RFK Jr. Is Our Brother and Uncle. He's Tragically Wrong About Vaccines.

[brooklynite]

KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND, JOSEPH P. KENNEDY II and MAEVE KENNEDY MCKEAN

Americans have every right to be alarmed about the outbreak of measles in pockets of our country with unusually high rates of unvaccinated citizens, especially children. Right now, officials in 22 states are grappling with a resurgence of the disease, which was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. With over 700 cases already reported and indications that more outbreaks will occur, 2019 will likely see the most recorded cases of measles in decades. And it’s not just measles. In Maine, health officials in March reported 41 new cases of whooping cough, another disease once thought to be a relic of the past—more than twice as many cases as this time last year.

This problem isn’t only an American one. The World Health Organization reports a 300 percent increase in the numbers of measles cases around the world this year compared with the first three months of 2018. More than 110,000 people are now dying from measles every year. The WHO, the health arm of the United Nations, has listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to global health in 2019. Most cases of preventable diseases occur among unvaccinated children, because parents have chosen not to vaccinate, have delayed vaccination, have difficulty accessing vaccines, or the children were too young to receive the vaccines.

These tragic numbers are caused by the growing fear and mistrust of vaccines—amplified by internet doomsayers. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—Joe and Kathleen’s brother and Maeve’s uncle—is part of this campaign to attack the institutions committed to reducing the tragedy of preventable infectious diseases. He has helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.

We love Bobby. He is one of the great champions of the environment. His work to clean up the Hudson River and his tireless advocacy against multinational organizations who have polluted our waterways and endangered families has positively affected the lives of countless Americans. We stand behind him in his ongoing fight to protect our environment. However, on vaccines he is wrong.

[HopeAgain]

1. Fuck all anti-vaxxers

I don't care who they are.

[NurseJackie]

3. Amen.

[olegramps]

18. Idiocy has no bounds. It respects neither science or common reasoning.

[hlthe2b]

2. I've never understood how RFK JR could have been so bamboozled by anti-vaxx conspiracy

He's not a stupid man. He's worked with others who are similarly pro-science and firmly rooted in the rational, including his long term radio host partner and fellow lawyer, Mike Papantonio. His family is rooted in scientific belief as well. He's no climate science skeptic. But on this... who knows?

[JHB]

4. Likely via distrust of corporations, especially pharma...

...so was too quick to believe the now-shown-to-be-fraudulent autism study, and took opposition to it as corporate PR, similar to attacks on people linking tobacco smoking to lung cancer.

[octoberlib]

5. RFK Jr. has been instrumental in growing the anti-vaxx movement.

Kennedy made his name in the anti-vaccine movement in 2005, when he published a story alleging a massive conspiracy regarding thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that had been removed from all childhood vaccines except for some variations of the flu vaccine in 2001. In his piece, Kennedy completely ignored an Institute of Medicine immunization safety review on thimerosal published the previous year; he’s also ignored the nine studies funded or conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have taken place since 2003.

I first wrote about Kennedy and his foray into the anti-vaccine movement in “The Panic Virus,” my book about the persistence of the myth that vaccines can cause autism. Below is a lightly edited version of my chapter on Kennedy, titled “A Conspiracy of Dunces.

While Kennedy has been brazen in publicizing outright lies, he appears to be less loquacious when faced with skeptical reporters. I attempted to contact Kennedy more than 20 times over an 18-month period. At various points, I was told that he was considering my interview request, that he was on vacation, that he was dealing with a family crisis, that he wasn’t feeling well, that he was behind in his emails, and that he was on the verge of calling me back. (He never did.)


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kennedy-jr-distorted-vaccine-science1/

[Tarc]

6. anti-vaxxers are morons, which makes the DU's love affair with Jim Carrey all the more perplexing

Seems that if someone really really really hates Trump too, some of their nastier aspects get a bit of a whitewash.

[dewsgirl]

10. Jim Carrey isn't, he is/was against a specific vaccine something about mercury I think.

[Major Nikon]

11. He is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Carrey#Beliefs

[dewsgirl]

12. I did read that, I thought he was an antivaxxer when he was with Jenny McCarthy. Thank you, I guess

I was wrong.

[octoberlib]

7. And he's still going at it on Twitter and Facebook. This time with the HPV vaccine

Robert Kennedy Jr's mind is playing tricks on him. No matter where the anti-vaxxer looks, all he can see is his own misguided convictions.

After reading a CBS new article about how young people are more depressed, anxious and suicidal than ever, Kennedy completely ignored what the scientists had to say - that these trends are likely linked to cultural changes, such as less sleep and less face-to-face time with family and friends.

