By Michelle R. Smith
Providence, RI (AP) – A Texas doctor who treated children in a measle epidemic was shown on video with a rash on measles on a clinic a week before the health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. meets and praises him as “extraordinary” healer.
Dr. Ben Edwards appeared in the video published on March 31 by the Anti-Vaccin group Kennedy, once directed, the defense of children’s health. In this document, Edwards seems to be carrying scrubs and speaking with parents and children in a makeshift clinic he installed in Seminole, Texas, on the ground zero of the epidemic which spoke badly of hundreds of people and killed three, including two children.
Edwards are asked if he had measles and replied: “Yes”, then said that his infection started the day before the video recording.
“Yesterday, it was quite painful. Little light fever. Stacks came in the afternoon. Today, I woke up well,” said Edwards in the video.
Measles are the most contagious for about four days before and four days after relevance and is one of the most contagious diseases in the world, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the world. Doctors and public health experts said Edwards’ decision to go to the clinic put children, their parents and their community in danger because he could have disseminated it to others. They said there was no scenario in which Edwards conducting would be reasonable.
Kennedy met Edwards about a week after the video was published by Children’s Health Defense, the Kennedy group led for years until December. In an article on April 6 on X, Kennedy said that he “visited these two extraordinary healers”, including Edwards and another doctor, and rented their use of two unproven treatments for measles.
Even if measles has exploded in Texas and has spread across the country, Kennedy, the highest health official in the country, refused to encourage people to vaccinate their children in a coherent manner and to remind them that the vaccine is sure. The Kennedy post attracting attention to Edwards is inappropriate but not surprising given the Kennedy file, said Dr. Craig Spencer, a doctor who is also a professor at the Brown University School of Public Health.
“I think it is unfortunately perfectly on the brand to find out how he thinks that medicine should be practiced,” said Spencer. “And that’s what makes me remarkably uncomfortable and extremely worried and frightened for the next three and a half years.”
It was not clear if Kennedy knew that Edwards had entered his clinic when he was infected with measles before meeting him. A spokesperson for Kennedy said that he was not anti-vaccine and that he was “determined to improve the health of children in America and restarted resources in Texas to help the current epidemic”. He did not respond why the Secretary of Health chose to meet and rent Edwards rather than one of the other doctors in western Texas who treated the children in the epidemic.
Edwards told the Associated Press in an e-mail that he “interacted with any patient who were not already infected with measles” while he was infectious. “Consequently, obviously, no patient had been endangered to acquire measles because they already had measles.”
But Jessica Steier, a public health scientist, said that the video shows Edwards in the room with people who do not seem sick, including parents of sick children and people who have visited the children’s health defense clinic. She also asked what the steps took Edwards to confirm that people were sick with measles, rather than relying on assumptions.
Steier, who heads the science literacy laboratory, said that although there may be extraordinary emergencies where it would be appropriate for a sick doctor to work, it is not one of these situations because there is no shortage of providers who are not infected. She also pointed out that the video shows that Edwards did not wear a mask.
“You have the HHS secretary to lift him,” she said. “You know, it’s so dangerous. I really feel for people on the ground.”
The defense of children’s health has pursued a number of press organizations, including AP, accusing them of rape the antitrust laws by taking measures to identify disinformation, including on the pandemic and COVID-19 vaccines.
The promotion by Kennedy of a doctor who praised unprecedented measles treatments is “fully irresponsible” but complies with the long public assessment of Kennedy in anti-Vaccin views, said Dr. Paul Offer, pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. He said Kennedy had brought these points of view to his new job at the head of the United States Ministry of Health and Social Services.
“He is no longer the director of defense of children’s health. He is responsible for the health and well-being of children in this country,” said Offer. “It’s an emergency, but Kennedy does not treat it this way.”
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
