“Absolute Nonsense”: As Measles Cases Soar & Kids Die, Expert Slams RFK Jr. on Vaccine-Autism Link

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

In his first news conference as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who now oversees the nation’s federal health agencies, focused on new findings about autism published in a Centers for Disease Control report which found an increase in apparent autism rates among 8-year old children. Kennedy described autism as an “epidemic” and blamed environmental factors for the increase in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder.

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: This is a preventable disease. We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics. They can provide a vulnerability. You need an environmental toxin.

AMY GOODMAN: RFK Jr. did not connect autism to vaccines during his news conference, but in his previous role as chair of Children’s Health Defense, he had repeatedly claimed that vaccines cause autism — which they do not.

Meanwhile, as the number of measles cases in the United States surpasses 700, RFK Jr.’s position on the measles vaccine is mixed. At an event Tuesday with Republican Indiana Governor Mike Braun and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, Kennedy said the measles vaccine is “leaky,” which medical experts dispute.

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: People get measles because they don’t vaccinate. They get measles because the vaccine wanes. The vaccines wane about 4.8% per year. And so, you know, that — it’s a leaky vaccine, and that problem is always going to be around.

AMY GOODMAN: Measles cases have been reported in at least 24 states, with the majority of infections in Texas, where the outbreak began in January. Three unvaccinated people have died from measles-related illnesses so far: an adult in New Mexico and two elementary-aged schoolchildren in rural Texas. Before that, there wasn’t a measles death for the last decade.

Earlier this month, Kennedy attended the funeral of the second child who died of measles, an 8-year-old girl in West Texas. During his visit, he posted on social media, “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” unquote.

However, he’s also continued to raise safety concerns about vaccines. In an interview last week with CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook, Kennedy claimed the vaccines were, quote, “not safety tested.”

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: I’m not going to take people’s vaccines away from them.

DR. JONATHAN LAPOOK: Right.

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: What I’m going to do is make sure that we have good science so that people can make an informed choice. And we are doing that science today, so that we know the risks of that product and we also know what the benefits are. And right now we don’t know the risks of many of these products because they’re not safety tested.

DR. JONATHAN LAPOOK: And I understand that position. But just to be clear, you are saying, and we do, on the federal level — and you personally do — recommend that people get the measles vaccine?

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Yeah. And when I say they’re not safety tested, what I mean is they’re not adequately — many of the vaccines are tested for only three or four days, with no placebo group.

AMY GOODMAN: Measles is a highly contagious airborne disease that’s preventable through vaccines and had been considered eliminated from the United States in 2000. The disease has now spread to border communities in Canada and Mexico, with Canada reporting 730 cases, Mexico at least 360 cases with one death.

For more on RJK Jr. and his positions on measles and autism, and what to do about the growing number of cases of measles, we’re joined now from Boston by Dr. Peter Hotez, who is usually in Texas. He’s dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he’s also the co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development. He’s the author of several books, including The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning and Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad.

Dr. Hotez, welcome back to Democracy Now! So —

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Thanks for having me, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: We recently spoke, but since then, I believe two more people have died of measles. If you can explain how rare this is and what actually is happening in your state of Texas?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Yeah, Amy, we haven’t seen a measles death in a very long time, and now we have two unvaccinated children who tragically died from measles. These were otherwise healthy school-aged children who did not have to die, but they weren’t vaccinated with the highly effective and safe MMR vaccine.

And this measles epidemic is really escalating. We now have at least 500-plus known cases of measles in West Texas. It’s probably much higher than that, because if you do the back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the case fatality rate of measles, there’s probably closer to a thousand, or maybe even more than that, cases in West Texas. And now it’s extending into New Mexico, into Oklahoma, into Kansas. They all seem to be related to the same very large epidemic. So this is sweeping across the Great Plains. And we’ve had sustained transmission now since the very beginning of the year, possibly even earlier than that. And the worry is that we’re going to reach a point where, if it continues, we could even lose our elimination status for measles, which was so hard-fought.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to RFK Jr.’s what seems to be — I mean, it’s nuanced, but a slightly shifting position? He would not have endorsed MMR, the measles vaccine, before, but now, under enormous pressure, with hundreds and hundreds of cases of measles, and it being fast-growing, he has said he’s not opposed to them. Can you explain and also address his concerns?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Well, his comments are insufficient. He grudgingly acknowledges the importance of the MMR vaccine and immunizations, when it’s the only way we’re going to be able to contain this highly dangerous and lethal epidemic. So he needs to be much more of an advocate for MMR vaccinations.

