Anti-vaccine moms are rethinking what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. preaches.
“He [RFK Jr] was a big part of why I even became anti-vax,” Heather Simpson, mother to an eight-year-old daughter, told Raw Story.
In 2016, while researching healthy ways to get pregnant, Simpson became drawn into the anti-vaccine movement after becoming “hooked” on the docuseries The Truth About Vaccines, which featured RFK Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense.
“I was like, ‘Man, if a Kennedy is saying to be cautious, that’s probably something,” Simpson told Raw Story about her initial reaction.
Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit founded by Kennedy, has been identified as one of the leading sources of false and misleading claims about vaccines, with a worldwide impact.
Over the years, it has filed federal and state lawsuits challenging vaccine policies, including a 2019 case in New York over school vaccine requirements following a measles outbreak, which the group lost.
Simpson went down the anti-vaccine “rabbit hole” and became an “anti-vax influencer,” even dressing up as a measles virus for Halloween.
After the first measles-related death of a six-year-old in two decades, anti-vaccine influencers at Children’s Health Defense and beyond reframed the tragedy into material urging people not to get the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Dr. Leslie Treece of Cookeville Pediatric Associates in Tennessee told Raw Story that she has seen an increase in parents refusing to vaccinate their children due to misinformation. Still, she expects a “big pendulum swing” back to vaccines as outbreaks rise.
In 2020, after the pandemic began, Simpson supported mask-wearing and decided to consult a specialist about some anti-vaccine claims. When the specialist debunked the argument that an emulsifier in vaccines opens the blood-brain barrier, allowing aluminum to enter and cause brain inflammation linked to autism, Simpson began researching “actual biology.”
“I was just like, ‘Well, dang, what if I’m wrong about everything?’” Simpson said. She later co-founded the group and podcast Back to the Vax with Lydia Greene, fellow mother and former anti-vaxxer.
“The government officials are saying the same thing, so why should they be afraid to spread this information? It’s mainstream now,” said Greene, speaking about the spread of the anti-vaccine movement.
Greene, a mother of three, described her earlier self as a “crunchy mom,” a term for mothers who pursue a holistic, natural approach and are skeptical of conventional medicine, often championing Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.
Since RFK Jr. was appointed Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, he has changed eligibility rules for COVID vaccines, replaced the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with members critics call “vaccine skeptics,” cut $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine development, and launched an investigation into a debunked link between vaccines and autism.
Even though the health secretary said that he is not taking “people’s vaccines away from them,” health officials are worried that the mixed vaccine messaging will result in lower vaccination.
“Many of the myths and disinformation coming from this administration is likely to confuse parents and consumers of vaccines, and that will result in lower vaccination,” Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who directs the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told PBS.
“The only way this is going to change is when kids start dying, and they’re going to die in high enough numbers where you know a kid that ended up with horrible brain damage or death because of a vaccine-preventable disease,” Greene said.
In 2025, the U.S. reached a milestone in reported measles cases, the highest since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. The CDC has confirmed three deaths so far.
“There’s some kind of karmic justice maybe for me in that I wished this would happen when I was an anti-vaxxer, and now I’m watching it play out, and it’s a disaster, and I feel guilty a little,” Greene concluded.
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