WASHINGTON >> U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reprised various misleading claims about vaccines this week, including that the measles vaccine contains cells from aborted fetuses and the mumps vaccination does not work.
Kennedy’s comments come as the U.S. battles one of its worst outbreaks of measles in 25 years. Scientists have warned that the U.S. is at a tipping point for the return of endemic measles, declared eradicated nationally in 2000, and say U.S. public health officials like Kennedy should provide urgent endorsement for highly effective vaccines.
Two children have died and hundreds more have been infected in the outbreak in Texas, which is centered in a Mennonite community and has spread to neighboring states, including New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
Kennedy, who became the nation’s top health official in February, has for decades helped sow doubts regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, contributing to a decline in vaccination rates.
Kennedy says he is not opposed to vaccines, but has begun to revive some of the unproven or debunked theories he promoted as a lawyer and public figure, now from his perch at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.
“There are populations in our country, like the Mennonites in Texas, (who) were most afflicted, and they have religious objections to the vaccination, because the MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted fetus debris and DNA particles, so they don’t want to take it,” he said in a News...
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