The measles outbreak in Texas is continuing to rage on, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the newly enshrined Health and Human Services secretary—is touting scientifically unsupported treatments for it. In a recent interview, Kennedy espoused the supposed benefits of supplements and steroids for measles patients.
RFK Jr. has been making the rounds publicly as of late to discuss the federal government’s response to the Texas measles outbreak, which has affected over 200 residents since mid-January. In a 35-minute interview with Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel, posted last week, Kennedy made many dubious claims related to measles, which included arguing that cod liver oil pills, steroids, and antibiotics could be useful treatments for the viral disease.
Cod liver oil supplements are known to contain omega-3 fatty acids as well as vitamins A and D. Research has shown that a measles infection can be more severe in children with vitamin A deficiency, and groups like the World Health Organization do recommend that doctors provide vitamin A to measles-infected children in regions where deficiency is common.
However, vitamin A deficiency is incredibly rare in the U.S. (perhaps affecting around 0.3% of the general population). Moreover, the benefits of vitamin A for measles are thought to come from very high doses of it—doses much higher than what is typically found in a cod liver oil pill. There appears to be no evidence that cod liver oil itself can be beneficial for measles. People can also suffer from vitamin A toxicity if they take too many supplements, and toxicity appears to be a bigger problem in the U.S. than deficiency.
RFK Jr. also praised the value of budesonide, a steroid, and an antibiotic called clarithromycin, claiming that local doctors had seen almost “miraculous and instantaneous” recoveries after using such treatments. Doctors have occasionally used steroids for serious measles cases, including during a 2017 outbreak in Italy. A 2023 study examining this outbreak found that steroid use wasn’t associated with worse outcomes. However, there’s no clear evidence that steroids should be a standard treatment for the disease. Antibiotics can be used to treat secondary bacterial infections that could emerge from measles, but generally aren’t able to directly treat viral infections.
During the interview, Kennedy also tried to downplay the threat of measles, appearing to imply that severe and life-threatening cases usually only happen in people with poor diets and a lack of exercise.
“It’s very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person,” he explained, claiming there’s a “correlation between people who get hurt by measles and people who don’t have good nutrition or who don’t have a good exercise regimen.”
It is true that malnutrition can be a risk factor for severe measles and other infections. But measles can absolutely kill healthy people, especially if they’re young. Texas health officials previously reported that the sole measles death seen in the state so far involved a school-age child who had no known underlying conditions; the child was unvaccinated, however. Measles vaccination is both highly effective at preventing infection and at reducing the severity of any infections that do rarely occur. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), measles vaccination programs worldwide have prevented some 60 million deaths from measles since 2000.
Kennedy has been more supportive of measles vaccination lately, but certainly nothing approaching what’s required and expected of a public health leader. In both the Fox News interview and an op-ed earlier this month, he acknowledged that the vaccine can prevent measles and that it should be widely recommended in communities where the vaccination rate is relatively low. At the same time, he claimed that these vaccines are riskier than commonly believed by many experts and that vaccination should be a personal choice. RFK Jr. has long spread misinformation about the safety of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and others, including by supporting a debunked link between the MMR shots and autism.
Elsewhere, the agencies under Kennedy’s new HHS have also taken steps to undermine the public’s confidence in vaccines. The CDC is reportedly planning a new large study that will once again reexamine whether vaccines can cause autism, for instance, despite decades of evidence showing otherwise. And the National Institutes of Health is no longer funding research aimed at reducing vaccine hesitancy.
