I’ve Been Quiet. Here’s Why.

On demoralization, the bind the MAHA base is in, and where I’m going next.

Old Glory hanging at HHS.

I’ve been quiet for several weeks now. It had nothing to do with writer’s block.

Marty Makary resigned his post as FDA Commissioner on a sunny Tuesday five weeks ago.

I was halfway across the country, sitting in hair and makeup with a friend, waiting for Marty to walk out and deliver the news. Neither of us said much. There wasn’t much to say.

When the moment came, I couldn’t watch.

Three days later goons walked Tracy Beth Høeg, MD, PhD, out of the building after she refused to sign a fake resignation, posting that she had been fired with “no regrets.”

(She wrote about her time at the agency and on being fired here)

By then, Vinay Prasad was already gone.

Three people who saved my sanity during the darkest, scariest time of my life (and certainly my career) swept out of the FDA within weeks, for what appears to have been the unforgivable sin of attempting to honestly regulate the industry they were appointed to oversee.

I keep trying to find a composed, measured way to describe how that felt, but I don’t have one.

I was devastated. Then angry. Then just numb.

I knew whatever I wrote next would be hard.

(Turns out it is.)

The problem was never figuring out what to say. What needs to be said is obvious.

The hardest blows MAHA has taken this year have not come from Pharma, legacy press, or any of the enemies we were prepared for.

They seem to have come from our own side:

• The recent FDA purge.

• Glyphosate (the chemical RFK Jr. built a legal legacy fighting) protected by executive order.

• Our own lawyers arguing Monsanto's side at the Supreme Court in one breath, then that states can strip religious accommodation from vaccine mandates in the next.

• $735 million committed by CDC to Pfizer to purchase Covid vaccines for infants and children.

And of course, Thomas Massie, one of the only Republicans who showed up to fight against any of it, losing the most expensive House primary in American history after many friendlies, including the Secretary of Defense, campaigned against him.

Rep. Thomas Massie and me at the People v. Poison rally outside the Supreme Court, April 27 — 22 days before he lost his seat.

After 5 weeks of contemplation, I’ve decided to acknowledge the disappointments without participating in the friendly-fire. Not because the moves don’t deserve scrutiny, but because of who’s waiting to cash in.

The institutions who would benefit are the same crowd that spent the last decade sterilizing 9-year-olds, deifying pharmaceutical products, medicating suffering instead of solving it, and treating dissent as a threat to be eliminated at any price. The legacy-media health desks ran cover for all of it.

When those institutions are handed a coherent critique they don’t hear “ahhhh… a movement correcting course.” They hear something more like, “MAHA admits it was a fraud.”

So I’m opting out.

What hurts at the moment is that the people who seem to be working against us are not the swamp. They’re the people we believed cared about the same things we care about - regardless of which side owned the issue. The ones we helped put in place with our own hands and our own pocketbooks.

How do we get back on track?

I don’t know exactly, but I’m not the only one grappling with that question.

MAHA supporters are asking it in group chats, green rooms and the school pickup line. It’s the subject of so many conversations that drop to a near-whisper. And when the most loyal people in a movement begin to wonder whether their own side still believes what it said to get here, that’s a powerful signal to reassess.

I hope we take that opportunity.

Because when people feel betrayed they don’t immediately go out and vote for the other guy, but they do lose their vigor. They stop fighting to win. Eventually they just stay home. And when the votes and the money stay home, so does the influence those votes and dollars bought.

I don’t want that. I want change- and a healthy America.

MAHA’s promise was never “perfect, all at once.” It was “better, as fast as we can get there.”

By that measure we’ve gotten real things done like the food dyes, the nutrition guidelines, HRT relabeling, and honesty around gender issues.

And while I am an eternal optimist and usually have zero issues painting the glass half-full, I’m struggling with how to translate recent events into a story of missteps and misunderstandings.

As Katy Talento ND ScM so often points out in her writing, policy fights are fierce and complex. Industry is a powerful force. And since I don’t know what I don’t know, I’m taking a breath to let the dust settle.

Here’s where I’m going instead-

For the next stretch, I’m leaning into the things I can write about clearly - without deciding in real time whether I’m defending the indefensible.

Why your hormones got dismissed for twenty years. The “settled science” your doctor never actually read. The supplement aisle that’s half snake oil, half life-changing suppressed research. What happens to your brain on an SSRI - and coming off one. The fight over what we’re allowed to say out loud, and who’s pulling the strings. The amazing things that happen when people gather. And how I clawed my own health back when the system had no answers.

Nothing should be too taboo to examine - vaccine injury, fecal transplants, the treatments your doctor dismisses and the ones they’ve never heard of.

I’ll come back to MAHA coverage. My mission hasn’t changed.

But right now, I’m processing. And I’d rather be honest with you than keep displaying a certainty I don’t have. Criticism from inside a movement is how it corrects course. But that only works if you’re honest with yourself first.