Is anyone surprised that Health Secretary RFK Jr. went back on his word with Sen. Bill Cassidy and made changes to existing vaccine recommendations? We at The Contrarian certainly aren’t.
Jen is joined by Colette Delawalla, Founder and CEO of Stand Up for Science, to discuss the devastating impact RFK Jr.’s decisions will have on the country. Rolling back decades-old vaccine mandates, defunding health support for LGBTQ+ groups, and cutting Sudden Infant Death Prevention Programs are just some of the actions this administration is taking to undo years of public health progress.
Check out Stand Up For Science’s ‘Impeach the Quack’' campaign here. Take a look at the video below to see the campaign in action:
Colette Delawalla is the Founder and CEO of Stand Up for Science, a political activism organization dedicated to defending and advancing America’s scientific ecosystem, a cornerstone of democracy, freedom, and progress.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I am delighted to welcome Colette Delawalla. She is the CEO and founder of Stand Up for Science. Colette, welcome.
Colette Delawalla
Wonderful, thank you, Jen, for having me on. I’m excited to be here today.
Jen Rubin
What is Stand Up for Science?
Colette Delawalla
We are a non-profit political organization. Our fight is to mobilize the fight for science and democracy. We, you know, I founded this organization in February of this year with a slew of rallies across the nation and the world. We did over 170 rallies on March 7th, and you know, it’s a… it’s a big fight. It was immediate on day one of Trump’s presidency that independent centers of thought, particularly science, universities, and also the press, of course, as you know, were directly under attack, like, day one, hour one.
And so it became very apparent to me as a scientist, as a student, as a mother, that we really were going to have to put up a fight here to make sure that we were able to maintain science as this independent and not politically influenced center of thought in the United States.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely Now, today, Representative Haley Stevens, who we at the Contrarian just spoke to, not a few days ago, has, introduced a motion, or a, I guess it’s, the articles of impeachment against RFK Jr. Tell us about your group’s involvement in that, and why that is so important.
Colette Delawalla
Yeah, absolutely. So, first of all, we’re just delighted that Representative Stevens accurately read the room and is meeting the moment in ways that, you know, her colleagues, like, anybody could have done this, right?
It is so important that in this moment, to call out and document mis- and disinformation. And we launched a a campaign in August to see RFK impeached and removed, and to really push for that, while other organizations were calling for resignation. That didn’t make sense to us, because why would somebody at the height of their power voluntarily resign? And there have been a lot of people calling for it. He has yet to do so.
And so, it was, an honor for us to be able to, you know, partner with Stevens and her office, to bring these articles forward, to help, you know. shape in any way that, you know, they asked, some of the language, or just call out, you know, make sure that the numbers were right, those kinds of things in the actual articles themselves. So yeah, that’s, you know, we’ve been on the ground in Washington, D.C, knocking on doors, meeting with representatives and their teams, trying to find somebody who would take up this banner, and Representative Stevens was the one to do so.
Jen Rubin
Wonderful. We first, began the RFK Jr. era at the, Department of Health and Human Sciences during that confirmation hearing. And he made some promises directly to, frankly, Senator Cassidy, who is himself a doctor. And he said he wasn’t gonna mess with the vaccine boards, he wasn’t gonna mess with the vaccine science. He went back on his word, if he ever intended to keep it. Talk to us about what he has done, and the other things throughout this long year that have really undermined the health and well-being of Americans.
Colette Delawalla
Yeah, so I think that there are sort of these layers of the things that he’s done, ranging from just, like, the wide impact to these really, really in-the-weeds, like, policy pieces, but overall, he has completely stabilize public health and the biomedical research machine in the United States, just broadly speaking, with personnel changes, policy changes, enacting unscientific, you know, pushes for various things. So just from, like, the most broad perspective, that’s what’s happening. He has gone through and essentially cut out key pieces of the mechanisms that make our public health run in this country.
So, whether it’s something as basic, and just such a no-brainer, like… Sudden Infant Death Prevention Programs that cost barely anything and that have been wildly effective in preventing infant death, which, like, who doesn’t want that? You have to be a monster to not want to prevent that, right? Preventing and, shutting down anything related to LGBTQ plus health, which we know that this is a group who experiences, more health consequences because of who they are, than somebody who isn’t LGBTQ+. And so, cutting down all of the studies that, look into and address and intervene in the group, with, you know, Black women, with Black men who experience health disparities, you know, more than other areas simply because of lack of access.
