Another day, another series of alarming claims from Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the current head of Health and Human Services. This week, on Dr. Phil Primetime (currently available on YouTube or his own streaming channel, Merit TV), RFK announced his intention to investigate chemtrails—the supposed longer-lasting white streaks left by aircraft believed by some to be government-created chemical agents. When asked by an audience member, “Emily,” how he would attempt to stop “stratospheric aerosol injections that are continuously peppered on us everyday—umm, bromium [by which she probably means barium], aluminum, strontium,” Kennedy claimed that the chemtrails are “coming out of the jet fuel,” and promised to “do everything in my power to stop it” by finding those responsible and holding them accountable.
Kennedy isn’t the first Republican politician to declare an interest in finding out who’s responsible for chemtrails. Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania state senator, 2022 Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, 2020 election denier, and Jan 6 attendee, introduced legislation to ban chemtrails, through updating Pennsylvania’s 1967 Cloud Seeding Licensure Law. Pennsylvania requires anyone seeking to experiment with weather modification technology to apply for a license (though no one has ever applied for one). The Tennessee Legislature has also passed a bill outlawing chemtrails.
The problem is that chemtrails don’t exist—at least according to a consensus of atmospheric scientists. What people like Kennedy identify as chemtrails are called contrails by scientists and the aviation industry, and attributed to water vapor emitted from jet exhausts. They’re short-lived, and dissipate into the atmosphere. Chemtrail theorists claim that these white trails are chemtrails when they last longer and spread out more than ordinary contrails. These longer, wider white cloud trails are claimed to be evidence of a secret government operation spraying “chemicals” or “heavy metals” into the atmosphere, often identified as strontium, aluminum (not a heavy metal), and barium. A 2017 survey of US adults found that 10% considered the chemtrail explanation “completely true,” and 20-30% thought it could be “somewhat true.”
Chemtrail theories have been around for a while. Various YouTube documentaries, such as FrankenSkies (2017), and What in the World are They Spraying? (2010), make various claims about why the US government would want to poison its population from the sky. These documentaries invariably invoke the history of military and academic research into geoengineering and cloud-seeding technology. The results of these experiments have largely been inconclusive, speculative, and limited. Yet because of the flexibility of the terms involved, theories can be fueled by poorly explained references to actual geoengineering research, which is one of the areas that seeks to mitigate global climate change.
These theories are also fed by widespread distrust of federal entities, with blame being placed on the military, NOAA, or HAARP (which is actually a University of Alaska-Fairbanks research program into the ionosphere). Kennedy does this himself by suggesting it could be DARPA, a Defense Department agency. But here’s the problem. Kennedy is now part of the federal government, so continued belief in this theory implies the existence of some sort of deep state or shadowy group of bad actors frustrating the Trump Administration to continue to be believable.
The purpose of chemtrails is debatable. In general, the claims largely suggest that chemtrails make people sick, with some suggesting the existence of a “chemtrail flu” that they experience after days where they believe lots of aerial spraying has gone on. The purported effects of the spraying are listed as weakness and chronic illness, both of which would render people less able to resist. For some, the ultimate aim is extremely sinister—some form of depopulation, which allows chemtrail theories to feed into theories about the Great Reset, where elites are accused of trying to force an economic transition to socialism on a weakened populace.
Concerns about intentional pollution of the skies, the soil, and the water link chemtrail theories with other environmental conspiracy theories. Fluoride has been linked to learning disabilities in children and also a communist plot for depopulation. Robert F. Kennedy Jr has called fluoride a “dangerous neurotoxin” linked to arthritis, weaker bones, and thyroid disease. As head of Health and Human Services, he has instructed the Centers for Disease Control to stop recommending the addition of fluoride to drinking water. Utah has already announced a ban. Previously, the CDC called fluoridation of public drinking water one of the top-10 public health interventions of the twentieth century. Fluoride in toothpaste is now being investigated by the Attorney General in Texas.
Pervasive pollution of the environment by corporations is well established, and real cases such as dioxin in drinking water and the production of toxic forever chemicals, or PFAS, lend credence to the wilder theories about chemtrail flu and fluoride causing learning disabilities. Corporate negligence and misfeasance of environmental impacts is widespread, but there’s a deeper theory that beliefs about chemtrails and fluoride mix with. Terrain theory suggests that germs are natural, and do not cause illness. Instead, bodies are sick or weakened already and this renders them more susceptible to disease.
In Kennedy’s 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci, he describes what he calls “miasma theory” in a chapter called “The White Man’s Burden.” In this section, Kennedy denies germ theory and instead claims disease is caused by weakened immune systems. Miasma theory is a theory of disease that predates germ theory and attributes disease to bad air from sewage or rotting food or bodies. Kennedy isn’t describing this theory, he is, in fact, describing terrain theory, which has gained popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The implications of terrain theory account for many of the health policy changes Kennedy has advocated, which have baffled scientists. In terrain theory, a healthy body with a strong immune system will not get sick even when encountering viruses and bacteria. Only weakened bodies will get sick. Chemtrails, fluoride, and vaccines are then identified as external agents that weaken immunity, leaving people at risk of illness. To stay healthy, terrain theorists advocate diet, exercise, and avoiding toxins.
While much of this advice isn’t incorrect—diet and exercise do, of course, support good health—it denies the crucial link between bacteria and viruses and illness. It claims healthy people cannot get sick. It rejects vaccines as life-saving and inverts them into poison, something that undermines the terrain rather than creating immunity to pathogens.
The consequence of this theory is that health is an individual rather than a collective responsibility. Each person keeps their own terrain healthy by boosting their immune system via individual actions. They don’t need to get vaccinated to support herd immunity for those that are unable to get vaccinated.
The responsibility for agents that pollute the terrain is also individualized. Since healthy people in terrain theory cannot get sick, when they do get sick it must be the result of direct poisoning. It establishes a worldview in which specific individuals who are poisoning the air and the water on purpose are doing so to further personal gain or sinister plots. This is the overall theme of Kennedy’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci—that Dr. Fauci is in league with Bill Gates to push ineffective treatments of COVID-19 and hinder effective treatments to make more people sick. It also denies the link between the HIV virus and AIDS, again asserting that Fauci invented the link for nefarious purposes. Far from being a public health expert and government scientist with over 30 years of public service, Kennedy accuses Fauci of overthrowing American democracy in a coup.
Leveraging his government position, Kennedy is now legitimating his alternative theories of health and immunity—a project with serious implications for public health. It’s also likely that since Kennedy is in the government, new enemies will need to be continually identified to blame for health concerns like the ongoing, worsening measles outbreak. And given his boss’s rhetoric, it doesn’t take an expert to predict where that might leave us.
