Rachael Bedard, MD is an internist, geriatrician and palliative care physician and a contributing Opinion writer at The New York Times.
From 2016 to 2022, she worked with Correctional Health Services, providing medical care in New York City’s jails. There, she founded the Geriatrics and Complex Care Service, a team focused on supporting the oldest and sickest incarcerated individuals through clinical care, court advocacy, compassionate release, and discharge planning. She currently practices at Woodhull Hospital’s Safety Net Clinic, serving homeless and housing-insecure New Yorkers.
Dr. Bedard writes about the intersection between medicine, politics and human rights. In addition to her writing in The New York Times, her work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The Washington Post and elsewhere. She and her husband have two children and live in Brooklyn.
https://www.rachaelbedard.com/
Peter Hildebrand choked back tears as he told the crowd about his daughter, Daisy. She was 8 years old when she died in April, one of the two unvaccinated children lost in the measles outbreak that tore through West Texas. “She was very loving,” he told the audience.
It was Day 2 of the annual conference of Children’s Health Defense, the organization of vaccine critics previously led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now the U.S. health secretary. Mr. Hildebrand had been asked to speak on a panel titled “Breaking the Mainstream Media Measles Narrative” at the conference, which brought 1,000 people to an event center in Austin, Texas, this month.
Mr. Hildebrand spoke about mistrusting Daisy’s hospital doctor, who he said talked to his wife about measles when he was out of the room. “You know, just whenever I wasn’t around, he would sit there and be political about it,” Mr. Hildebrand said.
Dr. Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, graduated from the Stanford School of Medicine but abandoned her residency before completion, and has spent the past half-dozen years as a wellness influencer and tech company founder. She says she left medicine when she realized she was training to treat the complications of illness rather than the root causes.
“With a wall full of awards and honors for my clinical and research performance,” she writes in her book, “Good Energy,” “I walked out of the hospital and embarked on a journey to understand the real reasons why people get sick.”