So, really just, like, systematically chopping away. At the same time, he has replaced career scientists, career, federal, you know, people at the NIH, people at CDC, who have spent their entire lives gathering the institutional and scientific knowledge to make good policy decisions and good recommendations with political appointees who have no background in this area. And so people without any, any background are making the calls on really nuanced, important, and, you know, decisions that require a really high, you know, degree of expertise. At the same time, we’ve seen this, like. less on the policy side, but more in the, like, social world. This… this MAHA movement, right? This Make America Healthy Again movement. And Jen, here’s what I think, and I could be way off base here. I think the baseline requirement for being the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the United States is that you should want to make Americans healthy. If you don’t want to do that, you should not take this job, okay? So the fact that, like. those are the words coming out of his mouth, as if every other HHS secretary has not wanted to do that, number one. Unhinged. Unhinged.
But number two, his actions don’t match his words. And so, that is my biggest thing. If you ask any person on the street, you know, do you want America to be healthy? Duh. Yes. We all do. Do we want our food system to be poisoned? No, we don’t. So then, why did he dismantle all of, I think all but two or three of the, food monitoring, like, foodborne illness monitoring systems at the CDC? So, you’re taking out red dye, but you’re bringing in listeria. I don’t… I… like, it does not make any sense to me.
And so we’re seeing this hypocritical piece, right, where he’s fighting for these culture war things, like food dyes and sugars. At the same time, he is, defunding diabetes research. He’s defunding lupus research. We’re talking about how there’s this mental health crisis in the United States. The number of grants that were assigned for mental health-related, you know, study at the NIH was decreased by 47% this year. So, the words and actions are not matching.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and as you say, no one thinks Americans should be eating more processed foods. That’s common sense. So, he has taken elements of common sense and combined them, first of all, with hypocrisy, as you point out, but also with bizarre recommendations and bizarre, unscientific principles. focusing for a moment on the vaccines. What is he doing to the vaccine system, and what is the consequences, what are the consequences that we are already seeing?
Colette Delawalla
Yeah, the move on vaccines is wild to me, to be completely frank with you. To answer that question, I’m gonna take a step back, and then we’ll get into the weeds, okay? Sure. So, something to understand is that until The 50s and 60s, of, you know, of the 19… 1950s and 60s. The entirety of the human history. Experience between a 30 and 60 or 70, depending on, you know, what part of history and what nation, percent of children who were born not making it to puberty. So, 30 to 70% of kids did not make it to puberty. that number in the United States today is, like, 2%-ish. It’s, like, barely 2%. It depends on the year. And so 98% of our kids who are born are making it to adulthood. The fact that we did this, the fact that we have managed this, is unbelievable.
We have addressed this problem that has haunted, you know all of humanity, and in the last less than 100 years. And I say that to make the point that that is because of modern medicine and vaccines. Those are the two, you know, it’s modern medicine, it’s vaccines, and it is, like, modern scientific, you know, understanding of how the world works. And so, when we talk about what is happening with this vaccine piece, we’re taking apart the foundation of that change. So he is systematically, brick by brick, taking down the foundation of this incredible feat of nature that we have accomplished in the United States and now across the world, right?
And he’s doing so by casting doubt on these very effective public health interventions. And he’s doing so by putting people in these places to make these policy decisions, and to advocate for these policy decisions, who have no business, or no background or no expertise to be in these positions. And as an American, I think we all have the freedom to make, you know, decisions and to have opinions on things. However, I think that when you… when you start going backwards in ways that are going to kill people. Like, you don’t… you can’t do that. We can’t do that.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Colette Delawalla
The other thing that I think is really important with this conversation that, you know, we’re having a little bit more broadly in the United States about, like, ACA subsidies and healthcare being really expensive, we are not in a place to be able to afford more illness. And when we talk about peer nations in Europe, that have universal healthcare, these are not peer nations. They have much, much better, approaches to dealing with illness. And so, if they want to have a little bit more flexibility about their vaccines, they can, because they have free healthcare.
In the United States, more than 30% of the population, if they have a $400 emergency, cannot afford that. And we’re about to see ACA, you know, just, just blown to smithereens. And so the idea that we should take away Hep B vaccines at birth. which is going to result in 30 years in a massive chronic illness, particularly related to liver disease, that we don’t have the infrastructure to support. We can’t support that illness in the United States right now. financially, or just, like, we don’t have enough doctors and nurses to do so. And so I think that the ramifications of these decisions will be felt for decades, and that’s the key piece of this here.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Now, we have already seen, outbreaks of measles and some other childhood diseases. How big a problem is this? And although we’ve seen it principally in some deep red states. We would be foolish to think that, by definition, communicable diseases stay in one place. That was the whole lesson of COVID. How concerned are you about the dropping rates of childhood vaccines and this movement to repeal vaccine requirements for school-age children, so that you will be sending your kid to a public school with a slew of other children who are not vaccinated?
