Kennedy, Conspiracy, and the Measles Outbreak that Nearly Destroyed Samoa
A story of fringe beliefs crossing oceans and breaking communities (Pt. 1 of 2)
Author’s Note: This is Part One of a two-part series. Part Two is available to read here. Thanks!
Regrettably, the first time I heard about Samoa’s 2019 measles outbreak was from a fleeting argument on the fifth season of a 90-Day Fiance spinoff.
The storyline in question features Kalani, a Samoan-American mother of two, and her native Samoan husband Asuelu. Asuelu, having left behind family and friends, is eager to take a family trip to the tiny Pacific island he calls home. However, Kalani is forced to slam the brakes on her husband’s plans – not for lack of wanting to go, but out of concern for their children's health. As she explains in a confessional, Samoa is in the midst of a measles epidemic, and the younger of their two sons is not yet old enough to receive the MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine necessary to protect him. Her husband, entirely unconcerned by the outbreak, predictably does not react well to his wife putting her foot down. Kalani stands her ground and insists that a trip to Samoa is much too dangerous, triggering a multi-episode story arc that showcases the couple’s feud.
I watched this segment in the summer of 2020, when there was little to do but languish in the heat and watch reality television between strained attempts at socializing from a distance. Perhaps the timing was what made this plot point so poignant. It was a sick joke, foreshadowing the internal conflict many (myself included) would face in deciding whether or not to visit loved ones during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Kalani and Asuelu’s situation also struck me as a bit strange.
While the worldwide measles outbreaks of 2019 have largely been overshadowed by the general tumult that soon followed, vague memories of measles surges still lingered in my mind during the summer of 2020. As an American, I had heard occasional stories of the virus raging through insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and vaccine-hesitant Somali immigrants in Minneapolis. Occasionally, I’d encounter an aside about the damage measles inflicted in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, which recorded over 300,000 cases and 7,000 measles-related fatalities in 2019. But the DRC is an outlier, suffering from a unique brew of unfortunate circumstances that allows illness outbreaks to thrive1.
Word never reached me of anything amiss in tranquil Samoa, besides this fleeting moment on 90 Day Fiance2.
It’s only natural to suspect that Kalani was exaggerating her fears of traveling to her husband’s homeland for the sake of reality television camera crews. A crisis makes better fodder for an argument than a vague concern. However, this was not the case, and Kalani’s fears were entirely valid. Cursory research into the Samoan measles outbreak during the waning months of 2019 confirms there truly was a crisis, warranting far deeper examination and consideration than a passing plot point can offer.
What 90 Day Fiance left out was that over 3% of the Samoan population3 was infected with measles over three short months. Many of those infected were children under the age of five. One in five babies between 6-11 months contracted measles, and an estimated 1 in 150 babies within that age group ultimately succumbed to the disease. Eventually, the outbreak brought the tiny island nation to a screeching halt. Hospital facilities were forced to function far beyond capacity, and the Samoan government sanctioned strict curfews and lockdowns to prevent further spread of disease. Homebound people in desperate need of medical attention tied red cloths to the fronts of their abodes, accompanied by messages including “Help!” and “I want to live!”
At one point, the country expended all of its child-sized coffins and relied on imports from abroad to compensate for the sudden shortage4.
Some might argue that such tragedies are unavoidable, a force of nature that humankind can’t compete against. And sometimes, this is the case. Many illnesses sweep through masses and ravage those in their wake, and akin to a tsunami or a landslide or a volcanic eruption, very little can be done to stop the carnage.
But, in the case of measles, this analogy simply isn’t applicable.
A vaccine for the measles virus has been widely available since the early 1960s. According to the CDC, one dose of measles vaccine is 93% effective at warding off measles for a lifetime. A second dose boosts that effectiveness up to a whopping 97%. In 2019, WHO estimated that 86% of children worldwide had received at least one dose of measles vaccine. A worldwide inoculation effort has virtually eliminated endemic measles cases in several countries around the globe.
In other words, Samoan measles outbreak was completely avoidable.
This truth begs an obvious question: how the fuck did this happen to the people of Samoa? How is it that a peaceful, close-knit nation facilitated the conditions necessary that allowed children to die en masse from an entirely preventable illness?
Blaming the debacle on any one person is unreasonable and unfair. But one man, half a world away, played a particularly instrumental role in allowing this tragedy to occur: presidential cabinet pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I realize, skeptical reader, that it may come off as a bit bullheaded to blame one American politician for deaths occurring on a tiny, isolated island in the middle of the Pacific.
