Pharmaceutical and food industry influence is a leading cause behind the rise in childhood chronic diseases, from obesity and cancer to ADHD and autism, according to President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again Commission.

The 70-page MAHA Commission Assessment on the childhood chronic disease epidemic, mandated by Trump’s February executive order and published Thursday, pinned much of the chronic disease burden on large food corporations and the pharmaceutical industry for their role in determining science and safety standards for chemical exposures.

Recommended Stories

• Delaware governor signs physician-assisted suicide bill vetoed by predecessor
• Nebraska receives first-ever waiver to ban soda and energy drinks from SNAP benefits
• FDA to require clinical trials for COVID boosters for healthy adults and children

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the longtime environmental advocate and an architect of the MAHA movement, told reporters in advance of the publication that the report is the synthesis of “good environmental policy, good economic policy, and good public health policy.”

“Although the U.S. health system has produced remarkable breakthroughs, we must face the troubling reality that the threats to American childhood have been exacerbated by perverse incentives that have captured the regulatory bodies and federal agencies tasked with overseeing them,” the report reads.

The report repeatedly cites a British Medical Journal analysis from 2018 that found that “big food” spent over $60 billion on drug, biotechnology, and device research in nutrition science. Similar figures are cited in the report for the chemical-manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries, which each spend millions of dollars annually on lobbying.

Treating chronic conditions accounts for 90% of U.S. medical costs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many of these chronic diseases, particularly obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, are linked to ultraprocessed foods and other diet-related causes.

Although the sweeping report touches on a host of social issues also contributing to the chronic disease epidemic, particularly loneliness and social media use among adolescents, the main takeaways revolve around various ways to improve scientific research on environmental chemicals.

Kennedy said this stage of the report is “a diagnosis, not a prescription,” but the last page outlines several areas of policy change to advance the commission’s goals.

These include addressing the dearth of replicability in scientific research, post-marketing surveillance of drugs and chemicals from the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, and utilizing the power of artificial intelligence in toxicology studies.

Despite concerns expressed by agriculture advocacy groups this week about the potential for the report to condemn farm practices, it largely focused on the need for better science on the long-term effects of pesticides, insecticides, and other crop production tools.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, on a call with reporters Thursday morning, stressed that the goal of the report is not “to demonize American agriculture” but rather to improve technology to usher in “a new golden age in agriculture for America and the world.”

“Everyone on the commission agrees that the purpose of this report is to spur a conversation about how we can build a world together where American farmers are put at the center of how we think about solving our health crisis,” Rollins said.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin told reporters that the commission will work with stakeholders over the next 80 days “to develop pro-growth policies that continue America’s economic leadership.”

Zeldin said the Trump administration inherited “a massive backlog of hundreds of chemicals that should have been getting reviewed,” including pesticides depended upon by farmers.

Zeldin added that his agency is working alongside the NIH with the goal of “increasing the amount of science and research going into chemicals and pesticides” to address the cumulative effects of chemicals children are exposed to at critical stages in their development.

GERRY CONNOLLY’S DEATH REIGNITES DEMOCRATIC DEBATE OVER AGE

Rollins added that the U.S. food supply is still “the safest in the world” despite the report’s sharp criticism of ultraprocessed foods and the interaction of chemicals.

“We now have the most obese, depressed, disabled, medicated population in the history of the world, and we cannot keep going down the same road,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said. “I hope this marks the grand pivot from a system that is entirely reactionary to a system that will now be proactive.”