Washington D.C. – On ‘Face The Nation’ this weekend, former CDC chief medical officer Dr. Debra Houry delivered a blunt but accurate assessment of RFK Jr.’s science-trampling tenure as Trump Health Secretary: “I think the secretary has caused a lot of irreparable harm, and when you look at many of the polls out there, the trust in public health, specifically CDC, has decreased dramatically, over 20 points in many polls. That’s really difficult to recover from.”
Case in Point: The Historic Measles Crisis With No End in Sight. Today, the Washington Post reports, in “roughly half the time”, the U.S. is “on the brink of surpassing last year’s total measles cases, putting the country on track to set a new record before summer’s end”. Compounding the problem: “As vaccination rates decline and measles spreads wider, those outbreaks are becoming harder to extinguish … The rise in vaccine hesitancy has affected vaccine-preventable diseases beyond measles. For example, cases of pertussis, or whooping cough, which is highly contagious, have been on the increase nationally.”
And What Is The Trump-RFK Jr. HHS Doing About It? Making Matters Worse. The Post notes: “Since taking office, [Kennedy] has questioned vaccine safety, reshaped federal vaccine policy and criticized long-standing vaccination recommendations. … Once the measles virus starts spreading, health departments rely on labor-intensive contact tracing, case investigations and quarantine measures to keep outbreaks from growing. But public health officials say recent federal funding cuts have left many departments with fewer people to do that critical work. Despite the rapid resurgence in measles activity across the country, outbreak control capacity of health departments in the U.S. has not recovered or expanded.”
“As disinformation really began to suppress vaccination rates after the pandemic, RFK Jr. was right there in the thick of it, abusing his celebrity status to stoke unfounded fear in the safety of any and every vaccine. Unfortunately, Kennedy found success in scaring families without cause,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project. “As health secretary, Kennedy has used every bureaucratic tool at his disposal to stoke anti-vax skepticism without proof, which further sabotaged vaccination rates and gave way for measles to roar back after decades of dormancy, with other preventable diseases right behind it. To make matters worse, while RFK Jr. is quick to promote unsubstantiated anti-vax claims and unproven miracle cures, he has made virtually no effort on behalf of the federal government to combat the growing measles crisis, leaving states and doctors to scramble for resources and guidance. The lasting damage Kennedy has done to public trust in vaccines is apparent every day in communities across the country, where doctors now struggle to cope with measles they’ve never seen before on top of Trump’s cuts to public health protections that dealt them a losing hand.”
SOME OF THE MANY WAYS RFK JR. BASELESSLY DISCOURAGED VACCINES AND WELCOMED OUTBREAKS OF PREVENTABLE DISEASE:
- In 2015, Kennedy called vaccination a “Holocaust,” repeating his claims about autism and comparing it to genocide.
- A 2019 study found that “the majority of Facebook advertisements spreading misinformation about vaccines were funded by two anti-vaccine groups”, including Children’s Health Defense which was founded and led at the time by RFK Jr. This is the same group that invited an Idaho woman on their podcast to amplify her claims that vaccines killed her 18-month-old twins, and who has since been charged with their murders.
- “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” declared RFK Jr. in a July 2023 appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast.
- During an interview on Fox News in March 2025, Kennedy recklessly and baselessly claimed that the MMR vaccine leads to “deaths every year” among other blatant falsehoods.
RELATED FROM PROTECT OUR CARE:
- RESIGN: ‘Air Force confirms first death in Lackland flu outbreak, Rep. Castro says’ – San Antonio Express-News
- MUST READ: WashPost: ‘Inside the push to keep RFK Jr.’s vaccine agenda alive’
- What About RFK Jr.’s Emails?
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