In reality, it’s not all that unreasonable.
Over the last four years, Kennedy has emerged as a warrior dedicated to combatting supposed deep-state plots and hacking at the shackles of government regulation. His path to becoming a juggernaut in American politics is built on a sturdy foundation of fear and disinformation5, primarily propagated through carefully crafted online campaigning. The COVID-19 pandemic proved to be unfathomably advantageous in bolstering this platform and catapulting him to his current position of prominence.
But before that, there was Samoa.
Though the world has largely forgotten, and five years of shitposting has largely buried the evidence, the island nation of Samoa played a small but key role in getting Kennedy to the position he enjoys today. When the people of Samoa stopped proving useful and ceased to fit cleanly into the narrative Kennedy wanted to build, they were largely left to suffer in obscurity.
Appreciating the true scope of Kennedy’s hypocrisy and the subsequent damage it has inflicted is no easy feat. His path is a convoluted one, one that at times disregards logic entirely. He is in some ways a sympathetic character, and it is easy enough to fall into the trap of blaming those that listen to him for their misfortunes. But ultimately his words, his actions, and his funds played an integral role in enabling a preventable health crisis.
To fully understand how RFK Jr. played a role in fostering conditions for such a tragedy, it’s important to understand exactly how he emerged as a leader in the anti-vaccination movement6.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as I’m sure many are aware, is a member of the politically prominent Kennedy family. Their dynasty in U.S. politics spans over a century, with various branches of the family having assumed roles in American public office since the 1890s. Robert’s uncle, John F. Kennedy, served as the 35th president of the United States and garnered widespread, enduring admiration from his countrymen. His death, which came in the form of a bullet to the brain mid-motorcade, shocked and confused the nation. Meanwhile, Robert’s father, RFK Sr., was primed to become the Democratic presidential nominee during the 1968 election. Though he endeared himself to millions of working-class Americans, his campaign was cut short when he, too, was assassinated.
RFK Jr. was 14 years old at the time of his father’s untimely death.
As a Kennedy, the boy was groomed from birth to become a political maverick. His name, once a signifier of a bright future ahead, was marred by curse. Theatrical Caravaggio-esque images of his father’s dying moments were promptly published by Time magazine. Countless films, television specials, books, and songs center solely on the death of his uncle.
This sort of unavoidable, widespread media coverage would have been enough on its own to generate a lifetime of uniquely unimaginable trauma. But an onslaught of conspiracy theories has been adding fuel to the fire for the past sixty years. Suspected culprits in the deaths range from CIA operatives to the Italian-American mafia to Fidel Castro to nameless brainwashed patsies. To understand RFK Jr., the truth of the crimes hardly matter. What does matter is that he, to some extent, buys into the narrative of a nefarious, secretive conspiracy at play7. Though familial tragedy didn’t derail his political destiny, it sent him hurdling down a trajectory of deep-seated distrust and paranoia. From adolescence on, he has been thrust into the role of perpetual target – backward as that may seem, coming from arguably one of the most privileged families in America.
This, of course, paints a pretty dark (though perhaps not entirely inaccurate) portrait of a world led by powerful, remorseless, obscured forces, far more interested in serving themselves than their customers and constituents. Perhaps this belief created a desire to do something noble, to somehow better society.
Whatever the impetus, in early adulthood RFK Jr. chose to pursue a career in law and environmental advocacy. As a senior attorney for Riverkeeper, a Hudson River protection non-profit, he assumed the unlikely role of underdog in lawsuits targeting widespread pollution generated by large corporations such as GE and ExxonMobil. He sued dozens of wastewater treatment plants that refused to comply with the Clean Water Act, and he fought on behalf of Indigenous Americans whose tribal lands had been reduced to toxic waste dumps8. His work in litigation ultimately established long-term environmental legal precedents. In short, his environmental efforts were largely admirable9 in the eyes of most decent people. Kennedy gained enough momentum to launch a widespread water protection program of his own, the Waterkeeper Alliance, in 1999.
Unfortunately, it was during this transition that Kennedy’s sights began to shift.