And he surrounds it with disinformation, Amy. You know, he says the measles vaccine is a “leaky vaccine.” I’m not even sure I know what that means, but it’s absolute nonsense. It’s one of the most effective and safest vaccines we have — a single dose, over 90% protection; two doses, 97% protection. You know, I’m a vaccine developer, a vaccine scientist. We make vaccines for global health. We’ve reached 100 million doses of our low-cost vaccines for COVID administered globally and now vaccines for parasitic disease vaccines. When we are designing our vaccine, our strategy when we whiteboard this out, our gold standard is the MMR vaccine. We aspire to make a vaccine that’s as good as the MMR vaccine. And yet he calls it “leaky,” which is absolute nonsense.

He also gives an absolutely false number. He says there’s a decline of 4% protection, of vaccine protection, per year. It’s absolute nonsense. It’s nothing like that. If it declines at all, and there’s some estimates that it could be 0.04%, not 4%, so a hundredfold less. So, that’s really unfortunate.

And then, when he talks about vaccination, he then often will pair it with this false equivalency, talking about a steroid, budesonide, which has no preventative activity, or vitamin A, which is not preventative, or he’s using other unproven interventions. And that really sends a mixed message, because it tells parents, “Hey, you have the choice: You either get the MMR vaccine, or you get this nonsense cocktail of interventions.” So, he still has a long way to go about all of these things.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let me go to RFK Jr. speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity last month.

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: It used to be, when you and I were kids, everybody got measles. And the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but in many people, it wanes.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond, Dr. Peter Hotez? Everyone used to get measles, he said.

DR. PETER HOTEZ: That’s right. Everyone used to get measles. And measles, at one time, was the single leading killer of children globally. And it caused hundreds of deaths annually in the United States in the pre-vaccine era. I mean, we’ve got — you know, we know what measles does. Twenty precent of children who are unfortunate enough to get measles because they’ve not been vaccinated, 20% are hospitalized — measles pneumonia, measles encephalitis, permanent hearing loss from neurologic damage, sometimes loss of vision. Measles is a bad actor. It’s one of the most serious childhood infections we know about.

And the fact that he would be so dismissive of it, again, this is — had been consistently his modus operandi and the modus operandi of the anti-vaccine lobby. What they do is they’re dismissive of the severity of childhood infections, especially measles. And what they’ll do is they’ll exaggerate the very, very rare side effects that occasionally occur, but we’re talking extremely rare instances. And the consequence of that is parents then make executive decisions based on the disinformation coming from Mr. Kennedy and others and decide not to vaccinate their kids. And this is happening now across the Great Plains in the United States, and we see what the consequences are: likely thousands of cases of measles, 56 hospitalizations so far and now three measles deaths.

AMY GOODMAN: In March, The Washington Post reported that HHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, hired David Geier to study vaccine autism data — gī(ə)r or gir. Who is he?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: I don’t know much about him. That’s a sort of a blast from the past. I hadn’t heard his name or his father’s name for some time. But the point is, you know, what’s his rationale for doing this?

