There has always been an anti-vaccine movement in this country, right from the 1700s. I was blissfully unaware of the history of it. I only learned how many lives vaccines saved. By the time I got around to having a polio vaccine, which killed and crippled so many including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, I was able to enjoy the medicine on a sugar cube. Yum. It’s fading away but I can still see my smallpox vaccine scar. That one hurt. There were no vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, and other childhood ails so I developed a natural immunity after getting sick with them.
I was very happy that vaccines had been developed by the time my three kids were born. Natural immunity is a fine thing but the illnesses themselves were a misery. Besides, I saw firsthand some of the side effects issues of these illnesses as a sign language interpreter of the Deaf during the 1980s. I was working at a high school and several of the 15-year-old Deaf kids had been born to mothers who’d gotten rubella while pregnant. Not only were the kids Deaf, but they also had other disabilities as well. My kids were all vaccinated to prevent them from getting sick and possibly suffering side effects from the illnesses.
Over the years, I’ve had many vaccines: tetanus every so often, shingles (never want to get them again!), flu, and all available covid shots.
I first became aware of the theory that the MMR vaccine could cause a child to become autistic. That theory was first advanced in 1998 but I didn’t hear about it until almost 10 years later. Some dude named Andrew Wakefield published false research in the British medical journal Lancet. After conducting realistic research, that document was debunked and retracted by 2010. Meantime, parents suddenly didn’t want their babies getting the MMR because gasp! their children might get autism!
In the midst of all this, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stuck his nose into it. Junior was an environmental lawyer and an effective one. He was a strong advocate and if he’d just kept to that path, my feelings about him would be so different. But in 2005, he wrote this article for Salon and Rolling Stone magazines. He went on about a conspiracy that thimerosal was being used in the MMR vaccine and was causing autism. There were a lot of children diagnosed on the spectrum, but it was more because there was a better understanding of how we think and process things. So Junior was wrong that there was a conspiracy, and he was wrong that there was thimerosal in the MMR vaccine. Research debunked all of that, and Junior should have backed down, taken his theories, and gone back to environmental law.
But he didn’t.
Even though Salon and Rolling Stone both retracted the articles, Junior continues to spread the misinformation almost twenty years later. Not only that but he’s also tacked on a lot more misinformation about HIV and about the covid vaccines.
He is one of the founders of the Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit anti-vax organization that got itself kicked off Instagram and Facebook for publishing misleading misinformation. Even so, he’s managed to scare parents into foregoing important vaccines for their children. Cases of measles are rising again.
Junior has been interviewed by Fox News, which absolutely adores him, and has hung out with QAnon and white supremacist folk. He says he is a Democrat, but why? For the last twenty years, he sure hasn’t been behaving like one.
Most recently, he was interviewed by Joe Rogan. The two of them put their non-medically trained brains together and had a grand old time spouting off all kinds of crazy stuff. Junior thinks Bill Gates put computer chips into people’s brains or bodies. Really? He also thinks that all the requirements for covid vaccines during the pandemic were worse than the Holocaust. The nerve! Rogan still thinks ivermectin is a good cure for covid.
God help us.
Peter Hotez is a scientist that helped developed a low-cost covid vaccine. The vaccine can be used globally, and he won a Nobel Prize for his work. He criticized all of the misinformation on Rogan’s show. Rogan challenged Hotez to come on the show and debate with Junior. He offered to pay Hotez $100,000. Why would a brilliant scientist who accomplished so much condescend to debate with one who isn’t a doctor and is totally clueless about how vaccines work? Hotez said no thanks.
Junior is advancing in the polls, and that gives me agita. People like the name, Kennedy. People of my generation, the Boomers, remember JFK and RFK (the real Bobby) with affection and respect. We remember how other members of the Kennedy family were so active in the needs of the community. I appreciated Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics. So many members of the family have been involved in good works. There’s the temptation to automatically support Junior because he’s a Kennedy.
But no!
Here is an excellent, in-depth article. Please read it.
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