this vaccine within 24 hours. The CDC’s advisory now, nonsensically, suggests delaying it by two months, a suggestion that has no medical justification and is projected to result in some 300 liver cancer cases per year, and 480 deaths per year. The survival rate for liver cancer is very low: only about 15 percent in the United States.
Also this month, the Trump Administration filed a brief supporting Monsanto in its attempt to get the Supreme Court to shield it from liability over cancer allegedly caused by Roundup, its notorious weedkiller containing glyphosate. Trump’s EPA says federal regulation forecloses the possibility of a liability lawsuit in this case, and that there is not enough evidence to support a link between glyphosate and cancer. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer begs to differ.
Just last week, the Trump EPA doubled the amount of formaldehyde deemed safe to inhale, a change that chemical industry lobbyists have long advocated. Now, those industry insiders work at the EPA—and may be violating federal rules, which say that employees are supposed to wait at least a year before making policy affecting an industry in which they’ve previously worked. According to a ProPublica analysis of the EPA’s own data, some 320 million people already live in parts of the United States where cancer risk from formaldehyde exceeds the agency’s limit. Last year, Biden’s EPA determined that the average risk level from formaldehyde in air pollution was 20 times the agency’s limit. So loosening these restrictions further is certain to increase our cancer risk.
Then there’s the gutting, early this year, of the Clean Water Act. That will almost certainly increase water pollution, and several water contaminants, including arsenic and nitrate, are associated with higher cancer risk. Under Trump, if we are not breathing cancer, we’re drinking it.
How the Make America Healthy Again crowd put up with all this? They can’t. Amidst the hypocrites and toadies that make up much of Trump’s base, MAHA—which supported Trump in part because they believed his health secretary, RFK Jr. would reduce toxins in our environment and food supply, and in part because they agreed with him on the dangers of vaccines—now stands out as a rare example of a group sticking to its values. “MAHA Moms” have rightly lost patience with the Trump administration’s coddling of chemical companies, the New York Times reported this weekend.
Some are now circulating a petition to fire EPA chief Lee Zeldin, who has allowed chemical industry insiders to relax restrictions on harmful chemicals. One of the groups circulating it, Moms Across America, is calling EPA the “Everyone Poisoned Agency.” MAHA also takes issue—rightly—with Zeldin’s approval of new pesticides, including two that contain PFAS, aka “forever chemicals,” which have been a major target of the MAHA movement. Some MAHA activists and influencers told the Times that Zeldin’s willingness to allow chemical companies to make policy is unacceptable to their base and could become an election problem for the Republicans.
Even before Trump took office, cancer was a horrific killer. About two million Americans are diagnosed with cancer per year. More than 600,000 die of cancer, making it our second-highest cause of death (after heart disease). Though other threats like gun violence and drug overdoses loom larger in our public conversation, cancer is much more likely to touch each of us personally—and to kill us.
In recent years, the death rate from cancer—as well its rate of emergence—has been decreasing slightly, a happy trend that seems, like many things, manifestly unlikely to survive this administration. While attacking the regulations that limit carcinogens in daily life, the administration has also slashed funding for the medical research that helps fight cancer, and has cut staff at the National Institutes of Health, which helps implement new cancer treatments.
The Trump administration’s enthusiasm for mass death is bewildering. It’s hard not to see it as an extension of their eugenicist approach in general: The Trumpist assumption seems to be that diseases like cancer, much like climate disasters, will weed out the weak and sick, leaving the chosen few unscathed. If that sounds twisted and cruel, of course it is. It also doesn’t make sense: Like a flood or a wildfire, cancer can strike an otherwise-healthy person. But facts and logic aren’t their forte.
Not all of us will sicken and die because of Trump administration policies. But never say they didn’t try.