We have — as I’ve outlined in the book about my daughter, we have detailed evidence showing there’s no vaccine and autism link. And one of the things the anti-vaccine lobby does is they always move the goalposts. As soon the scientific community debunks one of their assertions, beginning with the MMR vaccine, then they come up with something else. So, in the late 1990s, there was a false assertion in a fraudulent paper written, claiming that the MMR vaccine causes autism. That was shown to be — that paper was retracted, and the scientific community followed with large cohort studies of hundreds or even thousands of kids showing that kids who get the MMR vaccine are no more likely to get autism than kids who don’t. And then, a few years later, Mr. Kennedy, in 2005, wrote an article in Rolling Stone magazine claiming, “OK, if it’s not MMR, it must be thimerosal preservative,” that used to be in vaccines — similarly debunked with large cohort studies, even nonhuman primate studies. The scientific community was very vigilant in following up with his assertions. Then he switched it up again, or they switched it up again, saying it’s because we’re overwhelming the immune system by spacing vaccines too close together. Absolute nonsense. Then it was aluminum in vaccines. So, you’re always kind of playing this kind of parrot game of whack-a-mole or moving the goalposts.

But the other really important point — and the reason I wrote the book, Amy, was in response to a year of discussions I’ve had with Mr. Kennedy, you know, going through all of this. We have at least a hundred autism genes that have been identified, many here in Boston at the Broad Institute of Harvard-MIT. We did genomic sequencing on Rachel, my wife Ann and I, and found Rachel’s autism genes. And they all operate in early fetal brain development, very early on in pregnancy. That’s when autism occurs. This is a genetic process. And yet, he dismisses all of the massive scientific evidence, the fact that all of this is occurring in pregnancy.

And by the way, I even had discussions with him, saying, “Yes, there could be some environmental exposures, but not vaccines. This is — these are environmental exposures that are occurring early on in pregnancy.” Let me give you an example. If you’re pregnant and maybe don’t realize it, and you’re on an anti-seizure medication called Depakote, also known as valproic acid, you have a much higher likelihood of giving birth to a child with an autism phenotype. And there’s at least half a dozen chemical exposures that I shared with Mr. Kennedy to look into this. But it’s all occurring during pregnancy.

And I was very puzzled by his lack of interest in it. I even said, “You know, Bobby” — I was calling him Bobby then, and I said, “You should be all over this. You’re an environmental attorney. This is your sweet spot. This is your moment to really look into this.” This was eight years ago. And he had no interest in it. He was just so — had this kind of fixed belief about vaccines, when there was not — not only was there massive evidence showing there’s no link, but the lack of plausibility, Amy. I think that’s what’s the most important part, is this is all occurring in early fetal brain development.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you make of Bobby Kennedy saying that he will discover the cause of autism by September?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Yeah, that one’s a head scratcher, because, first of all, there’s at least a hundred autism genes. There are many different forms of autism. And it’s not a simple cause, right? It’s clearly the genetic component is huge. There could be some environmental exposures early on in pregnancy. That would all be very reasonable for him to look at. But the way he frames it is almost childlike. It’s very simplistic, saying he’s going to find the cause of autism. There is not a cause. It is a complex set of interactions between genes and the environment, very much like cancer. It’s almost like saying that he’s going to find the cause of cancer by September. It makes no sense on scientific grounds. And that’s been explained to him in detail.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to the Health and Human Services Secretary Bobby Kennedy speaking at a news conference Wednesday morning.

HHS SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Autism destroys families. More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be — who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them, were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re 2 years old. And these are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that is Bobby Kennedy. Your response, Dr. Hotez, as an autism dad yourself, as well?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Yeah, well, it’s misguided on multiple levels. So, let’s unpack it a bit. The first point — well, the second point, where he talks about autism and not paying taxes, never working, look, my daughter Rachel, she’s a young adult. She’s in her early thirties. She can’t live by herself. She lives with us and has been living with us, but she works every day at Goodwill. She pays taxes. She earns money. She loves going to work. She walks to work. She has friends at work. She goes to the movies. And the way he portrays autism in these very dark terms simply doesn’t reflect the vast majority of people who live on the autism spectrum. So, I found that deeply offensive. And it has, you know, this kind of creepy tone to it, as well, which we can go into more, if you like.

