Robert F. Kennedy Jr., staring down his first major health crisis as the head of Health and Human Services, had a plan. After Texas experienced the first measles death in the United States in a decade, Kennedy told Fox earlier this month that the federal government was delivering vitamin A—an unproven treatment that Kennedy has promoted as an alternative to vaccines—to measles-stricken communities in West Texas “right now.” But a Texas official told me this week that no doses of vitamin A have arrived at the state health department—not because RFK Jr. broke his promise, but because Texas doctors didn’t ask for them.
The doses are available “if we need them,” Lara Anton, the senior press officer for the state public-health department, told me in a statement. But her office, she said, has not requested any, “because healthcare providers have not requested it from us.” Anton had no records of any shipments of vitamin A, budesonide, clarithromycin, or cod-liver oil—all of which Kennedy has said can help with measles—even though the state has received 1,760 additional vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella from the federal government since the middle of February.
When I asked Anton if Texas officials thought vitamin A treatment was useless, she referred me to a state website, which reads, “Vitamin A cannot prevent measles. Vitamin A may be useful as a supplemental treatment once someone has a measles infection, especially if they have a severe case of measles or low vitamin A levels and are under the care of a doctor.” The local health department for Gaines County, the epicenter of the deadly outbreak, told me that it has not received any of the alternative treatments either. (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.)
In just a few short weeks on the job, Kennedy has broken with decades of public-health precedent in responding to measles. In a March 2 op-ed for Fox, he acknowledged that vaccines “not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity”—only after emphasizing that “the decision to vaccinate is a personal one.” He has also endorsed vitamin A, which is not FDA-approved to treat measles, as a way to substantially decrease deaths from the disease. Vitamin A can reduce the risk of death among children under 2 who are infected, according to a 2005 meta-analysis. However, it has not been shown to effectively prevent the disease, contrary to Kennedy’s claim in his Fox interview.
It’s hardly surprising that a health department wouldn’t want shipments of unproven treatments. But Texas’s decision to deny an offer of help from the top federal health official during a deadly measles outbreak suggests that not everyone in the nation’s public-health apparatus is ready to fall in line behind Kennedy’s unfounded claims. That apparently includes some staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which falls under Kennedy’s purview. On Tuesday, the CDC’s top communications officer announced his resignation in an op-ed lambasting Kennedy’s embrace of alternative measles treatments. 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. 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. “The best way to protect against measles is with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine,” one flyer read. And a letter from the local health-department executive director, Zachary Holbrooks, that was distributed to parents of unvaccinated schoolchildren stated: “I strongly encourage you to have your child vaccinated as soon as possible.” None of the materials I obtained made any mention of vitamin A.
It’s unclear if those pro-vaccine messages are convincing locals, particularly the Mennonite population at the center of Texas’s outbreak. Last school year, just under 82 percent of kindergartners in Gaines County were vaccinated against measles. Data from the state’s vaccine registry suggest that immunizations are up roughly 10 percent this year compared with the same period in 2024, although Texas has limited visibility on vaccine administration. Holbrooks recently told The Atlantic that three local Mennonite churches had refused the district health department’s request to place a measles-testing site on their property. Meanwhile, residents are clearing out local drugstores’ supplies of vitamin A and cod-liver oil, and showing up to a makeshift clinic that is giving out cod-liver oil. 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.
After casting a key vote to confirm Kennedy as health secretary, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a Republican, told his colleagues that Kennedy would help with “restoring trust in our public-health institutions.” But Kennedy has already made that laudable goal even less achievable. So long as the nation’s top public-health official is propping up purported miracle cures, families in West Texas will be encouraged to believe that not vaccinating their children is a responsible choice. Public-health leaders can’t fix that problem on their own, even if they refuse to play along with Kennedy’s pseudoscientific routine.
