Image by Gage Skidmore (License CC BY-SA 2.0)
If you’re anything like me and most of the rest of the world, you keep up with the news on a regular basis. If you have a phone, are on social media, or own a TV, it’s hard to miss. So you may have seen a few headlines in regards to Trump’s new pick for healthcare advisor, Katy Talento.
At first glance, Katy Talento seems promising. She holds a Master’s in Science from Harvard University, and has spent a lot of time in the field in the US and Africa working on disease control programs. She volunteers at the Leadership Institute as a faculty member and previously worked as senate staff for Senator Thom Tillis and the Health, Education, Labors and Pensions Committee. She sounds like a ray of hope in the dreary days of Trump, right? Someone that may have a bit of common sense. Wrong.
However hopeful we may have been, this woman is just as nutty as the rest of them. Talento fought to have HIV/AIDS funding cut by millions because she is under the belief that the funds are being used to profit Russian prostitution rings. As far back as 2003, during her time on the Senate health committee, she was part of a group pushing to defund and blacklist more than 150 HIV/AIDS research grants; grants that were set to be used for anything ranging from educational programs to transmission rate studies among sex workers and IV drug users.
“As if women as a whole aren’t already facing serious disturbances in their access to affordable and effective birth control, we now have to deal with a pro-life, right-winged health advisor that swears up and down that birth control kills babies.”
If passed, this would have shut off over $100 million in grant funds. This group claimed that the funds were being used to promote legalized prostitution and to print materials that would be distributed to schools, orphanages, and institutes to encourage young girls to pursue prostitution as a viable career choice.
This uproar forced Russian officials to spend months researching grants and funding, and produce tons of paperwork to disprove the bogus claim. The truth was that the grants were being used exactly the way they were supposed to be; funding educational programs, studying infection and transmission rates, and developing curriculum used to teach young people ways to avoid contracting the diseases.
The bill was blocked, but not without a serious shaking to the science community. They were left feeling as though their research, hard work, and dedication would be overshadowed by senseless investigations to push them into a right-winged agenda.
The scientific community are not the only toes that Talento has stepped on. She’s also ruffled the feathers of women’s healthcare groups by stating, on more than one occasion, that oral contraceptives cause abortions—even though this has been thoroughly research and has been found to be completely untrue. As if women as a whole aren’t already facing serious disturbances in their access to affordable and effective birth control, we now have to deal with a pro-life, right-winged health advisor that swears up and down that birth control kills babies. Not that they care at all what happens to that baby after you give birth to it. Don’t ask for healthcare, food, or assistance for that kid, because it’s not their problem. But you damn well better give birth to it anyway. But that’s another story for another day.
The fact of the matter is, the women’s healthcare community is up against enough as it is. We’re looking at losing basic rights to our own bodies and losing access to affordable basic care. The last thing we need is a woman pushing a right-wing agenda down our throats, because she doesn’t understand how science works.
If all of the above isn’t enough to make you shiver yet, this is the same woman who has pushed less than effective recommendations for avoiding the Zika virus. Zika is a mosquito borne virus that is transmitted through a mosquito bite or sexual contact with an infected individual. For a generally healthy adult it will cause flu-like symptoms, such as fever, headache, and joint pain, but is mostly harmless. However, if contracted by a pregnant woman, it poses a serious risk for birth defects in the unborn child, including microcephaly, severe brain defects, and an increased risk of Guillain-Barr Syndrome.
This past January, Talento published a list of recommendations to help avoid contracting the growing disease. A lot of her tips are standard, such as avoiding travel to high risk areas and using bug repellents. But she also suggested that women sleep with their husbands, with the woman snug tight under the blankets and the husband sleeping on top of the covers so that the infected mosquitos will hopefully go for the “easier target.”
Basically, you’re supposed to cocoon yourself under tons of blankets while your husband lies uncovered and offers himself up as some kind of human mosquito sacrifice. There’s no mention of what you’re supposed to do with your vulnerable, uncovered face (because you HAVE to breathe), what to do if you don’t have a husband to offer as a sacrifice, or the fact that Zika is sexually transmitted. She also doesn’t say what you’re supposed to do to avoid transmission once your husband has succumbed to the Zika mosquito gods.
Healthcare is in the middle of facing a serious shit-storm. Millions of people are facing the loss of their healthcare and access to life-saving treatments. A slew of ridiculous crap is about to be considered “pre-existing” conditions, and funding cuts are being proposed left and right. To say the least, a lot of people are already on edge. The very last thing we need is a healthcare advisor spouting inaccurate bullshit at every corner. Unfortunately, education doesn’t always fix stupid.
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Andrea is a freelance writer based out of Kentucky. She is the mother to a 3 year old little girl and step-mother to a 6 year old boy. She’s been married to her husband and best friend for 5 years. She enjoys fishing, camping, hiking and the occasional glass of wine by a bonfire.