A Top Ten List of Vaccine Misinformation from RFK Jr
Did you watch RFK Jr repeatedly challenge Sen Ben Luján to tell him “one piece of misinformation I’ve ever said. Just one?”
Of course, while Sen Luján had a list of misinformation, he didn’t read it because he didn’t want to waste his limited time in the hearing telling everyone something they already knew.
A Top Ten List of Vaccine Misinformation from RFK Jr
But in case you are one of those people who are still defending RFK Jr. and his anti-vaccine agenda, we will provide you with a little top ten list of vaccine misinformation that RFK Jr has said over the years.
Vaccine misinformation that he keeps repeating!
10 - RFK Jr repeatedly says that vaccines are not safety tested, including that vaccines are only tested for three or four days with no placebo group. Not true. Vaccines are well tested and are safe, with few risks. They are tested for more than 4 or 5 days, together, in double-blind, placebo controlled trials, with saline placebos, in long-term studies, and they are evaluated for mutagenicity, carcinogenicity or impairment of fertility.
9 - He says that the measles vaccine wanes and that it is a leaky vaccine. It does not. Two doses of a measles containing vaccine provide life-long protection for nearly all people, no matter what their titers may show. It is far from leaky.
8 - Immigrants are causing our measles outbreaks, something RFK Jr has said recently to deflect blame for his inaction in letting our outbreaks continue to soar. It is not true. Few of our measles are in immigrants or immigrant communities.
7 - RFK Jr has repeatedly said that he did not go to Samoa to talk about vaccines, even though there is a lot of evidence that he did and that he “shared his views that vaccines are not safe” with the Health Minister.
6 - He said that “Every child who gets measles gets a headline. When I was kid, there were 2 million measles cases a year and nobody wrote about them.” On the contrary, in the pre-vaccine era and later with outbreaks, measles routinely made the headlines.
5 - He said that children are given 72 vaccines. We do not have anywhere near 72 vaccines to give children!
4 - RFK Jr has said there are health benefits to getting measles, including that it can prevent cancer. Now if that were true, since most adults born before 1957 had natural measles infections, you would assume that they would have the lowest rates of cancer, right? They don’t. Anyway, this myth comes from anti-vaccine influencers misusing a study about engineered measles viruses to treat cancer and had nothing to do with natural measles infections! The authors of the study have even said that measles is not protective against cancer. The only benefit to having measles is natural immunity, but you have to earn that immunity by enduring a week of high fever and other symptoms and hoping you don’t suffer a complication, like pneumonia or encephalitis. And you have to survive having measles.
3 - On Joe Rogan, RFK Jr said that only “kids in the Mississippi Delta, black kids, severely malnourished” used to die with measles, and he credited the creation of WIC in 1964 for decreasing measles deaths. Neither is true. Deaths occurred all over the country and the first WIC site didn’t open until 1974! It was the measles vaccine that decreased measles cases and deaths.
2 - RFK Jr has said that it’s hard to kill a healthy child if they get a vaccine preventable disease, like measles. This is of course ridiculous, as nearly half of flu deaths are in kids who are otherwise healthy (just unvaccinated), and most measles deaths are in previously healthy kids, as are pertussis, diphtheria, and Hib deaths, etc.
1 - And maybe the most harmful thing that RFK Jr continues to say is that vaccines are associated with autism. They are not. He also never talks about the things that are much more likely to be causing the increase in kids, and adults, being diagnosed with autism over the years, like state and federal education laws, DSM criteria changes, and increased screening.
That’s a lot of misinformation about vaccines from one person!
It’s not even all the things about vaccines that RFK Jr. has said that can be considered misinformation.
Let’s not forget that RFK Jr. even said that MMR vaccines cause more deaths in children than measles!!!
Every time he talks about vaccines, he is basically pushing an anti-vaccine talking point that we have already refuted a thousand times already.
It’s past time that folks stop listening to him and that we take back our public health systems!