Intent on cleaning up America’s waterways at the start of the new millennium, Kennedy began taking note of highly toxic methylmercury levels entering the freshwater fish supply by way of coal-fired power plants10. This has been a valid health concern for decades, as mercury poisoning can result in serious, irreversible damage. However, as he spoke out on the issue, Kennedy found himself being confronted by scores of frustrated parents. He recalls the following in one interview:
“I was touring the country speaking about, among other things, the dangers of mercury emissions, which, by then, had contaminated virtually every freshwater fish in America. Following many of these appearances, mothers would approach me. Their tone was always respectful but mildly scolding. They said that if I was serious about eliminating the perils of mercury, I needed to look at Thimerosal. Vaccines, they claimed, were the biggest vector for mercury exposure in children.”
Thiomersal is an ethylmercury-based preservative in some vaccines, used to prevent fungal and bacterial contamination. Unlike methylmercury, ethylmercury is quickly metabolized and excreted by the human body within a matter of days. This prevents significant mercury accumulation, and in turn, the ill health effects associated with mercury poisoning. Though ethylmercury has been deemed safe to use in small doses, a review to reevaluate the safety of Thiomersal took place in the late 1990s.
Data showed that the mercury exposure an infant would be exposed to via vaccines over the first 6 months of life did not exceed FDA or WHO guidelines. However, depending on the size of an infant and the exact vaccine makeup, Thiomersal exposure could potentially surpass EPA guidelines. In a 1999 joint statement, experts stated there was "no evidence of harm caused by doses of Thimerosal found in vaccines, except for local hypersensitivity reactions". However, out of an abundance of caution, Thimerosal was removed from all routine infant vaccines by 200111.
Theoretically, this reformulation should have quelled the fears of parents concerned about their children being exposed to mercury. Regrettably, the Thimerosal reevaluation coincided perfectly with a 1998 report penned by Andrew Wakefield, infamously suggesting a causal link between MMR vaccination and an uptick in autism diagnoses.
From the beginning, there was an abundance of red flags. Wakefield himself stood to gain financially from tarnishing the 3-in-1 MMR vaccine’s reputation – an anti-vaccine legal advocacy group hired Wakefield as an “expert witness” in a case seeking scientific evidence tying vaccine injury to developmental disability12. After conducting an extremely flawed and biased study13 meant to validate his expertise, Wakefield failed to establish any biological mechanisms as to why vaccinations might cause developmental disorders. Nevertheless, a highly respected peer-reviewed medical journal, The Lancet, went ahead and published Wakefield’s study. Media outlets latched on to the shocking claims, luring viewers and readers in with frightening headlines. Scores of concerned parents convened on internet forums, and dozens of anecdotal experiences seemed to confirm suspicions sparked by Wakefield’s study14.
As mentioned earlier, Wakefield failed to point out what it was about vaccines that supposedly triggered autistic symptoms, leaving skeptics to draw their own conclusions. Thimerosal was never mentioned in Wakefield’s 1998 study, because the MMR vaccine has never contained Thimerosal. However, headlines about mercury-based preservatives in vaccine doses proliferated through the media when Wakefield’s study was published. People, understandably but incorrectly, conflated the two separate issues15. Even if there were ties to mercury poisoning by way of Thimerosal, its absence from MMR vaccine formulas meant that it couldn’t be responsible for the supposed autism-like symptoms allegedly triggered by the MMR vaccine. Unfortunately, very few took the time to correct this misconception, allowing it to metastasize into fear beyond reasoning.
The medical community attempted to right its wrongs when discrepancies in Wakefield’s study were discovered shortly after publication. Ultimately, The Lancet fully retracted the study entirely. Wakefield was subsequently stripped of his ability to practice medicine in 2010.
But the damage was already done.
For many, there was no undoing the connection between MMR vaccines and autism, and the retraction of the study that supposedly proved the point hardly mattered. Innumerable, thoroughly conducted studies over the years have since suggested that autism is a complex cocktail triggered largely by genetic predisposition and prenatal conditions. Nevertheless, the myths persisted. Likewise, reassurance concerning the overall safety of Thimerosal had little effect in. Removal of the preservative backfired miserably. Instead of being viewed as a precautionary measure, confirmation biases warped it into damning, concrete evidence of dangers lurking in vaccine formulas.
Imaginations have run wild with supposed hazards ever since. What Wakefield’s study produced was ultimately much more than fodder to back up a lawsuit. It instead cast a shadow of doubt that’s lingered for over 25 years, effectively convincing millions that vaccinations pose a greater risk to public health than the diseases they’re meant to prevent.
