Controversial doc gets measles while treating unvaccinated kids—keeps working

A controversial doctor providing unproven measles treatments to unvaccinated children in West Texas recently contracted the highly infectious virus himself amid the mushrooming outbreak—and he continued treating patients while visibly ill with the virus.

The doctor's infection was revealed in a video posted online by Children's Health Defense (CHD), the rabid anti-vaccine advocacy organization founded and previously run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time anti-vaccine advocate who is now the US secretary of health. Kennedy headed CHD until January, when he stepped down in anticipation of his Senate confirmation.

In the video, the doctor, Ben Edwards, can be seen with mild spots on his face. Someone asks him if he caught measles himself, and he responds, "Yeah," saying he was "pretty achy yesterday." He went on to say that he had developed the rash the day before but woke up that day feeling "pretty good." The video was posted by CHD on March 31, and the Associated Press was the first to report it.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a person infected with measles is considered contagious from four days before the rash appears to four days after it appears. The virus is among the most infectious known to humans. It spreads in the air and can linger in the airspace of a room for up to two hours after an infectious person is present. Up to 90 percent of people who lack immunity—either from prior infection or vaccination—will get sick upon an exposure.

In the video, Edwards is wearing scrubs, apparently in a clinic with patients, parents, and people from CHD. In an email to the AP, Edwards claimed that he "interacted with zero patients that were not already infected with measles" during the time he was infectious. "Therefore, obviously, there were no patients that were put in danger of acquiring measles since they already had measles." However, the video shows him in a room with other people who do not appear sick, and he is not wearing a mask.

Edwards has become quite popular in the severely undervaccinated community in Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the explosive outbreak that began in late January and continues to grow steadily. Edwards set up a makeshift measles clinic in Gaines and provides unproven treatments, such as cod liver oil, the antibiotic clarithromycin, and the glucocorticoid budesonide, which is used to treat asthma and Crohn's disease.

Edwards and his unproven treatments have garnered direct praise from Kennedy, who in a social media post called Edwards and another controversial doctor working in the area, Richard Bartlett, "extraordinary healers." In 2003, Bartlett was disciplined by the Texas Medical Board for "unusual use of risk-filled medications" in multiple patients, including children. The risky treatments included intravenous antibiotics and hefty doses of glucocorticoids.

In the social media post, Kennedy claimed the two doctors had treated "some 300" children with measles amid the outbreak. According to another video posted by CHD, some of those children included the four surviving siblings of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died of measles in February. In the video, members of CHD interviewed the girl's parents, who believed that if Edwards had treated their now-deceased daughter, who developed measles before her siblings, she, too, would have lived. They also falsely claimed that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine was dangerous.

Misinformation

The interview culminated with the parents urging others to avoid the MMR vaccine. "We would absolutely not take the MMR," the mother said through a translator of Low German. "The measles wasn't that bad, and they got over it pretty quickly," she added, speaking of her four living children.