During the Senate HELP Committee, when asked if he would recommend families vaccinate against the measles, RFK Jr. confirmed he would. This is at odds with his long history of anti-vaccine rhetoric and his direct role in a tragic measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people, mostly children. Here’s the truth:
83 People Died In A Measles Epidemic In Samoa After Kennedy Helped Fuel A Wave Of Vaccine Hesitancy. In 2019, Kennedy visited Samoa at the invitation of a local anti-vaccine influencer. At the time the island nation was attempting to get its vaccination program back on track after two children died following a nurse’s error in mixing measles vaccines. Kennedy met with the Samoan prime minister and prominent local anti-vaccine activists. A few months later, a measles epidemic broke out in Samoa, killing 83 people, mostly infants and children.
Kennedy Claimed That The Global Decline In Measles Cases Was Caused By “Nutrition And Clean Water, Not The Vaccine” And Questioned Whether The MMR Vaccine Is Necessary At All. In a 2019 address to Texans for Vaccine Choice shortly before his trip to Samoa, Kennedy discussed the cause of the global decline in measles outbreaks. “The drop in measles occurred before the vaccine was introduced,” Kennedy said “The thing that cured measles was nutrition and clean water, not the vaccine.” Kennedy questioned whether the MMR vaccine was necessary since tuberculosis and scurvy had been largely eradicated through similar methods without vaccines and he warned parents that pharmaceutical companies are “trying to get at your baby and force him to take their vaccines. And give him a lifetime dependency.”
RFK Jr.’s Siblings Warned That His Anti-Vaccine Advocacy Was Spurring Global Outbreaks Of The Measles And Calling Him “Tragically Wrong About Vaccines.” In May 2019, shortly before his trip to Samoa, two of RFK Jr’s siblings and a niece authored an op-ed in Politico denouncing RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine advocacy as dangerous: “The World Health Organization reports a 300 percent increase in the numbers of measles cases around the world this year compared with the first three months of 2018. More than 110,000 people are now dying from measles every year. The WHO, the health arm of the United Nations, has listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to global health in 2019. Most cases of preventable diseases occur among unvaccinated children, because parents have chosen not to vaccinate, have delayed vaccination, have difficulty accessing vaccines, or the children were too young to receive the vaccines. These tragic numbers are caused by the growing fear and mistrust of vaccines—amplified by internet doomsayers. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—Joe and Kathleen’s brother and Maeve’s uncle—is part of this campaign to attack the institutions committed to reducing the tragedy of preventable infectious diseases. He has helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.”
In The Middle Of A Measles Outbreak In Minnesota’s Somali-American Community, Kennedy Told Parents That “Africans and African Americans May Be Particularly Vulnerable To Vaccine Injuries, Including Autism.” In 2017, amid a measles outbreak that was devastating Minnesota’s Somali-American community due to low vaccination rates, Kennedy continued to push his false claims that “science and anecdotal evidence suggest that Africans and African Americans may be particularly vulnerable to vaccine injuries including autism.”
During A Measles Outbreak In Southern California, Kennedy Falsely Claimed Nearly Half of The Cases Came From The Vaccine Strain of Measles – But No Outbreaks From The Vaccine Strain of Measles Have Ever Been Recorded. During a 2015 Measles outbreak in Anaheim, California, Kennedy lied about the outbreak supposedly being caused by vaccines, telling a crowd, “Where is the measles coming from in the Disneyland outbreak? 39 percent of the kids who got measles got vaccine strain measles. What does that mean? It means they got it from the vaccine or they got it from somebody who got the vaccine.” In reality, there have been no known breakout cases of the strain of measles used in the vaccine – ever. The CDC found all genotyped patients in the California outbreak had measles genotype B3, not the live attenuated strain used in the vaccine. Kennedy pulled those numbers out of thin air.
Kennedy Said That It Was A “Great Week” When He And His Siblings Had Measles And That Big Pharma Developed The MMR Vaccine To Create Lifetime Customers For Chronic Illnesses Caused By The Vaccine. In a 2021 interview with the Mikhaila Peterson podcast RFK Jr. said, “They are a rogue, outlaw industry that is making… And you know, listen, if they give you a measles vaccine… Listen, I had the measles when I was a kid. I had 11 brothers and sisters. We all got measles. It was a great week. We stayed home. We watched [inaudible]. We got soup. What is the cure for measles? The treatment for measles, it’s chicken soup and vitamin A. You can’t patent those. So pharma was seeing all these people who are sick and making no money. But if they give you an MMR vaccine and now one in every couple thousand people get the seizures and one in every thousand of them now has lifetime epilepsy, you now have a customer for life who’s paying a lot of money for chronic disease.”
- Kennedy Said Measles, Mumps, And Chicken Pox Were “Self Limiting” And “Gone” After A Week, But Chronic Diseases Caused By Vaccines Are Causing People To Become “Addicted” To Pharmaceutical Treatments. Kennedy said on the Mikhaila Peterson podcast, “Every one of these childhood diseases – mumps, measles, chickenpox – were self-limiting. In other words, after a week they’re gone and they were all treatable. None of the chronic diseases that are caused by the vaccines are self-limiting. They’re treatable, the symptoms are treatable, but you’re addicted.”