America's Top Health Official Is Spreading Vaccine Lies While Measles Kills in Pennsylvania

Two Dead, Hundreds Sick — and the Health Secretary Is Picking a Fight Over Debunked Claims

Two unvaccinated people have died of measles in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, state health officials confirmed on August 25. They are the first measles-related deaths in the United States this year and the first in Pennsylvania in 35 years. One of the two victims was an infant. It is a gut-wrenching milestone — and the nation's top public health official responded not with a clear call to vaccinate, but with a social media argument rooted in long-debunked misinformation.

As of August 25, 393 cases had been confirmed across Pennsylvania, with 86 diagnosed in just the prior week, and 70 people hospitalized for measles complications. Nationally, there have been 36 new outbreaks reported in 2026, with 2,777 confirmed cases — 94% of them outbreak-associated. The scale of this crisis is not subtle. And yet Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chose this moment to relitigate conspiracy theories about the very vaccine that could stop it.

A Phone Call That Went Off the Rails

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro publicly rebuked Kennedy on August 27, accusing the longtime vaccine skeptic of delivering a "tirade" of conspiracies when the two spoke about the ongoing measles outbreak. Shapiro said that when he received a call from Kennedy to discuss what support the state needed from HHS, he told the secretary that "what would be most helpful is if he would join me in encouraging people to get vaccinated and stop spreading misinformation."

According to Shapiro, Kennedy "launched into a tirade" about fetal tissue cell lines in the MMR vaccine, "blaming the previous administration" for low vaccination rates, and endorsing "natural measles." Kennedy claimed there are "approximately 646 billion pieces of human DNA from an aborted fetal cell line" in each vial of the MMR vaccine — a claim Shapiro said has been disproven by scientists and medical researchers. Shapiro called Kennedy's post "inaccurate and misleading" and said it contained "claims that have been debunked repeatedly by actual scientists and doctors."

What the Science Actually Says

The claim that the MMR vaccine contains cells belonging to aborted fetuses is a long-standing, repeatedly debunked piece of vaccine misinformation. As organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics have clarified, vaccines do not contain fetal cells. Some vaccines are developed by growing viruses in a cell line derived from two aborted fetuses from the 1960s, but as these lines are ongoing, no more aborted fetuses are required for vaccine development today — and the purification process removes fetal tissue from the final product.

At a press conference, Shapiro blamed the Trump administration for spreading misinformation that led to declining vaccination rates. "There's real-life consequences to scaring people and not relying on actual doctors and actual medical professionals to provide unbiased information to parents," Shapiro said. Pennsylvania's own Secretary of Health, Dr. Debra Bogen, was unambiguous: "The MMR vaccine is safe and provides the best protection we have against measles."

A Pattern With Deadly Consequences

Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order meant to drive down the number of vaccines recommended for children — a move backed by Kennedy that drew sharp criticism from pediatricians and public health experts. This is not a one-off stumble. Kennedy has spent years sowing doubt about the MMR vaccine, and now holds the most powerful public health position in the country while a preventable disease claims lives.

During a press gaggle in Florida on August 27, Kennedy responded to Shapiro's post by saying Pennsylvania is the only state that has refused federal assistance in dealing with its ongoing measles outbreak. The political back-and-forth may continue, but the stakes are not political — they are medical. With measles cases at their highest levels in decades and an infant already dead in Lancaster County, the question of whether America's health secretary will prioritize science over ideology has never been more urgent.