In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.
A number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.
Another leading anti-vaxxer is presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
He is now Trump's secretary of HHS. Trump has directed him to investigate autism.
Two people have now died in the growing measles outbreak in west Texas and New Mexico.
New Mexico Health officials on Thursday confirmed the death of an unvaccinated adult who tested positive for measles. The first death was a school-age child in Gaines County, Texas last week.
News of a second death comes as infectious disease doctors worry that the federal government's messaging about the outbreak is putting more emphasis on treatments like vitamin A than on vaccination, even as misinformation about some of these treatments is spreading online.
Those concerns come in the wake of recent comments made by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy addressed the growing measles outbreak in an editorial for FOX News published on Sunday, also posted on the HHS website.
While mentioning the value of vaccination for community immunity, Kennedy said "the decision to vaccinate is a personal one." He emphasized treatment for measles, saying that vitamin A can "dramatically" reduce deaths from the disease. In an interview with FOX News Tuesday, he said Texas doctors are giving steroids and cod liver oil to their measles patients and "getting very, very, good results."
In his editorial, he said good nutrition is "a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses."
That emphasis on nutrition and vitamin A to treat measles is concerning some infectious disease doctors.
"Mentions of cod liver oil and vitamins [are] just distracting people away from what the single message should be, which is to increase the vaccination rate, " said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