But the other piece to this is, you know, he also misrepresents the processes of autism. Autism occurs in early fetal brain development. And the full clinical expression often will not manifest until 1 or 2 years of age. And it can be shown that that clinical expression of autism coincides — this is work done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — with a big increase in brain volume expansion, as evidenced on imaging, MRI studies. But you can actually go back months or even at the beginning of life and show that those increases in brain volume expansion were already beginning as a consequence of the activity of autism genes. And so, again, he misrepresented, saying these kids had no issues at all, and all of a sudden there was some deus ex machina, you know, this kind of intervention that suddenly made them autistic. That’s not what occurs.

And we have this well documented, well detailed, and the science is quite clear. It doesn’t mean that we understand every aspect of autism, but, you know, that’s how he needs to talk about it, is saying, “Look, through funding supported by the National Institutes of Health, we’ve learned an awful lot about the causes of autism, how autism genes operate, how they interact with environmental factors, how then the full clinical expression occurs between 1 and 2 years of age.” And that’s where he needs to go and say, “OK, now we’re going to bring all of the world’s experts together — and we have an enormous amount of intellectual horsepower on autism here in the United States — and bring them together and say, ‘What are the gaps? What else do we need to look at?’” But he, again, shows this consistent lack of intellectual curiosity, this kind of simplistic way of thinking, and talking about autism, in my view, in what almost seems to be like eugenics terms, and I found it very offensive.

AMY GOODMAN: Last month, switching gears a bit, Dr. Hotez, the top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Peter Marks, resigned after being forced out by HHS Secretary Bobby Kennedy. In his resignation letter, Dr. Marks wrote, quote, “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” unquote. If you can talk more about what’s happening at this point to HHS, and specifically also talk about the flu vaccine and the cancellation of the meeting that would determine the strains of flu in a new vaccine?

DR. PETER HOTEZ: Well, you know, I don’t have the — I do not have the inside baseball on what’s going on at FDA or HHS. It’s a bit opaque right now, more opaque than it’s ever been. But I will say, in regard to Dr. Marks’s letter, you know, that sounds about right, that Mr. Kennedy seems to have this fixed belief that vaccines do bad things to kids, and he’s absolutely wrong. I mean, we have this extraordinary vaccine ecosystem that’s led to the elimination of multiple childhood infections, including kid meningitis and measles and many others. And now I’m really concerned that he is so fixed on these false links between vaccines and autism and other things, that this is going to jeopardize our entire vaccine ecosystem. That’s point one.

Point two, I don’t know what this means now when there’s efforts to introduce new vaccines. You know, the technology now is really advancing rapidly. We have the opportunity to build next-generation vaccines for emerging diseases. I’m very concerned about H5N1, and we need better vaccines for H5N1. We may have another coronavirus illness coming online. Remember, we’ve had SARS in 2002, which is a coronavirus, MERS in 2012, then, of course, COVID-19 in 2019. And I’m worried that we could have another one, as well. And we always need — and the vaccine producers are always refining and improving vaccines, and I’m worried that all innovation is going to stop.

On top of the fact, number three, that we’re gutting the NIH, and we’re facing potentially 40% cuts to the National Institutes of Health for all of our innovation. And that includes, Amy, new vaccines not only for infectious diseases, but noncommunicable diseases. For instance, we’ve been historically making low-cost recombinant protein vaccines, but now our scientists in the labs at Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development have really improved mRNA vaccine delivery, and now we have some exciting collaborations with our cancer center at Baylor to maybe — and we’re now looking into making a mRNA vaccine for triple-negative breast cancer, for which you cannot use recombinant protein technology, that there are some limits to that technology. So I think we’re going to need mRNA for that. Is that all going to stop now with this new regime? That also concerns me.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Peter Hotez, I want to thank you so much for being with us, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, where he’s also the co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development, author of several books, including The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist’s Warning and Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad.

Coming up next, 25-year-old photojournalist from Gaza Fatma Hassona was just killed in an Israeli airstrike. She’s the subject of a new documentary that was just accepted into Cannes Film Festival, and she was deciding whether she would be able to go, the documentary called Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. We’ll speak with the well-known director of that documentary, Sepideh Farsi. Stay with us.