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.
Struggling to contain a raging measles epidemic in West Texas, public health officials increasingly worry that residents are relying on unproven remedies endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and postponing doctor visits until the illness has worsened.
Hospitals and officials sounded an alarm this week, issuing a notice explaining which measles symptoms warranted immediate medical attention and stressing the importance of timely treatment.
“I’m worried we have kids and parents that are taking all of these other medications and then delaying care,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health in Lubbock, Texas, where many of the sickest children in this outbreak have been hospitalized.
Some seriously ill children had been given alternative remedies like cod liver oil, she added.
“If they’re so, so sick and have low oxygen levels, they should have been in the hospital a day or two earlier,” she said.
...
In his first public statements about the outbreak, Mr. Kennedy faced intense backlash for minimizing the situation, saying it was “not unusual” and falsely claiming that many people hospitalized were there “mainly for quarantine.”
In the following weeks, Mr. Kennedy altered his approach, offering a muted recommendation of vaccines for people in West Texas while also promoting unproven treatments like cod liver oil, which has vitamin A, and touting “almost miraculous and instantaneous” recoveries with steroids or antibiotics.
And in a scene out of Contagion:
In the last few weeks, drugstores in West Texas have struggled to keep bottles of vitamin A pills and cod liver oil supplements on their shelves.
