Healthcare. Two syllables, ten letters. It’s something that every American at some point has had to deal with, be it insurance payments or for medical treatment. Perhaps the most common experience for any individual is receiving their vaccinations. Regardless if it’s for RSV and Hepatitis B at birth, or for shingles at age 50, everyone eventually receives some vaccination. That however, describes a perfect world. One that simply doesn’t exist. With the increasing rise of the anti-vaccination movement, hypercharged after the Wakefield scandal over the MMR (Mumps, Measles, Rubella) vaccine in the 1990’s, it’s become less and less likely for people to actually seek those vaccinations. Not helping this any is political faces like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy, who came to national attention this year for his now extinct presidential campaign, was originally known for his work within environmental law. He served as the chief prosecuting attorney for the Riverkeepers organization for over thirty years. He wrote several books on his work, alongside being named a “Hero of the Planet” by Time Magazine. By all regards, he was an environmental activist with complete dedication to the cause.
When Kennedy began to speak openly of his belief in vaccination conspiracies, the very same people he’d worked for began actively distancing themselves from his increasingly extreme beliefs. It was only worsened when in 2021, he aided the publishing of “Cause Unknown,” which reported a fictitious death spike brought about via Covid-19 vaccinations. Further signaling his shift right was his hiring of Del Bigtree as his campaign’s communications director. Bigtree is a known face within anti-vaccination advocacy groups, and to this day remains a proponent of several anti-vax theories.
One of Bigtree’s more notable quirks is his continued support of the very conspiracy that got RFK Jr. into the rabbit hole: Vaccines can directly cause autism within children who receive them.
As above-mentioned, the theory originated from discredited and now unregistered British physician Andrew Wakefield. He claimed that the MMR vaccination caused a bogus intestinal disease that served as a marker of autism in children. What he didn’t share was the fact this was an effort to market his own version of the MMR vaccine. The paper was an utter fabrication, quickly disproven by several countering papers. In the ensuing series of litigation, Wakefield was removed from the British Medical registry and had his paper retracted by the Lancet, akin to a death blow for most academic careers.
Wakefield would go on to be charged with egregious medical misconduct, alongside outright scientific fraud.
In spite of this, Kennedy continues to lend credence to the theories supporting these supposed links between autism and vaccination. Now he mostly argues on the point that the thermisol in shots is the leading cause of vaccination-related autism. This is in spite of the fact that thermisol dilutes into ethyl mercury, which is harmless to humans, and is only used in multi-use vials of flu vaccines, which have been largely phased out since the early 2000s.
Perhaps the most horrifying impact Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views have had was in the aftermath of an incident in 2018 in American Samoa. Two MMR vaccines were incorrectly prepared with expired muscle relaxer rather than water, which led to the death of two children. The Samoan government temporarily suspended the MMR program. This gave Kennedy time, through his non-profit, the Children’s Defense Fund, to begin an astroturfing campaign against restarting the vaccinations altogether.
A year later, an entire outbreak of measles occurred in American Samoa. The outbreak likely started when a visitor to the small island landed with a non-presenting case of the measles. Because vaccination rates had plummeted from nearly 90% in 2013, to just 30% in 2019, it tore through the island. 83 people passed away from the disease, most younger children. Another 5,700 would end up infected.
All preventable cases with deaths that could have been entirely avoided, fuelled by a man who was too busy dumping a dead bear in Central Park and having an affair with a journalist who later wrote on behalf of his campaign to care. To date, Kennedy still maintains he has no fault in the scale of the Samoan outbreak.
But why talk about this? Why discuss the anti-vaccination views of a former third party candidate who dropped out? After all, it’s not like he was really ever in the running for President. But his friend Trump was.
Donald Trump is now the President-elect of the United States. The very same Donald Trump who offered Kennedy oversight and control of: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), alongside the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
This is the very same Kennedy who thinks vaccines cause autism. The same man who claimed that the Covid vaccine cost more lives in “Cause Unknown.” One who now runs around crying for people to Make America Healthy Again. He does all this while saying the man to do it is him, a man perhaps best known for having worms in his brain, and a nearly 80 year old Trump, who’s health status is becoming an increasing point of speculation. The kicker to all of it? Neither have any medical experience or formal medical education. A New York businessman wants to put a lawyer in charge of America’s leading health organizations.
It’s hard to predict such a duo. Perhaps the best thing Americans can do at this point is hope. Hope that this approaching fever breaks before it claims unnecessary lives. You don’t need polio to Make America Great Again.
