Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been pushing doctors to treat measles-infected children with cod-liver oil despite the fact that medical experts believe that this is an unproven remedy that is not as effective at preventing the illness.
The Atlantic's Nicholas Florko reports that doctors in Texas, which is the center of the measles outbreak in the United States, have not been filing requests for vitamin A, budesonide, clarithromycin, or cod-liver oil, all of which have been recommended by Kennedy, who prior to becoming the nation's top public health official was an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.
This is relevant, Florko suggests, because it seems there are hard limits on Kennedy's powers to force his preferred treatments onto the medical professional community even in red states such as Texas.
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What's more, Florko has found signs that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been quietly working to help doctors in Texas get out the word about the effectiveness about the measles vaccine.
"Public records I’ve gathered from Texas show that CDC staff are aiding at least one local health department in spreading pro-vaccine messages to the local community," he writes. "In a series of emails with Texas health workers, for instance, CDC officials workshopped multiple pro-vaccine public-service announcements and helped translate them into Low German and Spanish."
What's more, it appears that Texans who have taken up RFK Jr.'s advice to treat measles with cod liver oil have not been getting the results that they had hoped for.
"This week, The New York Times reported that some children in the area are taking such high doses of vitamin A that they are showing signs of liver damage," notes Florko.