{"id":9313,"date":"2025-04-23T14:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T19:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9313"},"modified":"2025-04-23T14:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T19:43:10","slug":"anti-vaxxers-are-grifting-off-the-measles-outbreak-and-claim-a-bioweapon-caused-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/04\/23\/anti-vaxxers-are-grifting-off-the-measles-outbreak-and-claim-a-bioweapon-caused-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Vaxxers Are Grifting Off the Measles Outbreak\u2014and Claim a Bioweapon Caused It"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/antivax-grift-measles-crisis-bioweapon\/\">Wired<\/a> <strong>Activists affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are selling a \u201cmeasles treatment and prevention protocol\u201d for hundreds of dollars, including supplements supposedly formulated by AI.<\/strong> Anti-vaccine activists with close ties to US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are falsely claiming that the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/this-is-how-measles-can-kill-texas-new-mexico-outbreak-vaccines-vitamin-a\/\">measles public health crisis<\/a>&nbsp;in Texas is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/this-is-how-measles-can-kill-texas-new-mexico-outbreak-vaccines-vitamin-a\/\">caused<\/a>&nbsp;by a \u201cbioweapon\u201d targeting the Mennonite community. These activists are now trying to sell their followers a range of pseudoscientific cures\u2014some purportedly powered by artificial intelligence\u2014that supposedly prevent customers from contracting measles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The claims were made in a webinar posted online last week and hosted by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/mikki-willis-tulsi-gabbard-red-pilled-plandemic\/\">Mikki Willis<\/a>, an infamous conspiracy filmmaker best known for his&nbsp;<em>Plandemic<\/em>&nbsp;series of pseudo-documentaries. These helped supercharge Covid-19 disinformation online and were, Kennedy has&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/culture\/culture-news\/rfk-jr-plandemic-funding-1235173801\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"said, opens in a new window\">said<\/a>, funded in part by Children\u2019s Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded. Willis also&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/CzrYl-gP_bZ\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"created a video for Kennedy, opens in a new window\">created a video for Kennedy<\/a>&nbsp;marking the announcement of his independent run for the presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not going to be careful by calling it a virus,\u201d Willis said in the measles webinar. \u201cI\u2019m going to call it what it is, and that is a bioweapon, and my belief after interviewing these families is that this has been manipulated and targeted towards a community that is a threat because of their natural way of living.\u201d (Measles is not a bioweapon. It is a viral infection that can be\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/05\/well\/measles-doctors-treatment.html\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"easily prevented, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">easily prevented<\/a>\u00a0by getting a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/publichealth.jhu.edu\/2025\/what-to-know-about-measles-and-vaccines\">vaccine<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/antivax-grift-measles-crisis-bioweapon\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wired Activists affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are selling a \u201cmeasles treatment and prevention protocol\u201d for hundreds of dollars, including supplements supposedly formulated by AI. Anti-vaccine activists with close ties to US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are falsely claiming that the&nbsp;measles public health crisis&nbsp;in Texas is&nbsp;caused&nbsp;by a \u201cbioweapon\u201d targeting the Mennonite community. [&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":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"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\/9313","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=9313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9314,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9313\/revisions\/9314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}