Why MAHA Must Keep Conservative Roots

For over two years now, the MAHA movement led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has attracted some unlikely bedfellows. Everyone – from religious homeschool moms to more hippy food-as-medicine advocates – has filled rooms to try to find solutions to America’s chronic disease epidemic. But sometimes the tent grows so big that it invites people whose ideas are completely at odds with the movement’s original priorities.

The goal of healthier Americans should be fairly bipartisan, but the means to achieve it, and the underlying philosophies that drive it, can differ. Technocrats and transhumanists offer interesting solutions to the mechanisms of our dysfunctional healthcare system, such as updated systems for patient records and data collection. However, true and lasting reform requires solutions rooted in more conservative moral worldviews that maintain the natural order of God’s design.

Nowhere were the divergent approaches to making America healthy again more apparent than at last month’s MAHA Summit in Washington, D.C.

Bryan Johnson, the man doing his best to “not die,” headlined the Summit, touting his new religion, which claims the “body is God.” His followers embrace an “opening ritual” (like prayer, communion, or the sign of the cross), and a “mantra” (like the Our Father).

They even have a path to repentance. Rather than confession and forgiveness from God, there is “a part where people apologize to their body for something they’ve done that has inflicted harm upon themselves,” Johnson explains. Apparently, they absolve themselves of their own sins.

Rather than accept a view of human nature rooted in the theological principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition, Johnson wants to “reimagine human nature.” He discussed revolutionizing the way humans age and extending man beyond his “biological limit.”

His fellow panelists, Alex Colville and Max Marchione, agreed that the foundations of good health – diet, sleep, and exercise – can go only so far. Genomic medicine, including gene-editing technology, must be embraced.

One need not be a devout Christian to understand the danger of Johnson’s rhetoric. We are already seeing discussions of selective gene editing and “made-to-order” babies.

And while Johnson occupies the extreme end of the longevity movement, he does represent a concerning faction of the MAHA zeitgeist that believes humans can overcome any limitations placed on them – and will go to extraordinary lengths to do so.

This progressive narrative is in direct opposition to the more organic, grassroots uprising of those who believe that medical sovereignty, healthy soil and food, and meaningful human relationships are the fundamentals for human flourishing; those who believe that freedom is not found by removing all limitations, but through embracing struggle, pain, and even death to grow, change, and become the image bearers of Christ. Again, even if one does not embrace Christianity, a human-centered approach requires humility, a virtue often lacking in the technocrat’s vocabulary. Scientific progress can be good, but it should not be fueled by hubris or come at the expense of rejecting the natural order.

Thankfully, not all at the Summit embraced Johnson’s new, dystopian religion.

Michael Boes, the first chief MAHA officer of Steak ’n Shake, echoed the cries of those who embrace the real world, with all its obstacles, rather than one built on artificial intelligence and gene manipulation.

For Boes, the solution is much simpler. Eating real food and returning to the fast food of our grandparents’ generation – cooking fries in beef tallow and using buns without seed oil – can help restore vibrancy and order to the body.

For others, like the martial artist Michael Chandler, it’s about performing well, having a good attitude, and setting an example for his family. “My gratification is my children,” he said on a panel with MAHA-focused athletes.

Chandler also commented on the failures of striving for perfection, saying, “If we strive for perfect, we will never reach it … if perfection is the goal, you’re always going to be let down,” and intimated that doing so can lead to mental health disorders. He encouraged the audience to “enjoy themselves like a human being, sometimes.”

There is no such thing as moral neutrality. Any position or policy, whether it prioritizes American farmers or creates genomic medicine, has an end in mind, and ultimately a why that motivates it.

The MAHA movement has the potential to return to what is good, true, and beautiful, a harkening back to the food and medicine of our forefathers. Or it can lead to transgression, not merely progression, of the limits that God has placed upon human biology.

If conservatives fail to remember the why of MAHA, it will soon be co-opted by dystopian mad scientists who eat sandy green mush and clone themselves. 

The future of the MAHA movement doesn’t have to be binary. Technological advancement and AI can drive meaningful change in how Americans reclaim medical sovereignty and access their own health data. But it must not abandon its roots in the fundamental truths of human nature.

One can and should pursue a healthy life, but death will never be optional. MAHA is about redeeming the time we’re given, not trying to outlive our expiration date.

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Jennifer Galardi is a Senior Policy Analyst for Restoring American Wellness in the DeVos Center for Human Flourishing at the Heritage Foundation. Susannah Ely is a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program.