With the United States facing the biggest measles epidemic in 25 years, Health and Human Services Minister Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It will direct federal health services to explore possible new treatments for the disease, including vitamins, according to a HHS spokesman. The decision is the last one in a series of actions by the nation’s leading health official that special fears will undermine public confidence in vaccines as a basic public health tool.
The announcement comes as Mr Kennedy faces a strong reaction to the handling of the fireplace. It has scanned in large areas of the southwest, where vaccination rates are low, infect hundreds and kill two young girls. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 930 cases at national level, most of which are related to Southwest Exbreak.
Critics have said that Mr Kennedy has focused very much on unpaid treatments – such as Gadu liver oil supplements – and offered only implicit support for measles vaccine, which studies show that it is 97 % effective in preventing contamination.
The decision to put more resources in possible treatments, instead of encouraging vaccination, could have serious consequences at the center of the epidemic.
“We do not want to send the signal that you do not need to be vaccinated because there is just a way to get rid of it,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University School of Public Health.
Scientists have already studied thoroughly various vitamins and medicines as possible treatments for Ilala, Michael Osterholm epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota said.
Decades of research have not appeared a miracle treatment for measles virus, which can cause pneumonia, making it difficult for patients to get oxygen in their lungs and brain edema, which can cause blindness, deafness and mental disabilities.
“It’s not that there was a lack of studies,” he said.
Patients with measles are usually offered “supportive care” to help them make them more comfortable, while the virus runs its course, such as tylenol to reduce their fever, complementary oxygen and IV liquids.
The decision to search for new remedies is intended to help people who have chosen not to be vaccinated, said HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon. He added that the CDC still recommends measles, mumps and reds that is being shot as the most effective way to prevent measles.
But, he said, “our commitment is to support all families, regardless of their vaccination status, reducing the risk of hospitalization, serious complications and death from measles.”
As an example of such a community, Mr Kennedy pointed to the Mentonites in western Texas, who have experienced the main burden of cases and hospitalizations in the current home.
Mr Nixon said the CDC will work with universities to test new treatments for a “series of diseases”, which may include a combination of existing drugs and vitamins. The news of this effort was first mentioned by CBS News.
Public Health experts were embarrassed by Mr Kennedy’s decision to hunt new treatments, rather than supporting shots that have decades of safety and efficiency. They said that this appeared to be in contrast to his long focus on the prevention of diseases instead of treatment.
“This is similar to saying:” Go ahead and eat whatever you want, don’t exercise, you smoke like a chimney – we will invest all our resources in heart transplants, “said Dr. Jonathan Temte, a former chairman of the CDC vaccine advisory committee.
During the current measles epidemic, Mr Kennedy offered inconsistent and sometimes contradictory, messages about the MMR shot. In some places, he described the vaccine as “the most effective way to prevent measles spread”.
Other times, he questioned his safety: “We do not know the dangers of many of these products because they are not tested security,” he said in an interview with CBS News last month.
Doctors in West Texas said that Mr Kennedy’s focus on treatments and not on vaccines has already made their jobs difficult.
At the beginning of the epidemic, he told Fox News that he had heard of “almost miraculous and instant recovery” with treatments such as liver oil, which said it was “the safest application of vitamin A.”
While doctors sometimes administer high doses of vitamin A in a hospital to manage severe measles, experts do not recommend taking a doctor without supervision.
Shortly thereafter, doctors said they had encountered measles patients who had delayed critical medical treatment in favor of home stay and treatment with some of the supplements that Mr Kennedy was promoted. Some measles children received toxic levels of vitamin A, they said.
Dr. Osterholm said Mr Kennedy’s plan also undertook that people’s beliefs on vaccines were determined when in fact, clear information on their purpose and security had encouraged thousands of vaccinations in previous outbreaks.
Despite Mr Kennedy’s allegations that the Mennonites have “religious objections” to shots because they contain “fetal fragments”, historians studying the community say that it has no religious doctrine prohibiting vaccination, and the vaccine experts say that there is no MMR.
Local doctors have pointed out the misinformation about the safety of the shooting – which Mr Kennedy has helped to perpetuate – as the primary reason why their patients are choosing their children from vaccination.
