How Robert F Kennedy Jr's false claims about Covid-19 and vaccines could badly impact public health
The nephew of assassinated US president John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy Jr was recently banned on Instagram after he repeatedly used the social media platform to post false claims about Covid-19 and the safety of vaccines. Facebook, the owner of Instagram, confirmed the ban as a spokesperson said that Kennedy Jr has been blocked “for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines''. Even after the ban, the son of former presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy stood by his claims as he said in an emailed statement, “This kind of censorship is counterproductive if our objective is a safe and effective vaccine supply.”
Kennedy Jr is not new to the world of conspiracy theories on vaccines, 5G and more. Though he has been banned from Instagram, his Facebook and Twitter accounts that are being followed by more than 100,000 people are still active. According to a 2019 study in the journal, Vaccine, only two organizations were behind the majority of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook between May 31, 2017, and February 22, 2019. The study stated in that period 145 anti-vaccine Facebook advertisements ran and 54% of them were run together by two groups: The World Mercury Project and Stop Mandatory Vaccination. The World Mercury Project that ran the most ads of any single source has close connections with the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense, which is chaired by Kennedy Jr, which made him the single leading source of anti-vax ads on Facebook.
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Earlier in 2005, Kennedy Jr wrote a piece alleging a conspiracy theory regarding thimerosal, a mercury-containing organic compound widely used as a preservative in a number of biological and drug products, including many vaccines, to help prevent potentially life-threatening contamination with harmful microbes. He claimed that thimerosal caused autism in his story while totally ignoring an Institute of Medicine immunization safety review on thimerosal as well as several studies funded or conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To justify his theories, he quoted SafeMinds’ Mark Blaxill, whom he identified as the vice president of “a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicine.” Blaxill had accused CDC of “incompetence and gross negligence” and alleged that vaccines’ side-effects were “bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you’ve ever seen.”
Kennedy Jr confidently claimed that “It’s hard to calculate the damage to our country—and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases—if Third World nations come to believe that America’s most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It’s not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by American’s enemies abroad.” He also added that the failure of a generation of “scientists and researchers … to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world’s poorest populations.”
Speaking of damage, his claims do affect public health. It can be seen in the statistics when US suffered its worst measles outbreak in a generation owing to a drop in the number of children receiving the MMR vaccine. Following which the World Health Organization listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to global health. In the case of coronavirus, surveys have listed that despite the vaccine being free in some places, people are hesitant to get it. About a third or 35% of Americans living in rural areas say they probably or definitely would not get a Covid-19 shot that had been deemed safe and effective and was available for free, compared to about a quarter of suburban (27%) and urban residents (26%) who say the same, reveals a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Kennedy Jr once celebrated as a hero because of his decades-long work as an environmental lawyer, gained more popularity amid the coronavirus pandemic. He amassed a huge amount of support on social media by altering his anti-vaccine theories to fit the public health crisis, where he repeatedly uttered false allegations against Microsoft founder Bill Gates and about the safety of 5G telecom networks. He also alleged that Gates was creating an “injectable chip” so that he can keep track of human movements.
In an interview in 2020, the anti-vaxxer even went on to allege that Facebook and Instagram were censoring him to protect the interests of Big Pharma. At that time also, he stood by his claims that he was here to safeguard public health. “Does it trouble me that people are angry at me? No, it does not. That’s what I signed on for,” Kennedy Jr said as reported by The Globe and Mail. Not just that, he had also pointed fingers at Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious diseases expert, accusing him of monetary interest in promoting coronavirus vaccines.
Speaking about Kennedy Jr, Tim Caulfield, professor of health law and science policy at the University of Alberta, told Tortoise: “Kennedy Jr is one of the main anti-vaxx voices out there. He comes with some credibility with his name and the work he’s done in the environmental space. He’s more likely to get a seat at the table and be viewed as a credible voice.” Experts too second Caulfield's point as they say Kennedy Jr.’s famous name and legitimate background makes his messaging particularly effective.
Caulfield was true about the nephew of the 35th US President as in July 2020, the Britain-based nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate learned that social media accounts spreading anti-vax theories gained 58 million followers and Kennedy Jr. was leading the trend.
An analysis by Tortoise of more than 145,000 Facebook and Instagram posts containing examples of verified misinformation shows that on both platforms Kennedy Jr’s posts have had a huge impact, much larger than anyone else.
How did pro-vaccine Kennedy Jr become a proponent of false theories?
There was a time when Kennedy Jr was thriving as an environmental lawyer. For years, he served Riverkeeper, an organization made to save the Hudson River from pollution and neglect and won several awards. He was also named one of Time Magazine’s Heroes for the Planet for his success in saving the Hudson River. During that time when Kennedy Jr was at the height of his professional career, he started taking interest in vaccines. He was touring the country while speaking about several things, including the dangers of mercury emissions in American rivers. Once he was asked by a psychologist called Sarah Bridges if he believed mercury in a vaccine was responsible for her son’s autism.
“I’d always been pro-vaccine. I had all my kids vaccinated and my annual flu shot every year. But when I started reading about thimerosal, I was dumbstruck by the gulf between scientific reality and the media consensus,” Kennedy Jr said a few years ago. But eventually, he reportedly became obsessed with the idea that there was no study that had written about the unsafe nature of thimerosal. He went on to write a book ‘Thimerosal – Let the Science Speak’ summing up several studies that he claimed mentioned thimerosal was not safe. At first, people believed what Kennedy Jr said, but then “the corrections started coming in,” Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California, said. Reiss added, “When the errors were pointed out he doubled down rather than correcting them.”
Tortoise even once confronted Kennedy Jr after America was hit by the Covid-19. It told him that many believed his theories pose risk to people’s health, to which he replied, “Of course I have people that don’t like me. I’m used to that when I was an environmentalist, which I still am. Throughout my whole career people have been angry at me. I’m suing the pharmaceutical industry. I’m suing all the big vaccine makers. I’m suing FCC [Federal Communications Commission] on 5G and these products that are injuring people, and they all do this and then they create phony science. They take advertising and the press and they compromise journalists like yourself and, you know, they get people on their side.”
Kennedy Jr’s ideas have also left his relatives concerned. His siblings - Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Joseph Kennedy - along with niece Maeve Kennedy McKean publicly accused him of spreading dangerous misinformation in an article in Politico. The trio wrote, “We love Bobby. He is one of the great champions of the environment. His work to clean up the Hudson River and his tireless advocacy against multinational organizations who have polluted our waterways and endangered families has positively affected the lives of countless Americans. We stand behind him in his ongoing fight to protect our environment,” before adding: “However, on vaccines he is wrong. And his and others’ work against vaccines is having heartbreaking consequences.”