Derek Beres

Portland

Freelance Writer and Editor at Freelance

Co-Host at Conspirituality

🎙 Co-host, Conspirituality ✍️ https://t.co/M4mMAECJ23 🧵@derekberes

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Articles

Soft eugenics in the Trump administration

1 week ago | derekberes.substack.com | Derek Beres

Yesterday, The Guardianpublished my essay on the Trump administration’s soft eugenics practices—predominantly, though not exclusively, through the lens of RFK Jr and his MAHA movement. I’m happy with how it turned out (shout out to Guardian editor Sam Wolfson, who forced me to drill down on the phenomenon I’ve been trying to describe on Conspirituality). A few commenters noted aspects I didn’t cover they felt worth mentioning. I agree—the piece already ran 500 words over the initial word count.
Maga’s era of ‘soft eugenics’: let the weak get sick, help the clever breed

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Derek Beres

English polymath Francis Galton formulated the concept of eugenics in 1883. Inspired by animal breeding, Galton encouraged people with “desirable” traits to procreate while discouraging or preventing those with “undesirable” traits from doing the same. As social and intellectual qualities were hereditarily “fixed”, he thought some groups were naturally superior. Galton constructed a racial hierarchy, with white Europeans at the top. Eugenics has since played out in varying, always tragic ways.
War on Science - Coda Story

2 weeks ago | codastory.com | Derek Beres |Emily Schultheis |Isobel Cockerell |Erica Hellerstein

War on Science Science once stood as society’s trusted compass for understanding the modern world and our place within it, but today, this foundation faces unprecedented attacks from multiple fronts. Our special series War on Science reveals how fringe skepticism has infiltrated mainstream discourse, reshaped public policy and threatens global progress on critical issues from climate change to public health. How have these anti-science movements gained legitimacy?
Free market wellness

2 weeks ago | derekberes.substack.com | Derek Beres

“There’s a lot of issues with toxins, whether it’s food or vaccines or chemicals in our homes,” she said. “People focus on these bigger issues because they don’t even see the smaller issues.”That’s how the Washington Postuncritically featured one MAHA mom in a recent puff piece about shifting demographics in the environmental movement.
Mark Hyman's “reasonable” junk science

3 weeks ago | derekberes.substack.com | Derek Beres

In a recent appearance on Bari Weiss’s podcast, Honestly, Mark Hyman said:The way vaccines are studied is against other vaccines; it's not against a placebo. Blatantly false. Alarming that someone who started their career as a family physician would get something this wrong. Rubella, pneumococcus, Hib, HPV, polio, measles, Tdap, and COVID-19 vaccines have all been tested against placebo.
The weaponization of autism

4 weeks ago | derekberes.substack.com | Derek Beres

Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler first used the term “autism” to describe social withdrawal in schizophrenia (a term he also coined) in 1911. Bleuler introduced the concept of primary and secondary schizophrenic symptoms; his four primary symptoms (the four As) were abnormal associations, autistic behavior and thinking, abnormal affect and ambivalence. While his contributions to psychiatry are noted, Bleulur was a eugenicist with racist and ableist beliefs.
Jay Bhattacharya's replication hypocrisy

1 month ago | derekberes.substack.com | Derek Beres

Jay Bhattacharya thinks solving the replication crisis will help restore trust in public health. In a recent interview with Bari Weiss, “Jay Bhattacharya Was ‘Dangerous.’ Now He Leads the NIH,” he discusses the public’s lost faith in medical professionals. Never mind his involvement with the Koch-funded, anti-lockdown, pro-business treatise, the Great Barrington Declaration, which quickened the erosion.
MAHA is just repackaged Reaganomics

1 month ago | derekberes.substack.com | Derek Beres

Canadian-American economist John Kenneth Galbraith compared Reaganomics to a century-old economic philosophy in 1982:Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. Others have referred to it as the Willy Sutton syndrome.
5 values to live by

1 month ago | derekberes.substack.com | Derek Beres

I was recently asked to write out my values as part of a group exercise among friends. While the ask was political in nature, I don’t see much of a difference between personal and political values. Who you are as a person and who you are in society should sync up. Plus, you carry your beliefs with you wherever you go. Distilling a lifetime of thoughts and experiences down to a few grounding principles is difficult. The first impulse is often, for many, religious.
The war against children's health

2 months ago | derekberes.substack.com | Derek Beres

RFK Jr’s recent Fox News op-ed, “Measles outbreak is a call to action for all of us,” set off a firestorm from his MAHA stans. The subhead (which he also likely did not write) stated “MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease.” Pure kryptonite for anti-vaxxers.