For years, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. championed families whose children were injured by measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines. He challenged federal health agencies and pharmaceutical companies, popularized censored research, and co-authored books exposing severe risks of childhood vaccinations.
Now serving as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Kennedy is urging parents to administer the very MMR vaccine he once warned against while attributing the measles outbreak to disruptions in childhood vaccination during the pandemic.
Kennedy recently cited a May 2020 journal entry by former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci, describing it as a warning that more children could die from measles than would be saved from COVID-19 during lockdowns. He has also pointed to children who missed their scheduled MMR shots at 18 months as being disproportionately affected by the outbreak and claims that communities traditionally resistant to vaccination are primarily responsible for measles transmission.
Kennedy maintains he has never questioned the efficacy of the MMR vaccine but acknowledges past advocacy for concerns about its safety. His earlier activism includes founding Children’s Health Defense (CHD), where he petitioned the Department of Justice in 2018 to investigate alleged misconduct by government attorneys in federal vaccine litigation cases involving autism claims linked to vaccines.
He also defended Dr. Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 paper suggested a connection between MMR vaccination and autism. In his book “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” Kennedy and scientist Brian Hooker stated that the MMR vaccine is central to debates about vaccine safety.
CHD has challenged official accounts of measles deaths by highlighting cases where children died from secondary bacterial infections rather than measles itself, including medical records indicating a Texas child died from pneumonia treated with an inappropriate antibiotic.
Kennedy previously stated that the benefits of the MMR vaccine have been exaggerated and its protection wanes over time. After becoming HHS Secretary in February 2025, he shifted his position to urge MMR vaccination during the Texas measles outbreak while emphasizing its importance for public health.
