Kennedy Tasking CDC To Promote Fake Measles Treatments

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It’s hard to exaggerate just how dangerous HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy’s latest assault on public health is. And it is an assault—an all out attack on everything we know about infectious diseases and how to prevent them.

Measles is a horrific disease which is very easily prevented. By “horrific” I mean that out of every 1000 kids who get sick, about 2 will die, even in a wealthy country like the US. If measles regains its hold on the US (as it appears likely to do at this point), over the next 25 years, thousands of children will die needlessly. This doesn’t even include the thousands of children who will be permanently disabled by the neurological consequences of the disease.

For decades we’ve known how to prevent this. In fact, by the year 2000 we had eliminated measles as a health threat in the US with the use of safe and highly effective vaccines. Kennedy has chosen to downplay the necessity for vaccination at a time when there is a brush fire of disease sweeping through vulnerable communities.

The latest dangerous insanity from Kennedy is his plan to re-task the resources of the CDC to develop guidelines to treat measles with vitamins and medications. These do not work. Among the fake treatments being touted by RFK are:

• Clarithromycin: This is an older antibiotic. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections. Measles is caused by a virus so it cannot be treated with antibiotics. At all. If a child’s lungs are damaged by measles, they can develop a bacterial infection, but this would not be the drug of choice.

• Ribavirin: This one actually is an antiviral medication. Unfortunately, measles is not one of the viruses it can treat.

• Budesonide: This is a steroid. Steroids are complicated. In some cases they can be used as one of the tools in treating severe infections, but they also weaken the immune system and can make infections worse.

• Vitamin A: This is completely useless and quite dangerous. Vitamin A is useful only in parts of the world where vitamin A deficiency is common. That’s not the case in the US, and when it has been used during this outbreak, it has sickened patients.

We have tons of data on how to conduct effective vaccination campaigns. Giving wishy-washy advice about vaccination, as Kennedy has been doing, will do just the opposite. When I say that the blood will be on his hands, I mean it. He isn’t just failing to fight these deadly outbreaks, he is actively preventing us from using strategies that we know to be effective.

Please, write you your representatives. Tell them to stop this murderous ignoramus. Tell them to get RFKs hands off of the steering wheel of our healthcare system before he drives us all off a cliff.

-pal