Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday said the United States would reject a United Nations declaration on chronic diseases because the document, he claimed, included references to abortion and “radical gender ideology” and ignored “the most pressing health issues.”
Mr. Kennedy, who gave his remarks to a U.N. meeting on preventing and combating chronic illnesses like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, did not elaborate on the issues he said had been ignored.
The text of the declaration does not mention reproductive rights or gender ideology. The word “gender” appears several times in the document, but only in the context of the specific health challenges that women face around the world.
Despite opposition from the United States, the declaration, a list of health targets, is expected to win approval from a majority of the body’s 193 member states.
President Trump, a frequent critic of the U.N., earlier this year ordered the United States to withdraw from the World Health Organization, a U.N. agency, over claims that it mishandled the coronavirus pandemic and for what he called its “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms.”
Public health advocates said they were confounded and disappointed by Mr. Kennedy’s remarks, which were also posted on social media. Many of the U.N.’s aspirational goals for reducing noncommunicable disease would seem to dovetail with the health secretary’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, with its focus on chronic illness, childhood obesity and ultra processed food.
“The health secretary’s comments were disturbing, misleading and full of contradictions,” Paula Johns, executive director of ACT Health Promotion, an advocacy group in Brazil, said in an interview shortly after Mr. Kennedy’s remarks. “He claims the U.S. wants international collaboration on the issue of chronic diseases but fails to suggest how that could happen. Instead, he says the U.S. would rather walk away from the U.N.”
The declaration has wide support from global heath experts despite criticism that recommendations in an earlier draft had been watered down at the behest of industry. The changes included the removal of measures like high taxes and graphic warning labels to dampen demand for tobacco, alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverages. The final draft also scrubbed all references to sugary drinks.
In many ways, Mr. Kennedy’s description of the urgent threat posed by chronic illness mirrored that of the U.N. declaration.
“Chronic disease has more than doubled in a single generation. Millions of children now lose healthy years before they reach adulthood,” Mr. Kennedy said. “This crisis does not stop at America’s borders.”
But he said the U.N. General Assembly had overstepped its role, and that the United States could not accept the promotion of abortion and “gender ideology.”
“We believe in the biological reality of sex,” Mr. Kennedy said. “As President Trump has said, global bureaucrats have absolutely no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that wish to protect innocent life.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests seeking clarification of Mr. Kennedy’s remarks on abortion and gender ideology.
Health experts said the threat to abandon the U.N. process would only deepen U.S. isolation on some of the most pressing health issues facing humanity. The White House already stands alone in its opposition to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions — a position that has been on full display in recent days as world leaders discussed ways to accelerate efforts to address climate change.
“The U.S. seems to be trying to sabotage the process, but we don’t see how they can succeed at this point,” said Alison Cox, director of policy at the NCD Alliance, an advocacy organization. “It is really shortsighted and unhelpful in the face of an urgent global crisis.”
She noted that the current declaration was the result of a monthslong negotiating process that involved civil society groups, health experts and delegations from member states. “It’s imperfect but still an important achievement for global health,” Ms. Cox said.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., has been a vocal advocate for aggressive measures to tackle noncommunicable diseases, which are responsible for 17 million premature deaths each year.
In recent months, he has been promoting a separate W.H.O. initiative that calls on countries to raise taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugary drinks by 50 percent over the next decade. The taxes, Dr. Tedros has said, could raise an estimated $1 trillion for government health care efforts over 10 years and prevent 50 million premature deaths over 50 years.
“Health does not start in clinics and hospitals,” Dr. Tedros said in remarks before Mr. Kennedy took the stage. “It starts in homes, schools, streets and workplaces, in the food people eat, the products they consume, the water they drink, the air they breathe and the conditions in which they live and work.”
Andrew Jacobs is a Times reporter focused on how healthcare policy, politics and corporate interests affect people’s lives.
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