The moment RFK Jr. uttered the word “mercury”, the fledgling grassroots anti-vaccine movement – desperate for answers, desperate for a prominent voice – was in his ear.
And he listened.
It makes sense that he would. For the entirety of his career as an environmentalist, he dedicated himself to fighting on behalf of underdogs in the face of behemoth corporations.
Perhaps RFK Jr. truly empathized with the conspiracy-ladden parents he spoke with and understood them in a way only the son of a mysteriously assassinated senator could understand. Perhaps he saw an opportunity to exploit their hurt and confusion as a means of climbing the political ranks he was always fated for. Whatever his intentions or sentiments, he took a keen interest in the issue almost immediately.
In June 2005, RFK Jr. penned an essay – ominously titled Deadly Immunity – simultaneously published in print by Rolling Stone and online by Salon. It primarily focused on supposed collusion taking place between pharmaceutical manufacturers, Washington lawmakers, and health agents like the CDC. According to Kennedy, the organizations worked together to “whitewash” the risks of Thimerosal. He cited skyrocketing autism rates in children and claimed that the condition was “unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among 11 children born in the months after Thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931”. At one point, he writes:
Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis – a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the 20-year-old autistics?"16
Instantly, the article garnered ire for presenting a litany of misleading, contextless, and at times completely falsified information, based primarily on outdated concerns. Within a month of publishing, Salon issued five corrections to the story. In 2011, Deadly Immunity was retracted entirely. Former Salon editor-in-chief Joan Walsh admitted in a 2023 interview that the publication was immediately “besieged by scientists and advocates” pointing out errors. She called her role in the debacle “the worst mistake of my career”.
Much like the Wakefield study, the backtracking was futile. The corrections issued were skewed into censorship by conspiracy theorists. In their minds, Salon had caved to the whims of greedy CEOs and corrupt statesmen wishing to obscure the facts, and Kennedy established himself as the steadfast leader of America’s anti-vaccine movement.
Frankly, the movement couldn’t have conjured a better candidate in their wildest dreams. The name Kennedy evokes memories of civil rights advocacy and commitment to peace and prosperity in the hearts and minds of Americans. Historically, Kennedys – Robert, his father, his uncle, and the men that came before them – are people who fight for the good of everyone, whether that be through the championing of social aid programs or through lending an ear to the distraught mother of a neurodivergent child. Simultaneously, the name Kennedy is one inherently tied to the political elite. He is the sort of man who could conceivably know the intricacies of classified, closed-door gatherings headed by shadowy figures, hungry for financial and political domination. There is an air of legitimacy in his claims because he is a representative of a carefully cultivated dynasty of leaders.
In short, he was an irresistible ally to all those seeking to challenge the status quo.
One such party was the World Mercury Project, a Malibu-based non-profit activist group formed in 2007. With a stated goal of “stopping the devastating health effects associated with exposure to mercury…with the ultimate goal of banning all uses of mercury on a global level”, founder Eric Gladen devoted much of his efforts towards producing an autobiographical film detailing his own (alleged) Thimerosal-induced vaccine injury. In 2014, the film was released under the title Trace Amounts.
Somehow, the film caught Kennedy’s attention17. Soon, the celebrity politician was traveling to dozens of cities across the United States to speak about the dangers of Thimerosal at screenings of the film. By the end of the tour in 2015, Kennedy assumed the position of chairman of the World Mercury Project’s board.
Before Kennedy, the World Mercury Project was a humble endeavor, seemingly a low-budget tax-exempt vessel to fulfill Gladen’s passion project more so than anything else. In fact, to say that “Kennedy assumed the position of chairman of World Mercury Project’s board” is a bit misleading; prior to 2015, there was no board. Judging by screenshots captured by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, there wasn’t much of anything to the World Mercury Project at all, aside from a stagnant blog and a Paypal donation portal.
The moment Kennedy backed the World Mercury Project, hundreds of thousands of dollars were injected into the organization. He spent the next year employing a team of full-time professionals, eager to “expose phony science and CDC corruption”.
In 2016, Kennedy organized a PR blitz to announce the “launch” of the World Mercury Project. The choice to parade the non-profit as something new wasn’t entirely dishonest. Under Kennedy’s leadership, it was something new.
The initial press release advocates for the eradication of mercury, just as the World Mercury Project always had. That same press release also signaled a massive trajectory shift. From that moment forward, the stated goal was to “expose the government and corporate corruption that had led to [mercury] exposure”.
