Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. praised unconventional treatments, but didn’t mention vaccines, in an interview on Fox News about the expanding measles outbreak in West Texas.
In the prerecorded interview, Kennedy said that the federal government was sending vitamin A to the epicenter of the outbreak in Gaines County. He added that the government was also helping to arrange ambulance rides.
While officials from the health department have previously said that they were sending doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to the state, Kennedy, who has a history of vaccine-skeptic views, didn’t mention vaccination as an option during an interview.
Kennedy instead claimed that doctors in Texas had experienced “very, very, good results” by treating the disease using the steroid budesonide, the antibiotic clarithromycin, as well as cod liver oil, which the secretary said has high amounts of vitamins A and D.
The chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, Dr. Sean O’Leary noted when speaking to The New York Times that doctors sometimes use vitamins to treat children with measles, but added that cod liver oil is “by no means” a treatment based in evidence. He said he had never heard of a doctor using cod liver oil to treat the disease.
Source: The Independent, 5 March 2025
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