Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly was in contact with a Texas historian who helped support the distribution of unproven measles remedies amid an outbreak in the state.
Texas historian Tina Siemens told Mother Jones that Kennedy contacted her last week to discuss health concerns in the Mennonite community.
"Siemens said she had been working with a clinic called Veritas Wellness in Lubbock, Texas, to distribute medications, including Vitamin C, cod liver oil, and the inhaled steroid budesonide," the magazine reported.
Siemens was connected to an online fundraiser that claimed it would be "used to defray the cost of essential vitamins, supplements, and medicines necessary to treat children enduring complications from the measles virus and other illnesses."
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The fundraiser's creator, biologist Brian Hooker, was the "chief scientific officer of Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine advocacy group that Kennedy helmed until he ran for president," Mother Jones reported.
In an interview with Fox News last week, Kennedy said that steroids, antibiotics, and cod liver oil yielded "very, very good results" against measles but did not cite any research to back up his claims.
Siemens told Mother Jones that Dr. Ben Edwards of Veritas Wellness was also on the call with Kennedy. She said the secretary sought "to understand the Mennonite culture" because "Mennonites have typically gotten the blame" for spreading measles. Many members of the community choose not to get a vaccine for the virus.
Unproven medications had already been distributed to "150 to 200 families" with the help of the fundraiser, Siemens said.
"I'm very, very grateful that we live in a community that has that choice," Siemens explained. "We live in a state that has that choice, for the parents to make that choice for their family."
