Providence, RI (AP) – A doctor in Texas who treated children in a outlet of measles was shown on video with a result of measles on his face in a clinic a week before health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Him met and praised as an “extraordinary” healer.
Dr. Ben Edwards appeared in the video posted on March 31 by the anti-vaccine group Kennedy who once led, Children's Health Defense. In it, Edwards appears The wearing of scrubs and talking with parents and children in an improvised clinic that he set up in Seminole, Texas, land zero of the outbreak that hundreds of people has sick and killed three, including two children.
Edwards is asked if he had measles and he replied, “Yes,” and then said that his infection started the day before the video was recorded.
“Yesterday was pretty painful. Little mild fever. Spots came in the afternoon. Today I woke up with a good feeling,” said Edwards in the video.
Measles is the most contagious and four days after the appearance about four days before and four days after the result and is one of the world's most contagious diseases, according to the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors and experts in the field of public health said that the decision of Edwards to go to the clinic endanger children, their parents and their community because he could have spread it to others. They said there was no scenario in which the behavior of Edwards would be reasonable.
Kennedy met Edwards about a week after the video was posted by Children's Health Defense, the Kennedy group led to December for years. In a post of April 6 on X, Kennedy said that he 'visited with these two extraordinary healers', including Edwards and another doctor, and praised their use of two unproven treatments for measles.
Even while measles have exploded in Texas and spreads throughout the country, Kennedy, the best health officer in the country, refused to encourage people to vaccinate their children consistently and powerfully and to remind that the vaccine is safe. Kennedy's post that draws attention to Edwards is inappropriate but not surprising considering the record of Kennedy, Dr. Craig Spencer, a doctor who is also a professor at the Brown University School of Public Health.
“I think it is unfortunately perfect for the brand for how he thinks medicines should be practiced,” said Spencer. “And that makes me remarkably uncomfortable and extremely worried and afraid of the next three and a half years.”
It was unclear whether Kennedy knew that Edwards had gone into his clinic while he was infected with measles before he met him. A Kennedy spokesperson said he is not an anti-vaccine and that he “is dedicated to improve the health of children in America and re-used resources to Texas to help with the current outbreak.” He did not answer why the health secretary chose to meet and praise Edwards instead of one of the other doctors in West -Texas who have treated children in the outbreak.
Edwards told The Associated Press in an e -mail that he had “with zero patients with zero interaction who were not yet infected with measles” during the time he was contagious. “That is why there were of course no patients who were the danger of gaining measles because they already had measles.”
But Jessica Stier, 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 the people who visited the clinic by the health defense of children. She also wondered what steps Edwards took to confirm that people were sick with measles, rather than trusting guis work.
Steier, who runs the Science Literacy Lab and wrote an article together about the behavior of Edwards, said although there may be a number of extraordinary emergency situations where it would be suitable for a sick doctor to work, this is not one of those 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 who lifts him,” she said. “You know, it's so dangerous. I really feel for the people on the ground.”
The health defense of children has sued a number of news organizations, including the AP, who accused them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify wrong information, including the COVID-19 Pandemie and vaccines.
Kennedy's promotion of a doctor who has advertised unproven measles treatments is “completely irresponsible”, but is in line with Kennedy's long public report of anti-vaccine cases, Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician in the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He said that Kennedy brought those views to his new job as head of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
“He is no longer the director of Children's Health Defense. He is responsible for the health and well -being of children in this country,” said Offit. “It's an emergency, but Kennedy doesn't treat it that way.”
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