A team from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived in Texas this week to aid in the response to a growing measles outbreak, and US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged that they would talk to “front-line doctors and see what is working on the ground” and learn about therapeutics “ignored” by the agency.
There is a highly effective vaccine that prevents measles but no specific antiviral to treat it. Kennedy has previously pushed the use of vitamin A, and in an interview with Fox News this week, he endorsed an unconventional treatment regimen for measles including a steroid, an antibiotic and cod liver oil, which is rich in vitamin A.
In the interview, which was posted in full on Fox Nation, Kennedy praised two West Texas doctors who he said were using this remedy on their patients and had seen “almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery.” He said these doctors had “treated most of the patients” in the current outbreak, which has now reached 159 reported cases.
One of the doctors Kennedy is apparently taking cues from has troubled history. He was disciplined by the Texas Medical Board in 2003 for “unusual use of risk-filled medications.”
Kennedy said HHS would do a clinical trial on the steroid budesonide, the antibiotic clarithromycin and cod liver oil therapies and said “we recommend to local physicians that they consider vitamin A and their protocols. He also suggested that vitamin A may work “as a prophylaxis,” although doctors say it does not prevent measles.
However, Kennedy says measles vaccination, which can prevent most cases, is a personal choice.
“At this point, we are recommending that people in those [undervaccinated] communities get vaccines. We understand a lot of them will not, and we’re going to try to make sure that they’re taken care of through the best therapeutic interventions that we can provide them or recommend for them,” Kennedy said in the Fox interview.
Doctor was disciplined over treatments
One of the doctors Kennedy praised, Dr. Richard Bartlett, has a history of using unconventional treatments.
Bartlett faced disciplinary action from the Texas Medical Board more than two decades ago for “unusual” prescribing of antibiotics and steroids in five patients, including two children. None of the patients had measles; they came in with a variety of complaints including diabetes, back and neck pain, sinus pressure, inflamed tonsils and other cold symptoms, obesity and uncontrollable hunger, according to the medical board’s investigation.
After reviewing the patients’ medical records, the board found that Bartlett misdiagnosed their symptoms and mismanaged their care, ordering unnecessary tests and treatments.
In a 2003 order, the board cited Bartlett for inappropriately using medications such as powerful IV antibiotics and “multi-day doses” of long-acting steroids “without any documentation in the records of the weighing of risk versus benefits of this care.”
The board’s final order stated that the “respondent maintains that he treated the patients appropriately, with no adverse outcomes, considering that he was providing care to a relatively underserved area with limited resources and medical support.”
Bartlett was cleared to return to practice without supervision in 2005 after adhering to the board’s requests, such as completing additional medical education and having another doctor chosen by the medical board monitor him for at least a year. He also indicated that he would modify his practice accordingly.
During the pandemic, Bartlett said he treated Covid-19 patients with what he called his silver bullet: an experimental combination of budesonide, which is a steroid; the antibiotic clarithromycin; and aspirin. Bartlett often talked about the treatment on podcasts and in interviews, including some widely shared on social media. An independent fact-checking group found that his claims about the therapy were unsupported by scientific evidence.
Both measles and Covid are caused by viruses. Antibiotics, which kill bacteria, are powerless against viral infections. Medical experts say antibiotics can sometimes be helpful if a viral infection causes a secondary bacterial infection, such as an ear infection or pneumonia. But they’re not appropriate or helpful in every case.
Steroids have been tried in people with measles who develop a very rare complication that leads to brain swelling, but using them in milder cases may be harmful because they dampen the body’s immune response just when it is needed to fight the virus.
A virus ‘that doesn’t really discriminate’
There is no specific treatment for measles. In severe cases, doctors may offer treatments such as supplemental oxygen and fluids to help patients get through the worst of their illness.
Dr. Lara Johnson, Covenant Health’s chief medical officer, said its Lubbock, Texas, hospital has treated more than 20 patients and that hospital physicians have followed recommended treatment protocol.
The CDC recommends two doses of physician-administered vitamin A in cases of severe measles, such as people who are hospitalized. Infectious disease experts also recommend vitamin A in these cases, but they note that the vitamin is most useful in impoverished countries where children are significantly malnourished.
The HHS secretary said the people in West Texas who were getting sick, including a school-age child who died last week, may have had malnutrition.
“It’s very, very difficult … for measles to kill a healthy person,” Kennedy said.
However, the state health department reported that the child who died had no underlying conditions, and local doctors disagree with the secretary’s assessment of the population.
“Our children are actually very well nourished. [That’s] another concerning comment, because I think it makes people have a false sense of, ‘Well, my kid is well nourished, so they’re not going to get this,’” said Dr. Leslie Motheral, a pediatrician in Lubbock, where the outbreak is growing.