No longer was the objective simply to improve public health. The new World Mercury Project drifted away from proselytizing the specific health risks of Thimerosal and mercury (likely because said dangers are minimal, alongside the fact that it had largely been phased out of vaccine formulas by 2001). Instead, it was to take expose the collusion and take down the evil cabals broadly responsible for an allegedly unhealthy populace.
First, the organization set its sights on the National Vaccine Injury Compensation program. Established in 1988 following several high-payout vaccine injury lawsuits, a no-fault system was concocted to recompense vaccine-injury victims and protect vaccine manufacturers simultaneously. The need to protect billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies stems from the fact that the development and manufacturing of vaccines is generally not a particularly profitable venture18. When faced with lawsuits over inevitable vaccine injuries19, there becomes a powerful incentive to cease vaccine production altogether. This would have devastating consequences for society at large20. So, the compensation program, funded by an excise tax applied to vaccine sales, takes care of the injured without blaming manufacturers.
This should be a win-win for everybody. Victims are cared for promptly, threats to the vaccine production line are averted, and everyone is saved the time and expense of legal litigation. Between 1986-2023, about ~$4.6 billion USD has been awarded to victims. In 60% of those cases, injuries could NOT be confidently connected to the administration of vaccines, with some rulings standing completely contrary to all available scientific evidence. Nevertheless, many anti-vaccine advocates – including RFK Jr. – believe that this system fails to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for their missteps.
However, focusing on the National Vaccine Injury Compensation program wasn’t enough. Soon, the World Mercury Project wrapped its tendrils around researchers purportedly in bed with mega-corporations and government entities with vested interests in vaccine sales. Corrupt research professing misleading results is a real problem, as made evident with the Andrew Wakefield case. Unfortunately, instead of circulating any sort of information to help individuals identify red flags, the World Mercury Project instead aimed to sow seeds of doubt in all scientific research, lowering concrete evidence to the level of mere conjecture.
If this objective was exhausting to read, it’s because its meant to be. When presented lofty goals against a slew of Goliaths, even someone as powerful as a Kennedy can seem like a David. And by casting himself as the de-facto leader of downtrodden underdogs and righteous truth-seekers facing larger-than-life opponents, Kennedy could fully assume the role of a demagogue.
In the midsts of these monumental changes, the World Mercury Project underwent an immediate full-body digital makeover to acknowledge Kennedy’s ascension.
Previously, online representation of the World Mercury Project was little more than black text on a white screen. In 2016, it relaunched into something completely unrecognizable. Dark spaces were replaced with pure whites, muted chartreuse, and a shade of blue-green that compliments Kennedy’s bright eyes. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts21 were created to provide a steady stream of sleek content to share. Each page became flooded with unsettling collages haphazardly stitched together – a pregnant belly surrounded by two dozen menacing needles, a blue-eyed boy overlayed among smokestacks spewing dark clouds into the air supply. Many of these images were paired with articles sporting sensational headlines, listed under a banner titled “Kennedy News & Views”.
The World Mercury Project also notably added around 89 peer-reviewed studies linking vaccine exposure to developmental disability, for those not entirely turned off by the notion of good-old-fashioned scientific research. Neatly compiled into a PDF, each abstract is paired with a plain-text summary meant to translate results into something more easily digestable.
On the surface, the collection is compelling. However, notable issues with the majority of the studies presented become evident with minimal research. Nearly one in three of the peer-reviewed studies included were penned by father-son duo Mark and David Geier, who have been described in courts of law as “intellectually dishonest”, “not reliable”, and “wholly unqualified”22. A decent chunk of the studies come from problematic publishers such as Hindawi, which issued a staggering 8000 retractions due to compromised peer reviews and links to research paper mills before its discontinuation in 2023. A few of the studies appear to be sound in their methodology, but have been paired with misleading summaries23.
Luckily for them, these are easy enough details for unsuspecting readers to miss. So, post by post, the World Mercury Project was able to refine its image and its message.
Eventually, in 2018, the World Mercury Project rebranded itself to Children’s Health Defense – an infinitely less charged moniker innocuous enough to draw in any trusting passersby.
