A Minister of Health who bathes with his grandchildren in a ‘sewerbeek’ full of feces? It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but in the United States it is bitter seriousness. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cousin of the legendary president and notorious distributor of medical disinformation, took off his shoes for a ‘refreshing’ splash in Rock Creek – a watercourse in the state of Washington who is so seriously polluted that swimming has been prohibited for decades. What an innocent family trip seemed, soon grew into a public riot.

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