'I'll never forget': Journalist recounts horror story about controversial Trump pick
Raw StoryBrian Deer, a journalist who for years has covered the anti-vaccine movement, has written an editorial in the New York Times condemning controversial Trump nominee and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his actions in Samoa that led to a deadly measles outbreak there in 2019. In his editorial, Deer declares that "I'll never forget" what RFK Jr. did in Samoa, and then detailed how Kennedy convinced the tiny island nation's government to halt its measles vaccination program — with disastrous results. "In November 2019, when an epidemic of measles was killing children and babies in Samoa, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who in recent days became Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services — sent the prime minister of Samoa at the time a four-page letter," Deer begins. As a result of this panic, writes Deer, "Samoa’s vaccination rates had fallen to less than a third of eligible 1-year-olds" by the time the outbreak struck in 2019.
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