Washington D.C. – While the U.S. measles crisis remains on pace to blow past last year’s historically bad caseload sometime this summer, Gizmodo reports new research published in JAMA Network Open “has shown a troubling rise in public engagement with some notably ineffective and potentially toxic alternative treatments for this deadly and highly contagious disease”. And surprise, surprise, Donald Trump’s prolifically anti-vax health secretary played a leading role in it while Kennedy has also baselessly fear-mongered the safety of the measles vaccine to the extreme.
The researchers — including from Harvard Medical School — documented a major surge in public interest in such dubious alternatives following RFK Jr’s FOX News interview on March 4, 2025, where he touted cod liver oil supplements and vitamin A as viable treatments for measles. Alarmingly, the study found: “Between January [1] and March [31,] 2025, America’s Poison Centers reported a 38.7% increase in vitamin A exposures.”
“In the middle of deadly measles outbreaks, RFK Jr. used his celebrity status to push Americans towards snake oil ‘miracle’ cures and away from the only proven safe and effective option: the MMR vaccine. And apparently, his misguided efforts encouraged many Americans to poison themselves for nothing,” for Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project: “For Kennedy, it’s always any other solution but the right one. Measles continues to storm back like it’s the 1800s as a direct result of vaccine smear campaigns RFK Jr has trafficked in for years. This is the time for the Health Secretary to take some responsibility and use his federal resources and power to promote the measles vaccine. And yet Kennedy’s department apparently hasn’t run a single public service announcement and it hasn’t even come up at all on his taxpayer-funded vanity podcast. A charlatan to the end, and our public health keeps suffering for it.”
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