About a decade ago, Robert J. Kennedy Jr. enjoyed a reputation that — without hyperbole — was considered heroic.
As his description on the Cusp Conference website outlines , this was because Time magazine named him one of their “Heroes of the Planet” for his legal efforts in support of the Riverkeeper organization’s fight to restore the Hudson River. His image was bolstered by further legal successes that sought to protect the natural world, most notably in cases that saw him negotiate treaties on behalf of Indigenous groups throughout Latin America and Canada.
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However, that reputation has seen a great deal of tarnishing in recent years due to his similarly passionate and organized efforts to undermine public confidence in vaccine safety. Although CNN reported that he often says he’s in support “safe vaccines,” that doesn’t jibe with his tendency to spread debunked conspiracy theories about them throughout the past five years.
And now, it appears that this tendency is beginning to catch up with him.
Although Kennedy’s claims about vaccines date back to at least 2016, they have taken on new public health implications in light of American efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
As Irish Central reported , an hour-long conversation with Alec Baldwin on Instagram Live saw him make the unfounded claim that the death toll resulting from quarantining could eclipse the number of fatalities the United States has seen from the coronavirus.
He also stated without evidence that vaccines are the only medical product in the U.S. that aren’t safely tested and that they’re “unavoidably unsafe” because they contain unsafe levels of mercury.
Both of these claims have already been debunked as vaccines require thousands of test subjects before they’re eligible for approval, making them one of the most widely-tested products in the world.
As for the mercury claim, vaccine researcher Paul Offit explained that this misconception is based on a lack of understanding regarding the difference between ethylmercury and methylmercury.
As Offit wrote in STAT, Kennedy appears to be under the impression that the toxic methylmercury is found in vaccines.
Instead, certain vaccines can contain about 25 micrograms of ethylmercury, which is easily broken down and excreted by the human body.
Offit also pointed out that even vaccines somehow exposed people to 25 micrograms of methylmercury — which they don’t — that would still be eclipsed by the 360 micrograms that babies typically ingest within their first six months of life just by existing on the planet Earth.
However, Kennedy’s propagation of vaccine conspiracy theories go beyond a public conversation with an actor.
According to The Guardian , an organization Kennedy founded in 2016 called World Mercury Project was determined to be one of the two groups responsible for the majority of Facebook ads spreading vaccine misinformation in a 2019 study; the other being Larry Cook’s Stop Mandatory Vaccinations organization.
Kennedy is also the chair of a nonprofit group called Children’s Health Defense, which is known to make unfounded connections between chronic childhood conditions and vaccines, among other factors.
As CNN reported , Kennedy has also lobbied Congress to give parents exemptions from state vaccination requirements for children.
Alongside members of the public at large, criticism of Kennedy’s claims and works related to vaccines have come within his own family.
According to The Guardian , these include his brother, sister and niece, who have described the vaccine information he’s spread into public discourse as “tragically wrong.”
More recently, that penchant for misinformation has led to the termination of his Instagram account.
As CNN reported, a representative from Instagram’s parent company Facebook confirmed, “We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.”
Curiously, this doesn’t apepar to have affected Kennedy’s Facebook account, which remains active with over 300,000 followers.
And as a Facebook representative told CNN, there aren’t any plans to remove his page from that particular platform at this time either.
And aside from a statement to The Guardian that Facebook does not automatically disable users across various platforms, it remains unclear why this page that operates in a similar fashion to Kennedy’s Instagram account remains active.
This is particularly puzzling in light of Facebook’s recent pledge to crackdown on all posts and groups that frequently spread vaccine misinformation.
h/t: CNN , The Guardian
