Samoa was on the verge of disaster when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived in June 2019.
The previous year, two infants were murdered by a poorly manufactured measles vaccine, prompting the government to halt vaccinations. Thousands of their youngest children were left defenseless against a highly dangerous disease that was reemerging all across the world because many parents were not sure that the immunizations were safe, even though they resumed months later.
Officials and scientists were concerned about Samoa since less than one-third of its infants had received vaccinations. Kennedy, however, recognized a chance.
Kennedy recalled online that Samoan government leaders, including the Prime Minister, were interested in measuring health outcomes after the natural experiment generated by the respite from immunizations. Kennedy was the head of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit organization that opposed vaccines at the time. Kennedy was ready to offer them a means to execute it, no matter where the idea came from.
It’s a softer version of the theory he has long supported at home, which holds that vaccination safety, which has been confirmed by scientific consensus, needs more research in studies that would need a sizable number of kids to forgo them. Kennedy traveled to Samoa in 2019 with a well-known health informatics specialist to provide the prime minister and the ministry of health with an information system that would monitor the effects of medical treatments, such as vaccinations, on the 200,000 people living in the country.
The issue of what would happen to Samoan infants who were not vaccinated was resolved months after Kennedy’s arrival. A nationwide measles outbreak killed 83 people, primarily young children, and sickened many more. Kennedy maintained ties to the island throughout the measles outbreak by writing to the prime minister to voice worries about the vaccine and offering medical advice to a local anti-vaccine activist who falsely advertised the vaccination campaign and untested alternative remedies.
Since President Donald Trump announced his candidacy as secretary of health and human services, there has been a fresh focus on Kennedy’s time in Samoa and his impact there. At a time when kid vaccination rates are down and the threat of emerging diseases like avian flu is increasing, Kennedy would be in charge of U.S. public health policies and programs, particularly those pertaining to vaccines. When asked about Kennedy’s trip to Samoa, the Trump transition team representative refused to comment.
Kennedy has consistently denied any culpability for the epidemic in Samoa and its aftermath, and he did not respond to demands for comment. In 2021, Kennedy stated in an interview for the 2023 documentary Shot in the Arm, “I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa.” He informed the Samoa Observer in 2021 that during his visit, he and the prime minister had discussed vaccines in passing.
In a 2023 interview with NBC News, he also questioned whether measles was the source of the recent wave of mortality, describing it as a highly contentious theory.