“Whether you have underlying medical problems or you are healthy, measles can be detrimental. It’s the kind of virus that doesn’t really discriminate.”
Kennedy claimed in the Fox interview to have seen “studies that show [vitamin A] is good for prophylaxis,” but medical experts say it has no use for measles prevention. High doses can even be toxic.
“There’s not evidence that vitamin A has any preventative benefits,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital. “The worry is that it’s being weaponized by the health and wellness industry.”
The only way to prevent measles is to get the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to experts.
Kennedy is “talking about treatment for children with or anyone with measles, treatment of people with measles that can be prevented by vaccines,” said Dr. William Moss, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “Vaccines actually prevent people from getting measles, so you don’t need to treat them.”
Vaccines prevent measles, vitamin A doesn’t
Kennedy’s soft sell of the measles vaccine amid an outbreak has stunned public health experts.
Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles. Immunity from the shot is long-lasting, too. When the vaccine is used by enough people within a community, measles has nowhere to spread. It can be eliminated.
Experts say Kennedy’s emphasis on treatments has muddled the message.
In a post on X, Admiral Dr. Brett Giroir, a pediatrician and former US assistant secretary for health during the first Trump administration, thanked Kennedy for “emphasizing the critical importance” of the measles vaccine. “But please do not rely on #VitaminA to save your child in the US – helps in Africa where there is a deficiency-not here. I have both treated and buried children with measles,” he wrote.
In Kennedy’s interview on Fox, the HHS secretary was also eager to talk about vaccine injuries and risks.
“The CDC, in the past, has not done a good job at quantifying the risk of vaccines,” Kennedy said. “We are going to do that now so that people can make a real, informed choice about what’s best for them, for their families and their communities.”
Experts said that hearing this from the nation’s top public health official was distressing.
“He didn’t talk about the effectiveness and safety of the MMR vaccines, then pivoted to vitamin A and talking about how it was sanitation improvements that are bringing down measles rates in the US, and all this other kind of nonsense, and you just don’t do that kind of stuff in the middle of an epidemic,” Hotez said. “It was really disheartening to see that.”
Others echoed that sentiment.
“If it were someone on the sidelines kind of calling this out, I guess it would be less surprising, but to have the secretary of Health and Human Services, who is really responsible for the public’s health to tout this misguided treatment regimen for measles and downplay the role of vaccines and preventing measles,” Moss said. “It’s mind-blowing.”
Understanding infectious disease
Kennedy made other misstatements in the Fox interview that downplayed infectious diseases and their effects, too.
He suggested that bird flu has long been a threat, saying it has “been around for 100 years,” although H5N1 was identified in 1996 in China. It’s not clear whether Kennedy was referring to other flu types that could be carried by birds, a natural reservoir for the viruses.
Kennedy further said that about 70 people are known to have gotten sick with bird flu, and “almost all of them were involved in culling operations.” In fact, more dairy workers have caught the virus than people involved in the culling or depopulating of birds.
He said the bird flu strain that originally spread in cattle during the ongoing outbreak, B3.13, “is not very dangerous to humans” because people who have caught it have not been very sick.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, says that statement demonstrates that Kennedy doesn’t understand the threat.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of not being afraid of these viruses,” Osterholm said. “We have to take all of them very seriously as a potential cause of the next influenza pandemic.
“As long as they’re circulating as they are, that just gives each one of these viruses unlimited shots at the genetic roulette table,” he added. The more people they infect, in other words, the more chances they have to change and become more efficient human pathogens.
Kennedy maintained his message that he would tackle chronic disease and “get the really bad stuff out of the food as quickly as possible.” He questioned why the US had the “highest death rate on the planet” from Covid: Was it the infection itself or actually underlying disease in the population at large?
“Was it really Covid that was there killing them? Or was it that they were so sick that they were hanging off the cliff and Covid just came and stomped on their fingernails?” he asked.
“If you are healthy, it’s almost impossible for you to be killed by an infectious disease,” Kennedy said.
Experts say this typical of Kennedy’s communication: He starts with a kernel of truth, but his conclusions on an issue are often incorrect.
Kennedy is right that people with underlying health conditions are more likely to get sicker when they get an infectious disease. But it’s not true that people who are in good health are impervious to viruses.
“He’s saying some truth, right? He’s saying things that are wrong, but there’s some truth to it,” said Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert and distinguished professor of medicine at Emory University.
Measles is an infection that can make even healthy children very sick.
“I really want to plead to mothers to vaccinate their kids,” del Rio said. “That is a highly effective strategy. In this country, in 2025, we should not see measles.”