Mother Jones; Michael Brochstein/ZUMA; Cynthia S. Goldsmith/CDC
Appearing in Shot in the Arm, a 2023 documentary about vaccine opposition, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was asked about the deadly measles outbreak that occurred in Samoa in 2019 and claimed the lives of 83 people, mostly children. Kennedy, a leading anti-vaxxer who had visited the Pacific island nation a few months before the outbreak, replied, “I’m aware there was a measles outbreak…I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate. I didn’t go there with any reason to do with that.”
Kennedy was being disingenuous, sidestepping his connection to that tragedy. Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit anti-vax outfit he led until becoming a presidential candidate, had helped spread misinformation that contributed to the decline in measles vaccination that preceded the lethal eruption. And during his trip to Samoa, Kennedy had publicly supported leading vaccination opponents there, lending credibility to anti-vaxxers who were succeeding in increasing vaccine hesitation among Samoans. Moreover, in early 2021, Kennedy, in a little-noticed blog post, hailed one of those vaccination foes as a “hero.”
In the interview for this film, Kennedy, as he has frequently done, was downplaying his actions as one of the most prominent anti-vax conspiracy theorist in the world who has worked with and bolstered anti-vaxxers around the globe.
In the years prior to 2019, measles had not been a problem in Samoa. But in 2018, two infants died after receiving the measles vaccine. The country quickly placed its vaccine program on hold, as vaccine opponents, including Children’s Health Defense, exploited theses deaths to raise questions about the safety of vaccines. The vaccination rate plummeted from in the 60-to-70 percent range to 31 percent. But the problem, it turned out, was not with the vaccine. Two nurses had mistakenly mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxant. Once this was revealed, CHD did not update social media posts suggesting the vaccine was the culprit. (Those posts are no longer available.)
During the stretch in which the vaccination coverage was dropping in Samoa, Kennedy visited the nation in June 2019 and gave a boost to anti-vaxxers there who had used the death of those two infants to help cause the drop in vaccination rates. He had a meeting with Taylor Winterstein, a prominent Samoan Australian vaccination foe. In an Instagram post featuring a photo of her with Kennedy, Winterstein wrote, “I am deeply honoured to have been in the presence of a man I believe is, can and will change the course of history. This was a divinely timed, once in a lifetime opportunity and I will forever cherish the conversations and moments we shared together in Samoa.” She added hashtags used by anti-vaxxers. Public health experts complained Kennedy’s visit to Samoa helped amplifly anti-vax voices.
Kennedy later claimed his encounter with Winterstein was a chance occurrence. But he acknowledged his trip to Samoa had been arranged by coconut farmer Edwin Tamasese, another prominent Samoan anti-vaxxer, and paid for by Children’s Health Defense. The point of the trip, he insisted, was to discuss with government officials “the introduction of a medical informatics system that would allow Samoa’s health officials to assess, in real time, the efficacy and safety of every medical intervention or drug on overall health.” This would include questioning the value of vaccinations. In an 2021 interview with the Samoa Observer, Kennedy said he and Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi had talked “a limited amount” about vaccines.
Despite the impression Kennedy gave in the Shot in the Arm documentary, his trip was at least in part related to the use of vaccines in Samoa.
After the measles outbreak struck in November 2019 and the Samoan government implemented an emergency compulsory anti-measles vaccination program to contain the spread, Winterstein and Tamasese opposed the effort with misinformation and harsh rhetoric. Winterstein compared the operation to Nazi Germany. Tamasese called it a “killing spree.” He declared the vaccination operation “the greatest crime against our people” and suggested the vaccine itself was the cause of the outbreak. Tamasese advocated against the use of conventional medicine and antibiotics and urged people to rely on papaya leaf extract and vitamins instead of the vaccine and antibiotics.
During this outbreak, Kennedy’s group wrote to Prime Minister Tuilaepa, and he encouraged Samoa officials to examine the measles vaccine to “determine, scientifically, if the outbreak was caused by inadequate vaccine coverage or alternatively, by a defective vaccine.” So Kennedy, like Tamasese, was suggesting the vaccine itself might be responsible for the thousands of cases and scores of deaths.
The Samoan government declared a state of emergency and ordered anti-vaccination advocates to stop discouraging people from vaccinating. For his loud public opposition to the government’s initiative, Tamasese was arrested and charged with incitement against a government order. Samoa’s Communications Minister Afamasaga Rico Tupai told TVNZ, “The anti-vaxxers unfortunately have been slowing us down.” Days after his arrest, Tamasese was granted bail and banned from online activities. In December 2020, a judge dismissed the charges against Tamasese, noting he that had been improperly charged and that the prosecution and police had done a sloppy job presenting the evidence against him.
Soon after that, Kennedy wrote a blog post for the CHD site that called Tamasese a “medical freedom hero.” He referred to the 2019 blast of measles in Samoa as merely a “mild measles outbreak” and praised Tamasese for having “infuriated the Global Medical Cartel.” He suggested that the vaccine, along with lousy hospital protocols, had caused the deaths. A photo accompanying this post showed Kennedy posing with both Tamasese and Winterstein, and the post included Tamasese’s self-serving account of his actions during the outbreak. (A few months earlier, during a podcast with Winterstein, Kennedy lauded her as the “leading voice of dissent” in Australia.)
The Kennedy campaign did not respond to a query containing questions about his visit to Samoa, the measles outbreak there, his praise of Tamasese, and his comments to the filmmakers. Children’s Health Defense also did not reply to a message seeking comment.
The Samoa episode fits Kennedy’s M.O. As an anti-vax champion, he has decried vaccinations as unsafe and ineffective—repeating the debunked notion that vaccines cause autism—and he has boosted attempts throughout the world to convince people to eschew vaccines. Yet when he has been questioned critically about these efforts, he has issued false denials and contended that he’s just raising questions and calling for more research. In July 2023, at the invitation of House Republicans, he appeared at a congressional hearing and declared, “I have never been anti-vax. I have never told the public to avoid vaccination.” Yet that same month, during a podcast interview, he asserted, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
Kennedy, as he claimed in the interview for Shot in the Arm, may not have publicly urged Samoans to refuse the measles vaccine. But he encouraged those who did, and the group he led helped spread misinformation to discredit vaccinations there. After the tragedy was over, he dismissed the outbreak as not serious and extolled the anti-vaxxers who helped bring it about. The Samoa chapter provides a clear case study of how Kennedy threatens public health and slyly sidesteps responsibility for that.
