Children’s Health Defense using familiar playbook to defend health secretary as it downplays dangers of disease and exaggerate risks of vaccines, public health experts say
The non-profit group that Robert F Kennedy Jr built into a giant of the anti-vaccine movement is defending its old boss even as the US health secretary presides over the worst year for measles in more than 30 years.
Three people have died and 1,958 people have been reported infected with measles in the US this year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In South Carolina, 224 people are in quarantine amid an outbreak that has sickened 144 people. Most are unvaccinated children.
Children’s Health Defense, or CHD, which Kennedy led from 2015 to 2024, produces a daily stream of articles and videos stoking fear about vaccines and falsely suggesting that the risks associated with vaccine-preventable diseases are exaggerated.
At the height of the South Carolina outbreak this month, when more than 200 people were in quarantine, CHD published an article circulating anti-vaccine tropes and arguing that criticism of Kennedy over the spread of measles was unfounded.
