The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asked people to vaccinate measles, while at the same time they falsely claim that it has not been “proven of security” and its protection is short -lived.
Kennedy, an antivacamic activist who now supervises federal health agencies, including food and medication administration and disease control centers, had moved a complete backrest of measles vaccines, instead of the vaccine being the “most effective form” to prevent virus spreading.
In an interview on Wednesday with CBS News, Kennedy said the Trump administration focused on finding ways to treat people who choose not to vaccinate. However, there are no approved measles treatments, which kills almost 3 out of every 1,000 people diagnosed.
Many medical experts have had problems with their current measles outbreak approach, which has included emphasizing unseeding treatments and vaccination framed as a personal choice (which some doctors see as a wink to their anti -cacamic supporters).
Kennedy also suggested that measles cases are inevitable in the United States due to vaccine elimination immunity, a notion that doctors say it is false.
“We are always going to have measles, whatever happens, since the vaccine decreases very quickly,” said Kennedy.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center of the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, said that two doses of the measles, paper and rubella (MMR) vaccine offer protection for a lifetime. This is because the vaccine stimulates the production of memory cells, he said, which can recognize the virus throughout life.
“We eliminated the measles of this country. That could never happen if immunity decreased,” said Offit, who serves in an independent vaccine advice committee for the FDA.
In addition to occasional outbreaks, measles has not been constantly present in the United States since before 2000. International travelers introduce it locally, and from there it can extend among the underestimated communities.
“The federal government’s position is that my position is that people should obtain the measles vaccine. But the government should not demand them,” Kennedy told CBS News.
The Federal Government does not demand children’s vaccines; Rather, the 50 states require them for children who attend public school. The FDA approves vaccines based on safety and efficacy, and CDCs make recommendations on who should obtain them, that states often choose to follow.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the 50 states have exemptions for vaccine mandates for medical reasons, and all five, except five, have additional exemptions for other reasons, such as religious or personal objections.
The current outbreak was driven by transmission in a Mennonite community mainly in Gaines County, Texas, where vaccine’s doubt prevails. There have been 668 total cases since January, according to the NBC News account, including two pediatric deaths and a suspected death suspicion. Before those deaths, the United States had not had a measles death in a decade, and a child had not died of measles since 2003.
Kennedy has indicated the number of higher cases in Europe as evidence that the United States is responding properly to the outbreak. But the figure that has recently cited, approximately 127,000 measles cases in Europe, is the total of last year in 53 countries. The low vaccination rates in southeastern Europe were an important taxpayer, according to the World Health Organization.
“He has this way of twisting things,” said Dr. William Moss, director of the International Vaccines Access Center Johns Hopkins. “We should compare measles in the United States this year with measles in the United States and previous years. To say that Europe has more cases for a year than we have had in three months this year, it is just a false comparison.”
This year’s count in the United States has been the highest since 2019, when there was an important outbreak in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York. Doctors fear that the United States can be about to lose their measles elimination state as Kennedy continues to sow doubts about vaccine safety.
“At this time we do not know the risks of many of these products because they do not feel security proof,” Kennedy told CBS News. “Many of the vaccines are only tested for three or four days without a placebo group.”
Dr. Offer Levy, director of the Precision Vaccine Program at the Boston Children’s Hospital, said that the development of vaccines usually has been 10 to 20 years, with the remarkable exception of Covid shots, which were taken to the market in less than a year thanks to RNM technology and a coordinated effort throughout the world. (Even then, fundamental research behind RNM vaccines dates from 1997.)
When it comes to children’s immunizations, many of which were approved decades ago, there may be no placebo controls or long -term security follow -ups for each one, said Levy. However, he pointed out that even after vaccines are approved, several surveillance systems led by the government control adverse reactions. And in the rare case they find something, that vaccine is extracted from the market, he added.
Moss agreed that the types of clinical trials for vaccines have changed over time. However, “I don’t think there is any other product that we use that it is more rigorously evaluated for both security and efficacy,” he said.
Offit said that Kennedy “only continues to choose and choose” to the safety of vaccines with statements that are not scientifically valid, for example, suggesting that all children’s vaccines were not tested against the placebos, when, in fact, many were.
“The problem with RFK Jr. is its definition of ‘placebo,” said Offit. “Its definition of placebo is water or saline solution, which means only normal sodium chloride, but that is not the definition of Fda. The definition of the FDA is something inert.”
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said that Kennedy “raised valid concerns about vaccine test practices, including the use of active comparators instead of inert plates and short -backed observation windows backed by public data.”
But doctors said there is a legitimate reason to use active comparators, vaccines that have already been approved for infections given, instead of placebos: it would not be ethical to retain the benefit of a vaccine of the study participants, so the trials often try new vaccines against older versions.
Levy said there is always space for more long -term security or monitoring studies.
“I think the secretary is right that we could do more to study vaccine safety,” he said. “Of course, let’s say, did we miss something? Should we learn more? But let’s not forget that these childhood vaccines have avoided serious illness in children.”
