RFK Jr. Will Cure Measles By Pouring Cod Liver Oil Down The Throats Of Every Child In America
What could go wrong?
As the measles outbreak rages on — 222 cases across 12 states, with 38 hospitalizations and two deaths — America is looking to Health And Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for guidance on how to protect themselves and their children. Okay, maybe not. About half the country is looking to him to tell them that measles are fine and it’s better your kid have measles than autism, perhaps even hoping he’ll share that highly scientific Brady Bunch meme about how super safe and fun it is to get the Freedom Pox.
Meanwhile, the other half (us) is looking at him in horror to see what dangerous shit he’ll say next. And, so far he, hasn’t disappointed any of us.
In an interview last week with Fox News’s Dr. Marc Siegel (note to self, cancel 7 day trial immediately after posting!), Kennedy addressed the outbreak. While admitting that the measles was always the most serious of the childhood diseases and that it could cause a number of serious health issues, including encephalitis and blindness, Kennedy Jr. was careful to note that it only killed about one in 1200 kids who got it. So there’s some sunshine for ya!
“It can result in very serious consequences in some cases, and we are doing everything we can to make sure that that doesn’t happen again,” he said, adding begrudgingly that “People have access to good medicines, including those who want them, the vaccines, which do prevent infection.”
Because he’s so much more responsible than the CDC, RFK Jr. went and talked to the frontline doctors to see what they were doing about the outbreak, and he said they’ve been treating people with a steroid called budesonide (which you are very specifically not supposed to take if you have measles) as well as an antibiotic called clarithromycin (which has literally no effect on the measles, because the measles are a virus). Yes, just like how people wanted to treat COVID with antibiotics and anti-parasitic treatments, he wants to treat the measles, a virus, with an antibiotic. At this point, I am starting to think it’s some kind of religious thing I don’t understand.
But RFK Jr. is very upset that the HHS and the CDC haven’t been “talking to the frontline doctors and see what is working on the ground, because those therapeutics have really been ignored by the agency for a long time.”
It’s an interesting choice, I think, that he keeps saying “frontline doctors.” America’s Frontline Doctors, as you may recall, were/are a group of crazy-ass anti-COVID-vaccine doctors, many of whom had lost their licenses. Just saying!
Of course, his favorite cure, which we’ve all been hearing so much about, is cod liver oil.
True story! When I was in seventh grade, all of the jock type fellas kept asking me how to get high, because I was a weird chick and they thought my mom was a hippie (to be clear, she was a radical). So my mom and I came up with all these ways of fucking with them — like convincing them to huff packages of opium-scented incense, telling them to smoke banana peels, selling them oregano, and, her personal favorite, dipping cotton balls in cod liver oil and putting them in their ears (which had the additional effect of making them smell fantastic). Though I think even they caught on after that.
But not Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is pretty sure that cod liver oil is magic.
Now, this is not to say it doesn’t have some good properties. It’s good for inflammation, and it’s high in Vitamin A. In some countries, where kids are more likely to experience malnutrition, it is recommended to take Vitamin A to prevent or ameliorate the measles. However, as with all vitamins and minerals, taking more than you need does not do jack shit if you are not deficient (this also goes for B-12, in case anyone was wondering).
Unlike with vaccines, we actually do know that there are health risks when it comes to taking too much Vitamin A. It’s no joke of a chemical. If you put it on your face because you don’t want acne or wrinkles, and you don’t use sunscreen, you can get some serious sun damage. If you put too much of it in your body because you think that’s how you’re going to avoid getting the measles, you could end up with serious liver damage, bone density issues, skin and hair issues, etc.
Children are especially sensitive to Vitamin A toxicity, and can have adverse effects from levels as low as 1,500 mcg of Vitamin A a day. Your average Flintstone Vitamin has about 400 mcg of Vitamin A, a teaspoon of cod liver oil (RFK’s fave) has about 1350 mcg. Then, add in carrots, sweet potatoes, leafy greens, fish and other foods that have Vitamin A in them, and you do this over a long period of time … you’re gonna have some problems.
Of course, RFK Jr. claims that it’s fine to take as much cod liver oil as you want because it’s “from food” and therefore there’s no toxicity issue. I’m not an expert, but as someone with a tendency towards hyponatremia (low sodium) and anemia, vitamins that come from food are a lot more effective than supplements, and I have a pretty hard time believing that this would somehow make it less likely that toxicity would be an issue.
It’s the dose that makes the poison, after all.
And you know what’s never, ever happened in the history of the world? Adult onset autism. Or late-childhood onset autism. Yes, there are adult diagnoses of autism, but only of people who have actually had it all their lives. So even if you really, really believe, despite all available evidence, that MMR vaccines are turning the babies autistic, you’d have to at least understand that they will not turn your school-age child autistic, because that is not even a thing (this is also a pretty potent argument against the idea that the MMR vaccine causes autism, but that’s a little advanced for these types).
To his credit, Dr. Marc Siegel pushed back on a surprising amount of Kennedy Jr.’s claims (and even helpfully explained that unless people are malnourished, more Vitamin A isn’t going to do anything for them) and cautiously suggested that they might want to get out there to Gaines County and push for people to get the vaccine, so as to increase community immunity for those who can’t take it.
Jr., of course, insisted that they were, but also that he felt bad because no one wanted to listen to the Mennonites about their “vaccine injured” people (which seems sus because the Mennonites have never been big on vaccines either way). He also doubled down on this idea that the vaccines haven’t really been tested for safety.
“We don’t know what the risk profile is for these products. We need to restore government trust. And we’re going to do that by telling the truth, and by doing rigorous science to understand both safety and efficacy issues,” he said.
This is a lie. It’s an outright lie. These vaccines have been studied for decades. At this point, the entire world is a study for these products. We know they work, we know that serious side-effects are extremely rare (and include things like febrile seizures and anaphylaxis) and that the side-effects are never, ever “autism.”
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Whoa! Doesn’t he know cod liver oil causes milk leg, the blue screamers, and colly wobbles? Most leading quacks are recommending a course of leeches for everything and in extreme cases beating the demons of disease out.
RFK is a nut job. He’s had his own kids vaccinated. Now he’s giving people this kind of shit. SHAME ON him. His father is definitely rolling over in his grave.