From inhaling the odour of beef the butcher’s wife obtains her obesity (Professor H Booth, writing in the Builder, July 1844)

Ancient Greeks and Romans believed it. Folks in the Middle Ages, too. And in the 19th century, most medical professionals still swore by it: disease is caused by bad air.

Disease-causing bad air was called “miasma”, and for centuries, miasma explained illness. Well, sometimes it was the alignment of the stars and planets, but stinky air was the most common culprit.

Foul air was the cause of all sorts of sickness, from plague to deadly childbed fever.

Some, however, had other ideas. In 1847, Hungarian obstetrician Ignac Semmelweis insisted that doctors in his hospital wash their hands before delivering babies – and what do you know? Cases of childbed fever plummeted.

In Victorian London, physician John Snow insisted that it was infected water, not bad air that was responsible for a deadly cholera outbreak.

Semmelweis and Snow were pioneers in the development of one of the foundational principles of modern science: germ theory.

Germ theory says that pathogens – microscopic organisms – cause disease, not bad air.

This week, the Senate confirmed RFK Jr. to lead our nation’s health programs. He’s not a health care professional, an epidemiologist, or a scientist of any sort.

You’re probably aware of RFK Jr’s opposition to vaccine science and maybe his beliefs that 5G networks can control your behavior or that AIDS is not caused by HIV.

But you might not know that RFK Jr. doesn’t believe in germ theory. What’s more, he is a believer in miasma as the cause of disease.

Hello? The 1500s are calling. They’d like their HHS Secretary back, please.

“Germ theory aficionados blame disease on microscopic pathogens,” says RFK Jr. in his book The Real Anthony Fauci (2021).

Imagine that.

There’s a whole section in his book titled “Miasma vs. Germ Theory.”

It’s not life-saving vaccines and antibiotics that revolutionized medicine, says RFK Jr. It’s sanitation.

When a child dies from measles “germ theory proponents blame the virus,” he says, and not malnutrition. When RFK Jr. visited Samoa during a 2019 deadly measles outbreak, he urged vitamin A treatments, not vaccination.

Underlying malnutrition impairs the ability to fight disease, of course. But it is pathogens that cause disease. No matter how healthy you are, untreated rabies will kill you.

John Snow for HHS!