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by Dr. Mark Sircus
September 28, 2026
from
DrSircus Website
Trust is one of the most precious things people can give one
another.
It underpins marriage, friendship, medicine,
and government.
We trust people because we believe their words
match their intentions and that those intentions will eventually
become actions.
When that correspondence breaks down, something
much deeper than disappointment occurs. We begin to question the
relationship itself.
The
COVID era brought an extraordinary
collapse of public trust in medicine, public health authorities, and
the institutions that were supposed to protect us.
A major study published in JAMA Network Open
found that Americans' trust in physicians and hospitals fell
from 71.5% in April 2020 to just 40.1% in January 2024.
The erosion of confidence extends far beyond
medicine.
Americans are still losing confidence in the
medical establishment.
Gallup's July 2026 report found that only 28
percent of Americans have confidence in the medical system, down
from 51 percent in 2020.
Meanwhile, only 57 percent rate medical
doctors highly for honesty and ethical standards, compared with
77 percent in 2020.
In September 2026, Gallup reported that an astonishing 89% of
Americans believe corruption is widespread in their government,
the highest percentage recorded in the twenty years Gallup has
asked the question.
Republicans, Democrats,
and independents may disagree about almost
everything, but overwhelming majorities agree that,
corruption is widespread...!
We are living through a crisis of trust in the
very institutions modern society depends on.
And when people have already lost faith in
government and medicine, the betrayal of trust by someone who
promised to reform those institutions carries an especially
painful significance.
On September 21, 2026, Dr.
Robert Malone and Dr. Jill
Glasspool Malone published an essay titled
The Kennedy Exception.
Its central question was whether Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., now Secretary of Health and Human Services, was
receiving a degree of loyalty and protection from the medical
freedom movement that its members would never have extended to
previous health secretaries.
Their concern was not merely that Kennedy had
failed to accomplish everything his supporters hoped for.
It was that some of the very policies he had
spent years challenging remained in place under his leadership,
while influential figures in the movement continued celebrating him.
In their September 21 essay, The Kennedy Exception, Robert
Malone and Jill Glasspool Malone question,
why COVID mRNA products remain
licensed, why federal mRNA research continues, and why the
COVID PREP Act protections remain in place.
They are asking why his earlier commitments have
not produced the outcomes many supporters expected.
On September 21, Nicolas Hulscher reported that a coalition
of 168 physicians, scientists, researchers, and public figures,
collectively claiming more than 63 million social-media followers,
had sent an open letter to Kennedy and President Trump.
Coordinated by Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, the coalition
includes,
It calls for,
-
removing mRNA vaccine products
-
ending the COVID PREP Act declaration
-
repealing the PREP Act
-
banning direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical
advertising
-
confronting conflicts of interest within
federal health agencies
The signatories warn that they may withdraw
political support if their demands remain unanswered.
The complete report:
Massive MAHA Coalition sends Open Letter
to Trump and RFK Jr.
The issue is trust.
Trust cannot be restored through speeches,
explanations, or promises alone.
It requires listening, transparency,
accountability, and conduct that corresponds to words.
At this point, few expect either man to listen.
For years, Kennedy presented himself as an adversary of
pharmaceutical influence and what he regarded as failures of vaccine
regulation.
He criticized
COVID-19 vaccine authorizations,
questioned the adequacy of safety oversight, and challenged the
legal protections available to manufacturers.
Children's Health Defense, the
organization he formerly chaired, petitioned the FDA in 2021 to
revoke the emergency authorizations for COVID vaccines.
His position was sufficiently clear that
supporters expected major changes when he entered government, but
all we have gotten is a lot of talk and little action where it
really counted.
The
Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines
remain licensed.
Federal research involving mRNA technology
continues.
The Malones also point to the FDA's approval
of Moderna's mRNA influenza vaccine in August 2026.
They question the departure of officials who
sought tighter vaccine restrictions and the postponement of an
advisory committee meeting where a report on post-vaccination
illness was expected to be discussed.
The Malones raise a question that reaches beyond Kennedy.
What happens to a movement when its
leader becomes too important to criticize...?
Those days are hopefully coming to a close.
There is an old saying that,
once trust is lost, it is almost impossible
to regain.
I learned the truth of those words forty years
ago at the University of the Trees, when I found myself in a
situation where I had to work extraordinarily hard to restore trust.
I succeeded, but the experience taught me
something that has remained with me throughout my life:
trust is not restored through words,
explanations, promises, or declarations of good intentions.
It is restored through conduct.
A person who has betrayed trust
must,
demonstrate, consistently and often at
considerable personal cost, that something fundamental has
changed.
For years, Kennedy was one of the most prominent
critics of COVID vaccine policy,
pharmaceutical manufacturers,
regulatory agencies, and the legal protections surrounding medical
countermeasures.