Colette Delawalla
Well, first of all, as a mother of a toddler, I’m extremely concerned about this. We all engage and have for decades in the social contract of vaccines, because I don’t care who you voted for, I don’t want your kid to die… to die of a communicable disease, and I don’t want my kid to die of a communicable disease, right? Like, it’s… it’s so simple. And so, as a mother, I’m extremely concerned.
As a scientist, I mean, there’s just this piece of it that, like. we’re not going to understand how badly these impacts are going to be until it’s really bad. Like, this is one of those things that it’s really hard to explain to people, like. that because they took a left turn here, they missed getting into a car accident there, right? Like, it’s really hard to explain the harm that we haven’t experienced. It’s much easier to say, hey, this harm that you experience is directly tied to this policy, decision. And so, I’m very, very concerned that people are not taking this seriously enough, because we haven’t had these, like, major, super extreme outbreaks. But we’re headed in a very strong and fast direction, like, towards these outbreaks of various diseases.
Jen Rubin
And I think this is all based on some mythical past where they imagine that we were all healthier back in the 50s and 60s. What you’ve just described told us is that’s just nonsense. People died in greater numbers. The survival rate has gone up in our country. The child mortality rate has gone down. So, I don’t know whether they’re going to come up with a bloodletting, guideline or not, but it’s going back to the dark ages, in medicine. Representative Haley Stevens has introduced the articles of impeachment. What can, Americans do who are interested in learning more about this, or who want this to get a full airing? What can they do, and how can they reach out to your organization?
Colette Delawalla
Yes, thank you for this question. So, we understand that this is an uphill battle, but we also believe in the power of people. We really, really believe in people power. We would not be an activist organization And so, Stand Up for Science, we have a whole Take Action page on this. So, first things first, we need as many people and as many organizations to sign on and endorse these articles of impeachment. They can do that on our website. So, number one.
Number two, we are actively working to understand, sort of, what the ground is going to look like, who else is going to co-sponsor these articles. We, because we don’t have the support of House leadership, which is interesting to me because, Speaker Jeffries just posted 3 days ago on Blue Sky the RFK Jr. Minority leader. Not yet, Speaker. Excuse me, excuse me, minority leader. I’m speaking it forward, you know, into 2026, right?
So, all that to say, though, that we really need a lot of, Democratic members to come in and to co-sponsor these articles, and so we have a campaign called Quackogram Campaign, and for $3, anybody can send a small rubber duck to their, to their house representative, and these are typically delivered by one of the members of our team in a duck costume. We’ve had over 3,000, that have, you know, been ordered and have been distributed, but we’re trying to, like, get the message across, right? That, like, come on, impeach the quack. So that’s another thing that can happen.
Jen Rubin
Oh my god, that’s fabulous.
Colette Delawalla
Isn’t that fun? As soon as we get a better understanding of the lay of the land, we will be launching a pretty concerted and hardcore effort that is, you know, calling, letter writing. We’ll be planning and orchestrating constituent visits, virtual and in person, to make sure that, you know, these representatives understand just exactly how RFK’s policies are impacting their constituents, which I think is the key piece here.
So, we need pressure, we need people to share, we need people to endorse. If your organization wants to endorse these articles, let us know, we will get you going. But yeah, those are the big calls to action right now.
Jen Rubin
Well, we should not be surprised that the politicians are not leading this charge. If we have learned anything at the contrarian, it is that politicians follow. It is ordinary people who lead and push them to do things that they otherwise would not do.
Colette Delawalla
So we have bent the arc, right?
Jen Rubin
Yes, exactly, and push them into the fray. So, thank you so much, for all that you are doing, all that you are alerting our public to, and for your work with Representative Stevens. We are absolutely going to be following this.
Colette Delawalla
Thank you, Jen.
Jen Rubin
You heard it. For three bucks, you can buy a duck. Wow. I can’t wait. Now, I live in DC. I don’t even have a representative. I’m still gonna see if I can send a duck to our…
Colette Delawalla
You should come and do some, some quackagram deliveries. We should partner and do it!
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. So, folks, thank you, Colette. Thank you, contrarians. I know you’re going to get on board with this. We will look forward to following this, and we will have you back in the new year to tell us, how this is all going. So, thanks so much.
Colette Delawalla
Thank you, Jen, I appreciate you.
