Measles outbreak is Kennedy's first major test. He must tout vaccine to save lives. | Opinion
Either RFK jr. uses the measles vaccine to save lives in West Texas, or the reality of the outbreak there will level him.
Sometimes the accidents of history are a marvel to behold.
In 1954, in a city famous for birthing the American Revolution and later the dynastic Kennedy clan, there was an outbreak of measles.
Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital went to a boarding school just outside their city where the disease was flaring up. They began to collect throat swabs from patients. They took a sample from the mouth of 11-year-old schoolboy David Edmonston and used it to cultivate and isolate the virus.
From that specimen they were able to develop the first vaccine against measles, according to a World Health Organization report.
RFK Jr. grew up where measles vaccine was developed
Their monumental achievement would soon grow clear as a measles vaccine was eventually licensed and administered to the people of the United States and beyond. It would save millions of lives.
To this day, the “Edmonston-B” strain, named for the boy in Boston, is “used as the basis for most live-attenuated (measles) vaccines,” according to the WHO.
In that same year, 1954, Robert F. Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, gave birth to their third of 11 children, a baby boy named after his dad – Robert Francis Kennedy Jr.
Today, that boy is one of the foremost vaccine skeptics in the world, a man who has criticized the very measles vaccine that was developed in the year of his birth in the city where Kennedy family fame rose to mythical proportions.
Last week, RFK Jr. scaled a wall of angry opposition to become the next U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump.
Low vaccine rates threaten Texas and Arizona
Today, one of the first large tasks facing this new HHS secretary will be to manage the biggest measles outbreak in Texas in 30 years.
In little Gaines County, a far-flung region of rural West Texas and home to a large Mennonite community ‒ whose members take religious exemptions from vaccinations ‒ the measles virus is on a tear. This respiratory bug that was once declared fully eradicated in America is now bedeviling Gaines County and sending many of its children to the hospital.
It poses not only a threat to Texas communities but also much of the rest of the United States ‒ including Arizona, where measles vaccination rates have fallen below the herd immunity standard of 95% since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, the national measles vaccination rate is below 93%, The New York Times reports. In Arizona, that rate for kindergartners has dropped to 89.9%, Axios reports.
In Yavapai County, the vaccine rate for kindergartners is a dismal 75%, according to The Times.
West Texas measles outbreak is worst in decades
Measles is especially dangerous to infants and small kids and can lead to serious illnesses such as pneumonia and encephalitis (swelling of the brain), according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
RFK Jr. now must use the most cost-effective and nearly foolproof tool there is to knock down the epidemic – the measles vaccine.
No doubt he is monitoring closely what is happening in Gaines County.
As of Tuesday, there were 58 confirmed cases of measles in West Texas and eight more just across the border in eastern New Mexico, PBS reports. Experts suspect many more people are infected with the disease.
“This is probably the most contagious disease in the world,” Dr. James Mobley, the health authority for San Patricio County, Texas, told KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi. “One person has it, nine other people get it and spread it before they know they're infected.”
This poses a unique conundrum for Kennedy. He was grilled repeatedly in his Senate confirmation hearings about his vaccine skepticism and in particular his doubts about the measles vaccine.
Kennedy said he wouldn't stop child vaccination
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., pushed him hard on a comment he made during a July 2023 podcast that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
Kennedy responded that he had been cut off before he could add “for every person,” The Times of London reported.
Wyden also read passages from Kennedy’s books in which he argued that parents had been “misled” on the measles vaccine, The Times reported.
In his confirmation hearing, Kennedy assured senators that he is pro-vaccine and would not prevent childhood vaccinations.
Kennedy is a change agent and a complex figure in our politics who has been much maligned. Some of that criticism is well earned. He has led an erratic life.
However, for a more nuanced view of the man, go read David Samuels' April 2023 piece in Tablet magazine headlined “The RFK Jr. Tapes.”
Also, listen to Victor Davis Hanson explain to Stanford researcher Robinson Erhardt why Trump chose the Cabinet he did.
RFK Jr. must now tout the vaccine to save lives
If Kennedy is smart, he will use the 2025 Texas measles outbreak to build trust beyond the MAGA base. The way to do that is to harness the power of the measles vaccine and become its leading evangelist.
The vaccine itself is extraordinary.
Before it was introduced in 1963, American medicine reported 400,000 to 500,000 cases of measles annually, with an estimate that the real number is something like 5 million, according to a paper by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
By 1979, incidents of measles had declined 93% in the United States.
Across the world, the vaccine prevented 57 million deaths between 2000 and 2022, according to CDC estimates.
Bobby Kennedy Jr. has managed to wax on about vaccines for decades in lecture halls and in books. Now, he is responsible for eradicating the deadly disease.
Reality is coming at him fast. And if he is the kook his critics say he is, it will level him.
Time to harness his shared history with the measles vaccine and start saving lives.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic, where this column originally appeared. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com