He chaired
Children's Health Defense
and argued that the public had been misled about vaccine safety.
He supported efforts to revoke COVID vaccine
emergency authorizations and called for changes to
manufacturers' liability protections.
These were not incidental positions. They were
central to the public identity he developed before becoming
secretary of Health and Human Services.
Now,
he holds extraordinary authority over
American health policy.
He oversees a department that includes the
FDA,
CDC,
NIH, and other institutions
whose decisions affect millions of people.
His authority is substantial, though
constrained by legislation, scientific review requirements, the
courts, the White House, and the responsibilities delegated to
individual agencies.
In August 2025, Kennedy announced that HHS
was winding down 22 mRNA vaccine development investments under
BARDA, affecting nearly $500 million in projects.
He presented the decision as a move away from
a vaccine platform whose limitations he had publicly criticized.
But the department's own announcement
explicitly stated that other uses of mRNA technology within HHS
were not affected.
Then, on August 5, 2026, the FDA approved Moderna's mRNA
influenza vaccine, MFLUSIVA, for adults aged fifty and older.
When I saw Kennedy and Trump in the
White House with
Pfizer's CEO, Trump smiling, I
knew in my heart where this was going...
Pfizer CEO Albert
Bourla speaks (C)
as (L-R) U.S.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
Administrator for the
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Mehmet Oz,
U.S. President Donald
Trump look on.
© Win McNamee, Getty
Images
Source
Kennedy's Personal Life
Why should anyone trust a person with a messed-up personal life in
the public arena?
Journalists have examined Kennedy's marriage to
Mary Richardson Kennedy in
considerable detail, including in The New Yorker and in
Isabel Vincent's reporting
on his private diaries.
Those accounts describe repeated infidelity, a
contentious divorce, and sharply conflicting accounts of what
occurred within the marriage.
People close to Mary alleged that Kennedy
denied affairs and dismissed her suspicions.
Kennedy gave a different account, including
allegations that he experienced abuse within the marriage.
Mary died by suicide in May 2012 while the
divorce and custody dispute were ongoing.
Her family disputed important parts of
Kennedy's public characterization of her.
The documented infidelity and the competing
accounts of their relationship raise questions about
trust that are relevant to understanding why this history
remains so painful and contested.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s reported 2001
diary listed
37 women, including 16 with whom he reportedly
had sexual intercourse while he was married to Mary.
The deepest injury of infidelity is often not the sexual act itself.
It is the deception.
It is creating a false reality for another
human being.
It is looking into the eyes of someone who
trusts you and letting that person keep living with an
understanding of the relationship that you know is incomplete or
untrue.
A person may betray trust in a moment.
Maintaining a deception can require repeated decisions...
And once the deception is discovered, the betrayed person may begin
questioning not only the partner but also the meaning of years of
shared experience.
Was the affection genuine?
Were the promises sincere?
What else was concealed?
Which memories can still be trusted?
The person seeking to repair such a
relationship cannot restore trust by explaining his behavior alone.
He must become truthful in a way the other person can consistently
encounter.
Kennedy's diaries, as reported by journalists, contain
his own reflections on sexual temptation, guilt, self-image, and the
struggle to behave according to his stated ideals.
Those writings reveal that he recognized an
internal conflict.
The stakes of public-health decisions are
enormous.
Vaccine recommendations, product approvals,
safety surveillance, injury-compensation procedures, and
research funding can affect millions of lives.
They require careful evaluation of both
benefits and risks, not loyalty to a personality.
Public confidence depends on transparent
evidence and institutions that can correct mistakes.
Kennedy appeared before Children's
Health Defense on September 17 and told the audience that it had
a friend in the White House.
He pointed to policy changes made during his
tenure and urged supporters to recognize the progress achieved.
The Malones, writing four days later, asked,
why that same audience was not publicly
pressing him on the issues it had once treated as essential.
A person cannot regain trust by persuading others
that he is truthful. He must return to truth himself.
One of the biggest problems we see in people is,
naivety in trusting people who
should not be trusted...
Naivety is dangerous.
People trust the image, the reputation, the
eloquence, the promises, or the cause someone claims to
represent.
We may even defend people against evidence of
their misconduct because accepting that evidence would threaten
our investment in them.
Once we place someone on a pedestal, we become
reluctant to recognize contradictions between their words and their
actions.
This is now exactly where we are with Kennedy
and
Trump. And we cannot even begin
to talk about Trump's history; one would need a book for that.
And all of Congress and the Senate just look at
their financial ties to
the pharmaceutical industry to see
why we have the medical world we have.
In terms of the medical industrial complex, it is
in no one's interest to make Americans healthy again...
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