Instead, he came to his own spurious conclusions."What are we doing to our children?" he tweeted last week."@CBSNews reports sharp unexplained rises in #depression + #anxiety in American teens. Shouldn't we ask whether these trends are associated with the neurotoxic aluminum we are giving young teens in Gardasil #vaccine?

A mere month ago, amid a huge measles outbreak that left 800 kids missing school, Kennedy voiced his nonsensical views at a Washington state hearing on whether unvaccinated children should be barred from public schools.Speaking before the legislature's health committee, Kennedy erroneously claimed that the MMR vaccine had never undergone safety testing.


https://www.sciencealert.com/robert-f-kennedy-tweets-a-ridiculous-conspiracy-theory-about-vaccinations

[Mariana]

14. Kennedy erroneously claimed that the MMR vaccine had never undergone safety testing.

That's not an error. That's a plain old lie.

[LibFarmer]

8. Anti-vaxxers are a menace to society

By reducing herd immunity, they put everyone in danger but especially very young infants who haven't been vaccinated yet as well as elderly and disabled people.

[Major Nikon]

22. It's worse than that. Anti-vaxxers kill children with their bullshit

Thimerosal enables multi-dose vaccines which were used extensively all over the world because they were cheaper to produce. Despite exactly zero evidence thimerosal caused any of the maladies the anti-vax nutters claimed and plenty of evidence showing it's perfectly safe, the nutters managed to almost entirely eradicate it's use. Multi-dose vials aren't practical without thimerosal, so guess what happened? Vaccines suddenly became less accessible to those who need them most and the predictable result is epidemics happen and the most vulnerable die. Now those international epidemics are coming back to the US and thanks to the nutters efforts to reduce vaccine use here in the US, we now get to deal with those same problems.

[Lucky Luciano]

9. He needs to renounce his pro-plague nonsense! nt

[SidDithers]

13. +1...

thanks for posting.



Sid

[TheBlackAdder]

15. It's painful to listen to that ignorance, when he speaks. Lead and mercury permeates skin, many toys

.

Besides breathing in lead and mercury in the air, even if in an industry-free zone, as it travels in the atmosphere, it is in many foods, water, etc. The fucking atmosphere was rife with it in the 60s and 70s as I grew up. Many children's toys, when I was a kid and through the 80s and 90s had lead and mercury in them, including infant toys and teethers. Still, to this day, rogue Chinese factories introduce it in their products.

Yet, all through the 60s-90s, there wasn't a prevalence of autism.

If you want to try and blame something, I would start with something that actually changed in the 90s, such as water contamination by fracking and other chemical sites. The prevalence of ionizing RF and non-ionizing RF energy, etc.

.

[MH1]

16. The other thing that changed in the 90s was diagnosis.

Not saying that necessarily accounts for all of it, but certainly high-functioning autistics (Asperger's syndrome) were not being diagnosed before the 90's. I believe now they have deprecated the Asperger's designation and are lumping high-functioning autism in with other forms for statistics. Which is fine, maybe, since it really is a spectrum of one type of disorder (or so the thinking is now, I believe). But also one might wonder if there are side-benefits in some quarters for amplifying the statistics. But either way, the fact is that high functioning autistics were not being diagnosed prior to the 90s.

[TheBlackAdder]

21. Case point, my son.

.

He's more deemed as socially awkward, as his intelligence level seems very high.

He struggles with his social skills, and as a 22-year-old is a couple of years behind his peers. But, he gets better every day, while he is very creative and talented. He is a musician who is fine-tuning his craft as he performs concerts and is in several bands. His backup plan is mechanical engineering.

.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

24. That sounds a lot like Asperger's, which was removed as

a specific diagnosis several years ago.

Too bad, because in my opinion it's a useful diagnosis.

You are describing my 36 year old son. Incredibly smart, socially awkward, flunked out of two different colleges, and is now in a PhD program in astronomy. He's pretty much the smartest person I've ever known. It has taken a very long time for him to catch up socially and emotionally with his peers, and in many ways he's much more like a person in his early 20s than in his late 30s. He never did go through the wildness that typical teens go through. He was always very focussed on science. It was the larger social issues that caused his school failures.

Hope your son succeeds wherever he winds up.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

17. Actually, what changed is the diagnosis criteria

and recognition of autism as a spectrum, not a singular diagnosis.

[TheBlackAdder]

20. Yes. true. My son was diagnosed with high-functioning Aspergers, more as socially awkward.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

23. Now that diagnosis is called high functioning autism.

That was my daughter’s diagnosis as well.

[samnsara]

19. can we put them all on an island somewhere?

[ck4829]

25. K&R