The name isn’t all that’s changed. As time has passed, the initial PDF compiling anti-vaccine research has morphed into a full-fledged database, covering everything from Ivermectin and COVID to the ills of 5G radiation24. CHD.TV has been populated with hundreds of hours of video content, free from censors and the moderation of Youtube. There’s now a merch store, which offers infant onesies bundled with complimentary anti-vaccine ebooks available in English and Spanish.
And of course, most prominently of all, there’s RFK Jr. His face is the first you’ll see on the CHD website. He’s repeatedly referred to as “The Defender”, with a capital D. For $25 USD, you can buy a commemorative glass ornament for your Christmas tree plastered with the same headshot that greets you at login. He is inextricable from the Children’s Health Defense. He is Children’s Health Defense.
I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s obvious how, in a post-COVID world, an anti-vaccination turned cult of personality platform might thrive. But the story I want to tell starts before the world ended, the paradigm shifted, and an endless fount of content was available for anti-vaccine advocates to gnaw on.
In 2018, Children’s Health Defense was growing. But it was still far from the behemoth it would become. It still needed something big to draw attention to it, to draw in clicks and bring in funding for greater endeavors. A story that would REALLY fucking freak people out.
And in 2018, Kennedy and his cohorts would find just that Samoa.
(STORY CONTINUED IN PART TWO)
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This was mostly due to a lack of infrastructure and accessibility to health clinics for DRC populations living in rural areas (over 50%). Years of internal conflict raged by dozens of rebel militias has further hindered efforts to get vaccines to vulnerable communities. For this reason, the DRC is often hard-hit by epidemics. Most recently, the African nation has suffered scores of mpox cases, and before that, it experienced one of the largest ebola outbreaks in recorded history.
Not even 90 Day Fiance proper – we’re talking a 90 Day Fiance spinoff, for Christ’s sake.
I realize that 3% may not seem like much, but it is. This would be the equivalent of about 10,000,000 Americans getting measles in a three-month span.
Please take a moment to sincerely consider how depressing this is conceptually. Samoa had so many babies die so quickly that they needed to call on the international community to help supply baby coffins. This thought has haunted me for the past month.
It may have started as misinformation, which is when someone unintentionally gets their facts mixed up. But somewhere along the lines, much of what has spewed out of Kennedy’s mouth has become blatant disinformation (which is when someone actively tries to mislead others with false information).
Kennedy himself has long denied being anti-vaccine, instead claiming to be an advocate for “safe vaccines”. However, as recently as July 2023, Kennedy claimed on the Lex Fridman podcase that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective”. You can listen to his full statement here. So let’s call a spade a spade and stick to calling Kennedy exactly what he is – a leader in the worldwide anti-vaccine movement.
RFK Jr. has gone on record multiple times expressing doubt in the legitimacy and accuracy of the Warren Commission’s findings concerning the assassination of JFK. In 2021, he called for the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of killing his father, citing his belief that a rogue bodyguard instead fired the fatal shots.
It should be noted that said communities have since expressed disappointment in Kennedy’s lack of sincere commitment. Kennedy has argued that his critics are motivated by politics.
Of course, he wasn’t perfect and at times drew criticism from his peers. His choice to employ a man who illegally smuggled rare cuckoo bird eggs led to mass resignations at Riverkeeper, and his opposition to the construction of wind farms in Cape Cod was seen as counterintuitive to his environmental goals.
As explained in The Misinformation Age by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatheral:
“In the early 2000s, it was already widely known that some fish contained mercury. Coal-fired power plants emitted a form of inorganic mercury into the air, where it would gradually fall back to earth, mix into ocean water, and be ingested by microbes, which converted it to highly toxic methylmercury. These microbes would then be consumed by small fish, which would be consumed by larger fish, and so on up the food chain. Methylmercury tends to accumulate in animal tissue, so large fish were building up high levels of the toxin.”
Some vaccines (such as the flu and tetanus shot) continue to utilize thiomersal in trace amounts.
Wakefield also filed a patent application for a “safer” single measles vaccine, which would only become necessary if the widely-used three-in-one MMR vaccine fell out of use.
Wakefield’s findings were based on an examination of just 12 children. None of the twelve were part of a control group, because there was no control group. “Four or five” of those twelve children were covered by the legal aid contract Wakefield directly profited from. In other words, the parent’s ability to sue for compensation was directly tied to Wakefield’s ability to establish a scientific link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
For instance: Many autistic children begin to show initial symptoms around 12-24 months, which happens to be the same narrow period in which pediatricians tend to administer routine vaccines. Children start showing symptoms in this age range regardless of whether or not they’ve been vaccinated. But without that data at hand, one might come to the (incorrect) conclusion that the administration of vaccines somehow triggered the autistic behavior based on observation.
