How a Texas child's measles death was weaponized by the anti-vaccine movement
Anti-vaccine influencers use a 6-year-old's measles death to promote debunked theories, while health experts warn of the danger of the disease.
In February, a 6-year-old Texan was the first child in the United States to die of measles in two decades.
Her death might have been a warning to an increasingly vaccine-hesitant country about the consequences of shunning the only guaranteed way to fight the preventable disease.
Instead, the anti-vaccine movement is broadcasting a different lesson, turning the girl and her family into propaganda, an emotional plank in the misguided argument that vaccines are more dangerous than the illnesses they prevent.
The child’s grieving parents have given just one on-camera interview, to Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit group founded and led until recently by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the health and human services secretary. In a video that aired online Monday, the young parents stifled sobs, recalling how their unvaccinated daughter got sick from measles, then pneumonia, how she was hospitalized and put on a ventilator, and how she died.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. countered sharp criticisms from Democratic senators over his past questioning of vaccine safety. Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThe couple, who are Mennonites, believe their daughter’s death was the will of God. When Children’s Health Defense’s director of programming, Polly Tommey, asked specifically about parents who heard their story and might be “rushing out, panicking,” to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, the parents rebuked the intervention that offered the best chance of preventing their daughter’s death.
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