Public Health Watch Newsletter: As Measles Outbreak Rages On, Trump HHS Denies Leading Role While Ramping Up Autism Anti-Vax Propaganda Campaign

It’s been another banner week for chaos, blame shifting, public health decline, and anti-vax propaganda from the Trump-RFK Jr. Health Department.

The rapidly growing measles outbreak in South Carolina is now officially the worst in the U.S. “since the disease was declared eliminated in this country more than two decades ago.” The Trump HHS finally acknowledged the situation that has been festering since October — but of course shirked all responsibility for the sharp decline in vaccination rates fueling it that was encouraged for years by RFK Jr. and the many fellow anti-vaxxers he personally recruited for top health posts in this administration.

Speaking of taking zero responsibility, Secretary Kennedy delivered a falsehood-filled interview with USA Today, including the absurd claim: “I’ve never been anti-vaccine”. Has he met the RFK Jr. from 2023 who declared “There is no vaccine that is safe and effective”, and who is currently pushing an aggressive anti-vax agenda on multiple fronts based on nothing but debunked conspiracy theories? In fact, Kennedy’s anti-vax campaign has been so hostile that major vaccine manufacturer Moderna now “does not plan to invest in new late-stage vaccine trials because of growing opposition to immunizations from health officials in the United States” even as the company reported positive results from a cancer vaccine study.

Among the new fronts Kennedy has opened is his decision this week to pack a key federal autism advisory board with several unqualified advocates of the widely disproven ‘vaccines cause autism’ myth. This move is part and parcel with Kennedy’s proposed overhaul of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) which key lawmakers in Congress are warning “could threaten the domestic vaccine supply, undermine public health, and potentially enrich Secretary Kennedy’s family and close allies.”

If Secretary Kennedy were honestly pro-vaccine, you might have expected him to condemn or at least walk back the extremely disturbing recent statements made by his hand-picked Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) who challenged the need for the polio and measles vaccines and suggested that more unvaccinated American children put at risk of measles is a worthy experiment. The deafening silence from RFK Jr. and the HHS PR department on such dangerous rhetoric from within the Trump administration inviting a return of polio that could permanently paralyze American children could quite fairly be deemed an endorsement of it.

Capping off a chaotic week, it’s reported today that Secretary Kennedy Jr. is engaged in a bitter war with the head of the American Medical Association, the top U.S. advocacy group for doctors, who are “insisting Kennedy is a threat to public health.” All is not well for the state of America’s public health.

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