Remedy Supported by Kennedy Leaves Some Measles Patients More Ill
A nurse practitioner administering a measles vaccine to a 3-year-old patient at Seminole Memorial Hospital in West Texas last month, amid the measles outbreak there. Now, misinformation disseminated by the new Health and Human Services Director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recommending vitamin A as a possible treatment for unvaccinated children, has led to new cases of liver damage from excessive vitamin A being reporting in the region. Photo by Desiree Rios for The New York Times
The New York Times
Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary.
Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated, against the virus.
One of those supplements is cod liver oil containing vitamin A, which Mr. Kennedy has promoted as a near miraculous cure for measles. Physicians at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, say they’ve now treated a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage.
Some of them had received unsafe doses of cod liver oil and other vitamin A supplements for several weeks in an attempt to prevent a measles infection, said Dr. Summer Davies, who cares for acutely ill children at the hospital.
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