RFK Jr praises unconventional treatments but not vaccines in Fox interview about Texas measles outbreak
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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised unconventional treatments, but didn’t mention vaccines, in an interview on Fox News about the expanding measles outbreak in West Texas.
In the prerecorded interview, Kennedy said that the federal government was sending vitamin A to the epicenter of the outbreak in Gaines County. He added that the government was also helping to arrange ambulance rides.
While officials from the health department have previously said that they were sending doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to the state, Kennedy, who has a history of vaccine-skeptic views, didn’t mention vaccination as an option during an interview.
Kennedy instead claimed that doctors in Texas had experienced “very, very, good results” by treating the disease using the steroid budesonide, the antibiotic clarithromycin, as well as cod liver oil, which the secretary said has high amounts of vitamins A and D.
The chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, Dr. Sean O’Leary noted when speaking to The New York Times that doctors sometimes use vitamins to treat children with measles, but added that cod liver oil is “by no means” a treatment based in evidence. He said he had never heard of a doctor using cod liver oil to treat the disease.
In a statement seemingly referring to the conventional treatments of the disease, Kennedy said, “We’re going to be honest with the American people for the first time in history about what actually — about all of the tests and all of the studies, about what we know, what we don’t know.”
“We’re going to tell them, and that’s going to anger some people who want an ideological approach to public health,” he added.
However, in an op-ed for Fox News Digital on March 2, Kennedy wrote: “Parents play a pivotal role in safeguarding their children’s health. All parents should consult with their healthcare providers to understand their options to get the M.M.R. vaccine.”
“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one. Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons,” he added.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that it was sending “disease detectives” to Texas. State Health officials shared data on Tuesday that indicated the outbreak isn’t slowing down. According to the Texas Department of Health, almost 160 people have contracted the disease, 22 of whom have been hospitalized.
Most cases of measles are resolved within a number of weeks, but some cases can lead to pneumonia, making it hard for children especially to get oxygen into their lungs. It may also lead to brain swelling, which can lead to deafness, blindness, and intellectual disabilities. As many as one in five people infected with measles will end up in hospital. Measles also leads to a weakened immune system — a study found in 2015 that before the M.M.R. vaccine was widely in use, measles could have been behind as many as half of all infectious disease deaths in children.
Federal officials have faced criticism for not emphasizing the need for immunizations. The outbreak has taken the life of one child and the official number of cases is likely to be an undercount, Lubbock, Texas public health director Katherine Wells said, according to The Times.
The outbreak has mostly been spreading within a Mennonite community in Gaines County. They have traditionally had lower rates of immunization and they often avoid using the health care system. Wells added that she thought many of those families have not been seeking care and haven’t officially counted in the state numbers.
“I think it’s probably in the hundreds,” she told the paper. “We know that some of their schools were closed with lots of sick children, but we don’t know who those children were.”
Experts note that at least 95 percent of members of a community have to be vaccinated to avoid outbreaks. In 2024, about 82 percent of kindergarten children in the county had been vaccinated. Vaccination rates have been decreasing in the U.S., making it more likely that an outbreak will move between groups of unvaccinated individuals.
Nationwide, 93 percent of kindergarten children received the measles vaccine in the 2023-2024 school year. That’s compared to 95 percent before the pandemic. Cases of measles have been found in nine counties, and many of them have vaccination rates that do not reach federal standards.
