The Make America Healthy Again movement—which claims it wants to rescue Americans from the evil clutches of poisonous, self-interested corporations—would appear to have quite questionable taste in heroes. The movement’s figurehead, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., obviously springs to mind, but lately, there’s another figure who seems to be gaining traction with MAHA: disgraced founder of Theranos (arguably a very self-interested corporation), Elizabeth Holmes.
Politico notes that the MAHA movement is glomming onto the convicted fraudster and questioning whether she was unfairly crucified by the justice system. Most notably, MAHA-influencer Jessica Reed Kraus recently wrote an article on her Substack entitled “Elizabeth Holmes’ Redemption Arc Loading.” Kraus writes:
Many still think of Theranos, in which a faulty machine dramatically spews blood as a defunct prop, as the source of her downfall. Digging deeper, I found another (more practical angle) that framed Holmes as a catastrophic threat to a trillion-dollar industry controlled by conglomerates, with masked Pfizer interests looming.
Throughout the blog post, Kraus questions the official narrative surrounding Holmes, seems to compliment the disgraced entrepreneur on her “entrepreneurial advice and reflections on health, faith, and balance,” as well as her praise for “cultural figures such as Elon Musk, RFK Jr., and Charlie Kirk,” and writes that she appreciates the convict’s style of posting on X:
Her diary-like updates offer a window into motherhood behind bars. She has written nearly 3,000 letters to her children, expresses longing and faith, and shares family photos and drawings.
Other people in MAHA’s orbit also seem to have nice things to say about Holmes. For instance, longevity enthusiast Bryan Johnson occasionally chats with Holmes online.
On the one hand, this isn’t the first time that people have tried to view Holmes and Theranos through a slightly more charitable lens. People have noted that she was incredibly young at the time that she started Theranos (19) and that her mission (revolutionizing blood testing) was largely idealistic. On the other hand, the details of Holmes’ misdeeds are well-known, and she was convicted of multiple counts of fraud.
It just sorta makes sense that the MAHA movement would lionize a notorious fraudster as a misunderstood health hero, since critics have argued that MAHA’s prime mover, RFK Jr., offers similarly “misunderstood” solutions to America’s ongoing health crises. While Holmes sold biotechnology services that didn’t work, Kennedy would like you to believe that cod liver oil can cure measles, that America doesn’t need a vaccine advisory committee, that Tylenol gives you autism, and that the person tasked with running the CDC doesn’t need any training in medicine. While Kennedy may earnestly believe these unorthodoxies (just as Holmes may have believed that her biotech firm might, eventually, help lots of people), it doesn’t make them any less damaging to America’s health establishment, nor the millions of Americans who rely on it.
As we’ve previously noted, there are also clear and present obstacles to MAHA’s success. Taking on those trillion-dollar industries controlled by conglomerates that Kraus is critical of requires federal regulatory action and, as we all know, the Trump administration is not a huge fan of that sort of thing. Indeed, under Trump and Kennedy, the federal health bureaucracy is being defanged, not empowered.
It’s not that America couldn’t use a health movement—it could. But, like Kennedy, the MAHA movement seems to put its focus and energies in all the wrong directions.
English (US) ·