Canada has seen more cases of the measles this year than at any time since the wildly contagious disease was eliminated here in 1998, a resurgence experts chalk up to falling vaccination rates.
Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, has for years warned of the dangers of the anti-vaccine movement. Dr. Hotez, whose latest book is The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science, is in Winnipeg this week. He spoke with health reporter Kelly Grant about measles, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and whether he would ever consider leaving the United States.
I want to start with measles. Canada is grappling with a massive outbreak, the biggest one we’ve seen in nearly 30 years. Texas, where you practise, is dealing with a big outbreak as well. What do you blame for this resurgence of the measles?
In 2016 I wrote an article in the journal PLOS Medicine called Texas and Its Measles Epidemics that more or less predicted what’s come to pass, unfortunately. We’ve been watching this developing for the last 10 years and it actually got accelerated during COVID. The parts of West Texas and adjoining areas of Oklahoma where this epidemic is still raging are the same places where COVID vaccination rates were really low. To really understand what’s going on with this measles epidemic in West Texas, you have to understand three things. You have to first understand what happened during the pandemic. Second, you have to understand what’s happening with libertarian, far-right politics. And third, you have to understand – and this may surprise you a bit – what’s going on with the health and wellness and influencer industry.
Why has a movement dedicated to health and wellness hitched its wagon to the antivaccination movement?
The health and wellness and influencer industry is, in my view, based primarily on whatever they can buy in bulk, at low cost, jack up in price and then pair with selling telehealth visits. There are segments of it that have become a very corrupt industry. I think it’s very much linked now to this MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] movement that we’re seeing in the Department of Health and Human Services. Of course, we’ve now got anti-vaxxer in chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running this.
Let’s talk about RFK Jr. I’m particularly interested to hear your thoughts on his recent comments about autism because of the book you wrote about your daughter. What do you think about what he’s been saying about autism, particularly his promise to get to what he calls the root causes of autism by September?
The book that I wrote in 2018, called Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, is my journey as a vaccine scientist, pediatrician and autism dad. I wrote that after a year of discussions with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In 2017, the National Institutes of Health asked me to speak with him. I had a long series of discussions with him that were mediated by a third individual, Tim Shriver, a relative of Mr. Kennedy. Tim was terrific, but Mr. Kennedy was just deeply dug in. It was pretty clear that he had little or no interest in the actual science.
Your background is in developing vaccines for neglected tropical diseases. How worried are you about the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the World Health Organization and to cut funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development?
They cut USAID funding and [plan] to cut funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the neglected tropical disease program that I helped launch to provide access to low-cost, donated medicines. Gavi, one could argue, is the single most effective global public health organization in human history. It began with $750-million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and now it gets government replenishment. We went from half a million kids dying of measles every year to now it’s down to 100,000, with similar public health victories for pertussis or whooping cough and meningitis and the list goes on. To halt all that, it’s so self-defeating.
Up here in Canada, we’re looking for ways to take advantage of this moment. Have you spoken with colleagues who are eyeing moves to Canada because of the environment for scientists in the United States?
Canada can do quite a bit to help the world. Without a doubt, we will see some brain drain here in the U.S., especially with the stoppage or the uncertainty around the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. It’s not just the budget cuts. It’s the seemingly arbitrary and capricious nature of the cuts, with no articulation of an overarching plan. If you’re a scientist, you wake up in the morning and you don’t know if there’s going to be an e-mail saying, ‘Your grant just got cut.’
Is there anything that would convince you to leave the States?
I love Texas. I love the work we’re doing in Texas with the Texas Medical Center, which is really unique. There’s too many unknowns. What is it that the White House press secretary now always says? I’m not going to address hypotheticals. If it’s good enough for the White House, I guess I can use it, too.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
