STAT+: RFK Jr. says the measles vaccine causes deaths ‘every year.’ Scientists disagree
RFK Jr.'s claims on the safety of vaccine safety aren't backed by the data.
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as America’s secretary of health and human services, neutral observers might have asked themselves: Would it be possible for a lawyer who had questioned the safety of childhood vaccinations for two decades to look at the available data and reconsider his views?
Kennedy’s recent interviews with Fox News, along with an op-ed he published on that outlet’s website, have been enough to make many experts conclude the answer is “no.”
Parsing every claim about the measles vaccine that Kennedy has made would take a long time, so let’s focus on one: that the vaccine causes deaths every year. Researchers say that simply isn’t true, except potentially in a small number of people who are not supposed to receive it — those with compromised immune systems.
“There are adverse events from the vaccine,” Kennedy said in a March 11 interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity. “It does cause deaths every year. It causes — it causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.”
