{"id":8904,"date":"2025-03-11T16:24:16","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T21:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=8904"},"modified":"2025-03-11T16:24:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T21:24:18","slug":"kennedy-links-measles-outbreak-to-poor-diet-and-health-citing-fringe-theories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/03\/11\/kennedy-links-measles-outbreak-to-poor-diet-and-health-citing-fringe-theories\/","title":{"rendered":"Kennedy Links Measles Outbreak to Poor Diet and Health, Citing Fringe Theories"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/10\/health\/measles-texas-kennedy-fox.html\">NYT<\/a> In a recent interview, the health secretary also suggested that the measles vaccine had harmed children in West Texas, center of an outbreak. In a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/nation.foxnews.com\/watch\/d5c0ee929861616db083854daa058a56\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sweeping interview<\/a>, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, outlined a strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas that strayed far from mainstream science, relying heavily on fringe theories about prevention and treatments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He issued a muffled call for vaccinations in the affected community, but said the choice was a personal one. He suggested that measles vaccine injuries were more common than known,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC9939709\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">contrary to extensive research<\/a>. He asserted that natural immunity to measles, gained through infection, somehow also protected against cancer and heart disease, a claim not supported by research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He cheered on questionable treatments like&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/04\/health\/texas-measles-outbreak-kennedy.html\">cod liver oil<\/a>, and said that local doctors had achieved \u201calmost miraculous and instantaneous\u201d recoveries with steroids or antibiotics.<\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"GQJhrrODQfa\"><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NYT In a recent interview, the health secretary also suggested that the measles vaccine had harmed children in West Texas, center of an outbreak. In a&nbsp;sweeping interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, outlined a strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas that strayed far from mainstream science, relying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-measles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8905,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8904\/revisions\/8905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}