Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was reportedly part of a phone call last week with an activist in Texas helping distribute holistic and unproven remedies to families affected by the measles outbreak along the state’s border with New Mexico.
The activist and historian, Tina Siemens, spoke to Mother Jones in an interview published Monday, where she revealed that she had a phone call with Kennedy and a doctor from a clinic she is working with to distribute the remedies, Dr. Ben Edwards of Veritas Wellness, to discuss the health challenges affecting the Mennonite community amid the measles outbreak.
Siemens claimed the topic of the phone call was “to understand the Mennonite culture,” which she deemed important “because Mennonites have typically gotten the blame” for spreading the illness—which has so far affected 228 people across West Texas and New Mexico.
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“The media is spinning it as it’s all the unvaccinated, uneducated Mennonites, and that’s just not the truth,” Siemens told Mother Jones.
She additionally claimed that she and Veritas have helped distribute medications like Vitamin C, cod liver oil, and the inhaled steroid budesonide to “150 to 200 families.” Siemens noted that she was appreciative of living in a community where people get to decide whether or not they receive the measles vaccine.
“I’m very, very grateful that we live in a community that has that choice,” Siemens told the outlet. “We live in a state that has that choice, for the parents to make that choice for their family.”
The Department of Health and Human Services and Veritas did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
According to its website, Veritas offers online consultations for meal plans, supplement intake, and exercise routines, among other wellness recommendations. It was founded by Dr. Edwards, who had “a divine appointment in 2011” that “opened his eyes to the fact that U.S. medical schools only teach a very narrow way of disease and symptom management with pharmaceuticals instead of disease and symptom resolution by addressing root causes.”
In an op-ed published for Fox News earlier this month, Kennedy, a renowned vaccine skeptic, seemed to endorse the measles jabs by writing that the shots “not only protect individual children from measles but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons”—though he still said it was a personal choice.
Despite the health secretary’s recognition of the measles vaccine’s efficiency, he also has vouched for other treatments like steroids, antibiotics, and cod liver oil. In an interview with Fox News last week, Kennedy claimed that doctors in Texas have seen “very, very good results” from these unconventional treatments.
Although physicians will sometimes administer doses of Vitamin A to treat children with severe measles symptoms, cod liver has no evidence backing its efficacy.
The measles outbreak across the Texas-New Mexico border has continued to intensify over the past few weeks, and has claimed two lives: a child and an adult.
