An endorsement of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr this past weekend has provoked an outcry from anti-vaccine activists.
In a lengthy post on X, he said he had instructed the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to “supply pharmacies and Texas-run clinics with MMR vaccines” and that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine”.
This came after his meetings in Texas with the families of two children who died of measles during the recent outbreak.
Just 10 of the 481 measles cases recorded by 4 April were in partially or fully vaccinated individuals – around 2% of all cases, reports NPR. So far three unvaccinated people, the two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico, have died from the disease.
Kennedy’s endorsement is in line with all available scientific evidence on the MMR jab. “A single dose is roughly 93% effective at preventing illness, and the second dose gets that up to 97%,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Centre at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia.
But the Health Secretary’s suggestion that the shot is effective has infuriated several members of the anti-vaccine community, who responded on X to the statement.
Anger
“I’m sorry, but there is no defence for this poorly worded statement,” wrote Dr Sherri Tenpenny, a prominent anti-vaccine activist who once claimed during a legislative hearing that the Covid vaccine could cause patients “to become magnetised, allowing them to stick spoons and forks” all over their bodies.
Del Bigtree, a prominent anti-vaccine activist who supported Kennedy’s presidential run and recently co-founded a non-profit with him called MAHA Action, also questioned the Health Secretary’s endorsement.
Bigtree suggested Kennedy’s post had “got cut off”. He then went on to make unproven claims about vaccines and autism, and linked to a documentary he had made on the topic.
“We voted for challenging the medical establishment, not parroting it,” posted Dr Mary Talley Bowden, a Texas-based physician who has opposed Covid vaccines and is currently fighting a complaint from the Texan Medical Board over hospital admitting privileges.
Bowden said the complaint was related to her prescribing patients Ivermectin.
Kennedy’s statement also contradicts years of his own vaccine scepticism. He formerly chaired an anti-vaccine non-profit called Children’s Health Defence that, during a measles outbreak in 2019, tried to sue New York over the state’s school vaccine requirement. It ultimately lost the case.
In 2023, during an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Kennedy denied the measles vaccine had led to a drop in deaths. He claimed malnutrition was the root cause of measles deaths, and that by the time the vaccine debuted in 1963, mortality was already low.
The few deaths that did occur “were all kids in the Mississippi Delta, black kids, severely malnourished, and they were dying of measles”, he told Rogan. Kennedy did not cite any evidence for that claim.
In his new role, he has occasionally acknowledged the efficacy of the MMR shot.
“Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons,” he wrote in an op-ed last month.
But in the same post, he claimed that vitamin A can “dramatically reduce measles mortality”.
Vitamin A does not affect the disease course in developed nations like the United States, and can damage children’s livers in large doses.
Public Media reported that several children in West Texas were hospitalised with vitamin A toxicity after his statement.
Alternative
It was unclear why Kennedy chose this moment to explicitly endorse the MMR shot.
In a second post later on Sunday evening, Kennedy posted pictures of himself with the families who had lost children, and promoted two therapies, “aerosolised budesonide and clarithromycin”.
Budesonide is an inhaled steroid used to treat asthma and has “no role in measles”, Offit said. Clarithromycin is an oral antibiotic, but Offit said it was the wrong kind of antibiotic for treating secondary bacterial infections caused by measles. “Both of those things are valueless.”
Offit added that despite Kennedy’s online endorsement, he expects the measles outbreak to continue and possibly worsen. “This is a massive outbreak that is not being controlled.”
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Measles jab a personal choice, says Kennedy after child’s death
Unvaccinated US measles patients display vitamin A toxicity
Kennedy’s conflicting advice leave US doctors frustrated