The 'plot' to take down RFK Jr looks familiar

A leaked document this week reveals how powerful pharmaceutical interests are plotting to remove RFK Jr. from office. I’ve seen this playbook before—because a decade ago, they used it on me.

This week, the Brownstone Institute published a leaked internal memo that confirmed what many of us have long suspected—there is a coordinated plot to remove Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from office.

The document, reportedly from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO)—the largest pharmaceutical lobby group in the US—outlines a US$2 million campaign to “neutralise” Kennedy before September.

It calls for a covert assault on his credibility through media manipulation, political pressure, and behavioural messaging—while quietly working to fracture his support base.

According to the April 3 memo, BIO’s Vaccine Policy Steering Committee sees Kennedy’s reforms as a threat to their financial future.

His proposals—to restore manufacturer liability, require long-term vaccine safety data, and reintroduce rigorous placebo-controlled trials—risk dismantling the regulatory shortcuts Big Pharma has relied on for years.

So they laid out a plan to co-opt media influencers, partner with trusted conservative figures like Dr. Mehmet Oz, align with think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and flood the airwaves with emotionally charged messaging.

The aim is not to educate the public—but to “inspire and frighten” them into compliance by manipulating sentiment.

The Merck precedent

This tactic isn’t new. Back in the early 2000s, pharmaceutical giant Merck faced growing criticism of its blockbuster painkiller, Vioxx.

Internal emails uncovered during litigation revealed that Merck kept a literal “hit list” of doctors and academics who spoke out about the drug’s cardiovascular risks.

One executive wrote chillingly: “We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live.”

Merck ghostwrote studies, bribed physicians, manipulated data, and ran covert campaigns to ruin the careers of dissenting professionals.

Meanwhile, Vioxx remained on the market—linked to an estimated 60,000 deaths (a conservative estimate) before it was finally withdrawn.

Not one executive went to jail. The machine survived. And the tactics were refined.

I was on a hit list too

Between 2012 and 2015, I produced a series of documentaries for the ABC’s science program Catalyst.

We investigated the overprescription of medications like statins, exposed how sugar-laden processed foods—particularly breakfast cereals—were fuelling Australia’s type-2 diabetes epidemic, and revealed how industry influence and conflicted “experts” were distorting nutrition science and shaping national dietary guidelines.

These weren’t fringe broadcasts. I was a prime-time TV presenter on a top-rated national science show—often rating higher than the commercial networks.

Our stories reached millions. And that made me—as the face of the programs—a serious threat.

Because I wasn’t just criticising the food and pharmaceutical industries—I was exposing how they were working hand-in-glove with regulators, advisory panels and professional associations to preserve a profitable status quo. I was showing the public that the science had been captured.

And so, the machine came for me.

Leaked documents from the Australian Breakfast Cereal Manufacturers Forum (ABCMF)—a front group representing industry giants like Kellogg’s, Nestlé, and Sanitarium—confirmed what I had already experienced firsthand.

I was named as a target in an “active defence” strategy, alongside other academics and outspoken critics—the ABCMF drew up a hit list.

Their campaign wasn’t limited to media statements. It extended to social media, where they coordinated influencer posts, crafted narratives, and orchestrated meetings to sanitise the public conversation around processed cereals.

They even floated plans to fund industry-driven “scientific” studies, led by well-known dietitians, to counter negative messaging.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry had been quietly waging its own campaign against me. Over the years, my documentaries on statins, cholesterol, and sugar triggered fierce backlash from industry-aligned doctors and researchers.

Complaints were lodged with the ABC demanding I be removed. The chair of the nation’s dietary guidelines committee even wrote to my employer questioning why I was still on air.

Eventually, the pressure found its mark.

Mainstream media outlets refused to publish anything in my defence, while giving generous space to critics parroting industry talking points. Every attempt to speak for myself was shut down.

Our TV science team was disbanded. I was falsely accused of scientific misconduct and dragged through protracted, costly legal battles. Although ultimately vindicated, my name became ‘radioactive,’ and I couldn’t find work.

Today, the very information I was punished for promoting—such as low-carb diets for type-2 diabetes and the overprescription of statins—is widely accepted.

But by then, the damage was done.

This is how the system works

This BIO memo is an inside look at how the system works. These tactics aren’t the exception, they are the playbook.

Whether it’s food, chemicals, or pharmaceuticals, the mechanism is the same: powerful industries with billions at stake, mobilising coordinated, covert campaigns to silence dissent.

They don’t need to gun you down in the street or leave a horse’s head in your bed. They just set the machine in motion. The goal is to break you from every direction—until you’re professionally, financially, and emotionally ruined.

They don’t debate you. They isolate you. They don’t refute your arguments. They delegitimise you.

Behind the scenes, it’s relentless—driven by PR firms, front groups, professional associations, and captured media.

The real threat is transparency

What RFK Jr. is facing now is similar to what I faced a decade ago. And we have the receipts.

The pharmaceutical lobby will tell you it’s all for your safety—that it’s about protecting the public from misinformation.

But the truth is, they’ve decided that dissidents like Kennedy are dangerous—dangerous to their drug pipeline, dangerous to investor confidence, and dangerous to the machinery of influence they’ve spent decades constructing.

So they’ve done what these industries always do when threatened—they’ve activated the playbook.

And while Kennedy may be the target today, it could be anyone tomorrow. A journalist. A doctor. A scientist. A patient. The more you’re over the target, the harder they hit.

At its core, this is about whether dissent is allowed at all—whether anyone who challenges entrenched power can survive the backlash. Whether the system exists to protect the public, or to shield those profiting from it.

Because once you’ve seen the machine up close—as I have—you cannot unsee it.

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Further reading: The BIO memo exposes the same ruthless machinery Kim Witczak uncovered after her husband’s suicide was caused by a prescribed antidepressant. [LINK]

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