Of course, this theory falls apart under the slightest bit of pressure. The neurological symptoms of mercury poisoning differ significantly from the neurodevelopmental symptoms of autism. As mentioned previously, Thimerosal utilizes ethylmercury, a far less toxic compound than the methylmercury commonly associated with mercury-induced illnesses. Numerous follow-up studies have shown that autism rates continued to rise after Thimerosal was phased out of childhood vaccines. Most damning of all, the MMR vaccine – the vaccine Wakefield very specifically cited as the one responsible for triggering autism – never contained Thimerosal, even when the use of the preservative was far more commonplace.
The answer? On the E! Network, where Dr. Boyd could have watched 26-year-old former Playboy bunny Holly Madison star on the reality television series The Girls Next Door. Of course, like many people with ASD, Madison was not diagnosed until later in life and did not publicly reveal her diagnosis until the 2020s. The 20-year-old autistics were always there – we just didn’t have a good understanding of what constitutes autism. Many autistic individuals were grouped under nebulous diagnoses like “developmental delay” and “behavioral disorder”, which capture specific aspects but fail to describe the full picture of the condition. Still more were misdiagnosed entirely, with their conditions attributed to childhood schizophrenia or a general lack of maternal affection.
25 years later, the fallacy persists that autism is some new epidemic inflicting people. The reality is that people with autism spent generations being labeled anything from eccentric to invalid. Dan Akyroyd and Anthony Hopkins and Elon Musk and Courtney Love were all out and about autistically existing in this fabled period without autism – people simply didn’t realize that they were autistic. Darwin and Michelangelo and Tesla were there too, showing clear signs of ASD but born before a diagnosis existed.
This is to say nothing of the countless individuals without voices, never considered worth writing about. Plenty of autistic individuals throughout the ages have been quietly shuffled off and out of sight into insane asylums or lobotomized into complacency – we’ve just chosen to forget them.
In short, people with autism have always existed – the rest of the world simply did not care to acknowledge them before the 90s.
It’s unclear as to whether Kennedy and Gladen knew each other before the production of Gladen’s film – information on Gladen is quite scarce.
There are a few obvious exceptions, most notably the COVID-19 vaccine
And they are inevitable – no matter how safe the formulation, there will always be those who suffer allergic reactions, injure themselves in vasovagal episodes, etc. Just as you wouldn’t necessarily blame a cook or waiter for a bad case of heartburn after eating a meal, it’s possible to have a bad reaction to a vaccine and have no party at fault.
(More on that in Part Two)
These were the days before rules or regulations were urging social media platforms to point out outright disinformation.
Honestly, these descriptions are pretty kind. These two are completely bananas. Both father and son had their medical licenses revoked in multiple states back in 2011, when the two developed a protocol claiming to cure autism with the use of Lupron, which in turn chemically castrated patients. The “institutional review board” that approved the treatment was registered under the Geier’s business address, and was ultimately found to be a sham that failed to meet any sort of state or federal requirements. Over the years, the Geiers scammed thousands of dollars out of parents seeking to cure their children’s autism. The protocol came to an end when Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer of Lupron, stopped selling the medication to the Geiers based on the “nonexistence of scientific evidence” backing up the efficacy of the treatment. The American Academy of Pediatrics has criticized the work Geier’s work for "numerous conceptual and scientific flaws, omissions of fact, inaccuracies, and misstatements".
For example, the PDF includes a Danish study titled “Recurrence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Full and Half-Siblings and Trends Over Time”. The findings of the study quite clearly support the role of genetics in ASD. However, the inserted summary from the World Mercury Project instead harps on a contradiction in listed Danish autism rates between the given study and a second, unlisted study touted by the CDC.
To vet each study on the database is a job I’m personally not equipped to handle, but I will say this – CHD still has the suspect research and misleading descriptions from the original PDF compilation readily available. The database includes studies that have been retrospectively retracted, but fails to include any sort of disclaimers stating as much. Though individual studies hosted on the site may be valid, there’s an obvious pattern of disingenuous action on CHD’s part. Information is carefully curated to fit a specific diabolical narrative, and anything that runs counter to that narrative is either ignored entirely or discredited.