Kennedy Jr. asked his newly appointed CDC director to remove a reference to two Pennsylvania fatalities from the agency’s online measles tracker after questioning whether the virus contributed to the deaths, according to a new report. Kennedy’s request came after staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had already accepted the state’s classification of the deaths as linked to measles, a Pennsylvania official stated. Despite this, Erica Schwartz, the recently named director of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agreed to Kennedy’s instruction and implemented it without raising objections, three anonymous sources familiar with the situation told . The decision followed a contentious exchange on social media between Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist appointed by President Donald Trump, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. Both officials blamed each other for politicizing the outbreak in Pennsylvania, the latest state to face a resurgence of measles since the Trump administration took office.
Figures from the CDC and individual state agencies indicate that vaccination rates have been falling, with several medical bodies citing growing vaccine hesitancy as a major factor. In Pennsylvania alone, the state health department has recorded 540 measles cases this year. Georges Benjamin, chief executive of the American Public Health Association and former secretary of health in Maryland, said it is "unheard of" for the CDC to publicly express doubt over the determinations of state and local health departments, even if the agency wants further details.
"The secretary had no business interfering in the normal process," Benjamin said. "He has an anti-vaccine agenda and he's using this to play out his anti-vaccine agenda." Grace Davis Jamison, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services which oversees the CDC, said the public health agency "requested details necessary to determine whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths." She pointed to conflicting reports between county and state health officials over what occurred. Jamison did not comment on the involvement of Kennedy or Schwartz in excluding the deaths.
Schwartz did not respond to a request for comment. For years, Kennedy has promoted the claim that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, despite decades of scientific evidence demonstrating that they save lives. The combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine routinely administered to children in the U.S. has been shown to offer 97% protection against infection.
As health secretary, Kennedy has sought to downplay the impact of growing U.S. measles cases, which are now at their highest level in over three decades. He has repeatedly cast doubt on whether the virus was directly linked to the several fatalities reported so far. The Pennsylvania health department informed the CDC of two measles-associated deaths on the morning of August 25 before publishing the update on its website, according to the Pennsylvania official, who is close to Shapiro.
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