Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist serving as the secretary of Health and Human Services, made some wild claims about the link between measles, diet and exercise in an interview last week.
The interview aired on Fox Nation, Fox News Channel’s paid subscription service, the same day President Donald Trump delivered his speech to a joint session of Congress. The conversation between Kennedy and Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel largely flew under the radar until The New York Times reported on it Monday.
“We see a correlation between people who get hurt by measles and people who are ― who don’t have good nutrition or who don’t have a good exercise regimen,” Kennedy told Siegel at one point during the 35-minute sit-down.
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His comments were anchored to the current measles outbreak in West Texas, where there have been nearly 200 confirmed infections, 23 hospitalizations, and one death of an unvaccinated child ― the first such fatality in the U.S. in a decade ― who was part of a Mennonite congregation in Gaines County.
Without providing evidence, Kennedy pointed to malnutrition and lack of access to fresh foods in the area as factors that “may have been an issue in her death.”
He did concede that in “in highly unvaccinated communities like Mennonites, [vaccines are] something that we recommend,” but then went on to say that Mennonite leaders in Gaines County have told him “there’s a number of vaccine injured kids, about a dozen, in that community.”
“They said, we want [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workers] to look at our vaccine-injured kids, and look them in the eye,” he went on. The CDC, he claimed, “has not done a good job at quantifying the risk of vaccines.”
The CDC has extensive information about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, including their rare side effects, freely available on its website.
Kennedy also pushed unproven treatments for measles, saying two doctors treating patients in the area have told him they’re seeing “almost miraculous, instantaneous recovery” in measles patients when they’re given cod oil, steroids, antibiotics or high doses of vitamins A and D.
“We need to really do a good job talking to the frontline doctors and see what is working on the ground,” Kennedy said. “Because those, you know, therapeutics have really been ignored by the [CDC] for a long, long time.”
Kennedy also claimed there were “a lot of studies” showing that natural immunity derived from catching measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases can help the immune system fight cancer, cardiac disease and allergy conditions. However, research does not widely support that claim.
Kennedy ― whose remarks come despite his insistence throughout his Senate confirmation hearings that he is not anti-vaccine ― also shared that as a kid, he went to so-called “measles parties” ― gatherings where parents of unvaccinated children let measles spread from child to child in hopes they gained natural immunity.