MAHA Summit Features Talk of Psychedelics and Immortality

Psychedelics and Immortality Take Center Stage at MAHA Summit

Social-media influencers and anti-ageing entrepreneurs mingled with top US government officials, including the head of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), at an exclusive event steps from the White House this month. The meeting’s purpose was to discuss the future of health in the United States.

Organizers called it the MAHA Summit, referring to US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s signature ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement. Attendees included Kennedy, US vice-president JD Vance, NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya, US Food and Drug Administration chief Marty Makary and the food activist Vani Hari, who blogs under the name Food Babe. Sessions at the summit, which Nature attended, covered a wide range of health-related topics, including psychedelics, brain implants, and anti-ageing therapies. Academic researchers and clinicians were not among the speakers at the sessions, which were peppered by comments critical of the medical establishment.

The conference showcased the influence of the MAHA movement, whose supporters say there is a chronic-disease epidemic in the United States that they blame in part on corruption in the food and pharmaceutical industries. To combat this epidemic, supporters advocate lifestyle choices, such as improving sleep and taking dietary supplements.

The movement has ascended rapidly from a loose network of Kennedy supporters into a political force that Vance, speaking at the summit, called “a critical part of our success in Washington”. The event also drew officials from corporate heavyweights, such as Walmart and Google, and biotechnology firms, such as Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, New York.

“We didn’t have anything like this,” Robert Redfield, who led the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2018 to 2021, during US President Donald Trump’s first term, told Nature at the summit. “Bobby [Kennedy] has gotten industry to sit down with him.”

The nearly eight-hour summit featured remarks by several officials in Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services. Among them was Bhattacharya, who said that the “MAHA movement is an absolutely incredible thing to me”. He added: “I have waited my entire life to see this movement come.”

Other speakers included mixed-martial-arts promoter Dana White and actor and comedian Russell Brand. Attendees also heard health advice from Bryan Johnson, a Silicon Valley multimillionaire known for his anti-ageing ‘biohacks’, such as receiving plasma transfusions from his teenage son, and his view that his generation might be first to never die.

Throughout the event, speakers criticized established scientific and medical institutions. Both are frequent targets of Kennedy, who founded Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit organization in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, that is known for its anti-vaccine advocacy. One of these speakers was Bhattacharya, who said that the NIH, the world’s largest biomedical-research funder, has focused too heavily on small scientific steps instead of “disruptive” or “innovative” research.

“Makary decried “groupthink that again and again led us astray”, citing as an example public-health recommendations against eating saturated fat. (Kennedy has suggested that saturated fats are part of a healthy diet; the US government has, for decades, recommended limiting saturated-fat consumption.) “We got ‘saturated fat causes heart disease’ wrong for 50 years,” Makary said. “That’s a war we’re going to end.”

Vance also took aim at the medical establishment in remarks that seemed to allude to the public-health response during the COVID-19 pandemic. “As we found out the hard way over the last few years,” very often people outside the scientific mainstream “were right and all the experts were wrong”, he said, to loud cheers from the audience.

At a panel discussion about using psychedelics as medical treatments, investor Christian Angermayer urged attendees to “follow the science” about the drugs — eliciting audible groans from several audience members. Angermayer, founder of atai Life Sciences, a pharmaceutical company in Berlin that is developing psychedelics for the treatment of psychiatric conditions, quickly directed attendees to look at the data for the treatments’ efficacy.

Some speakers at the summit praised treatments such as psychedelics and the blockbuster obesity drugs called GLP-1 agonists. Others, however, expressed a distrust of pharmaceutical companies and their products. “I don’t like taking medications,” Vance said, pointing specifically to ibuprofen. “I don’t like taking anything unless I absolutely have to. And I think that is another MAHA-style attitude. It’s not anti-medication, it’s anti-useless-medication,” he said.

The lack of representation of scientists dismayed some MAHA supporters, Diana Lutfi, founder of the Healing Science Policy Institute, a MAHA-aligned advocacy organization in Washington DC, told Nature at the summit. Lutfi and her colleagues organized thousands of scientists and clinicians in support of Kennedy before his confirmation as health secretary by the US Senate. She argues that tapping this network is key to cementing MAHA’s legacy beyond Kennedy. A recent summit organized by the New York City-based policy group MAHA Action has sparked controversy with statements made by one of the attendees, Lutfi, regarding the perceived corruption of health officials by Kennedy and his inner circle. Lutfi claimed that Kennedy and his associates view health officials as complicit in the spread of COVID-19 and are seeking to punish them for their role in the pandemic.

Despite requests for comment, MAHA Action did not respond before publication, leaving the statements by Lutfi to stand unchallenged. The summit concluded with attendees receiving MAHA-branded tote bags filled with items from sponsors. Among the items included were a biography of Kennedy, creatine supplements touted for their athletic performance benefits, and potato crisps cooked in beef tallow, endorsed by Kennedy as a healthier alternative to seed oil-fried snacks. Additionally, mouth tape was included in the bag, a controversial product believed to improve sleep quality by promoting nasal breathing when worn during sleep.

The summit and its aftermath have stirred up debate and raised questions about the motives and beliefs of Kennedy and his inner circle. The inclusion of certain products in the tote bags has drawn criticism from some who question the validity and safety of the items. It remains to be seen how these revelations will impact public perception of Kennedy and his associates moving forward.

This article is a reproduction and was originally published on November 21, 2025. For more information, you can refer to the original article here.