Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the secretary of Health and Human Services. When Pennsylvania reported two measles-associated deaths, he used that office to suggest the deaths “may even have been altogether fabricated” by someone on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s staff, according to The Associated Press.
That sentence should end Kennedy’s career in public health. A man entrusted with the agencies that track disease took a legitimate dispute over how deaths are classified and injected a conspiracy theory into it. He did this while the United States was suffering its worst measles year since 1991.
Donald Trump put an anti-vaccine activist in charge of the nation’s health. Kennedy is using that power exactly as his record suggested he would.
Uncertainty did not justify a smear
Pennsylvania’s Department of Health announced on August 25 that two Lancaster County residents had died after measles infections. The department used the careful term “measles-associated” and said it would withhold identifying details to protect the families.
One of the people was a newborn who tested positive for measles after death. The county coroner attributed the death to a ruptured spleen and said measles did not contribute. Measles was still listed on the death certificate as another condition. Pediatrician Paul Offit has argued that infection could have contributed to the rupture, while infectious disease specialist Amesh Adalja says the virus could have been causal or incidental. FactCheck.org’s review of the available evidence shows how much remains unknown.
The CDC is right to review the cases. Its current measles page says available information does not yet establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths, so the agency has held them out of the national death count for now. Precision matters in public health.
Kennedy’s defenders can also point to his public statement that people should get the measles vaccine. They can argue that asking for better records protects trust. A responsible health secretary would have requested the records, explained the competing definitions and promised a transparent finding. Kennedy went far beyond that. He used a disagreement over classification to accuse a governor’s employee of inventing two deaths. His public statement offered no evidence that either person or death was fabricated.
The outbreak does not need Kennedy’s permission to be real
The CDC reported 2,903 confirmed measles cases as of August 27, up from 2,289 in all of 2025. Ninety-four percent of this year’s cases are linked to outbreaks. The United States has recorded more measles cases this year than in any year since 1991.
Vaccination coverage explains why the virus has room to move. The CDC says MMR coverage among kindergartners fell from 95.2 percent in the 2019 to 2020 school year to 92.4 percent in 2025 to 2026, leaving about 280,000 kindergartners at risk. Coverage above 95 percent is needed for community immunity. Two MMR doses are about 97 percent effective at preventing measles, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Vaccines drove local measles transmission out of the United States in 2000. Falling vaccination rates have put that achievement at risk, and international health officials are expected to review whether the United States has lost its measles-free status. Kennedy responded to this preventable reversal by injecting an evidence-free accusation into the public debate.
Kennedy’s record removes the benefit of the doubt
The Associated Press documented that Kennedy has spent 20 years making false claims that vaccines are unsafe. Even when he finally told people to get the measles vaccine after children died in Texas, he used the same interview to raise doubts about vaccine safety. His anti-vaccine allies understood the signal. Charlene Bollinger, who sells anti-vaccine videos, urged followers to trust that he had not abandoned them and to pay attention to what he left unsaid.
During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy repeatedly told senators that his 2019 trip to Samoa had nothing to do with vaccines. The Associated Press and The Guardian later obtained a letter he sent Samoa’s prime minister proposing that his team study the country’s MMR vaccines. The letter used “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times. Months after his visit, a measles outbreak killed 83 people, most of them young children.
That record changes how Kennedy’s words must be judged. He has spent years teaching people to distrust vaccines, minimizing measles deaths and presenting settled public health as a sinister plot. His fabrication accusation repeats the method: take an uncertainty, strip away the context and feed the gap to people already primed to see a conspiracy.
Public health cannot survive manufactured distrust
Kennedy’s accusation matters because public health depends on trust earned through evidence. Health agencies ask people to accept guidance about risks they cannot see, from an infection moving through a community to the protection offered by a vaccine. That relationship breaks when the nation’s top health official treats missing details as permission to suggest fraud.
Pennsylvania officials deserve criticism for releasing too little information and failing to explain their classification clearly. Amesh Adalja told FactCheck.org that the state created an information vacuum. Better disclosure is the remedy for that failure. Kennedy’s accusation still lacks evidence.
The CDC took the cautious route. The agency identified what remains unknown, excluded the two deaths from its current count and promised an update when more evidence arrives. Kennedy chose a partisan accusation before that review was complete. His conduct teaches the public to treat any inconvenient disease report as a political trick.
Trump chose Kennedy for this job despite a 20-year record of vaccine falsehoods. Measles needs susceptible bodies, and Kennedy is using federal authority to spread the distrust that leaves more of them behind. Every family now facing a disease this country once eliminated is living with the consequence.