03-26-2025, 06:14 AM
https://skynews.icu/health/816263-for-so...-more-ill/
Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary.
Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated, against the virus...
At high doses, vitamin A can cause liver damage; dry, peeling skin; hair loss; and, in rare instances, seizures and coma. So far, doctors at West Texas hospitals have said they’ve seen patients with yellowed skin and high levels of liver enzymes in their bloodwork, both signs of a damaged liver...
Health officials said the recent popularity of vitamin A use for measles could be traced back to a Fox News interview with Mr. Kennedy, in which he said he had heard of “almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery” with treatments like cod liver oil, which he said was “the safest application of vitamin A.”
In an opinion essay for The Washington Post on Tuesday afternoon, Kevin Griffis, who was until last week the communications director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote that he had resigned in part because of Mr. Kennedy’s handling of the outbreak.
“In my final weeks at the C.D.C., I watched as career infectious-disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy’s preferred treatments,” Mr. Griffis wrote.
In the weeks after the Fox News interview, drugstores in West Texas struggled to keep vitamin A and cod liver oil supplements on their shelves. “I did not hear anything about vitamin A until he said it on television,” said Katherine Wells, the director of public health in Lubbock...
Unlike other vitamins, which are flushed out of the body through urine, excess vitamin A accumulates in fat tissue, making it more likely to reach dangerous levels over time.
“That kind of preventative use I think is especially concerning,” said Dr. Lara Johnson, another doctor at the Lubbock hospital.
“When we have kids taking it for weeks and weeks, then you do potentially have a cumulative impact of the toxicity,” she added.
Dr. Johnson added that local physicians were particularly concerned about parents’ relying on over-the-counter supplements — whose labels don’t always accurately reflect the amount of vitamin they contain — and accepting dosage recommendations from unverified sources.
"Unverified sources" now includes the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary.
Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated, against the virus...
At high doses, vitamin A can cause liver damage; dry, peeling skin; hair loss; and, in rare instances, seizures and coma. So far, doctors at West Texas hospitals have said they’ve seen patients with yellowed skin and high levels of liver enzymes in their bloodwork, both signs of a damaged liver...
Health officials said the recent popularity of vitamin A use for measles could be traced back to a Fox News interview with Mr. Kennedy, in which he said he had heard of “almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery” with treatments like cod liver oil, which he said was “the safest application of vitamin A.”
In an opinion essay for The Washington Post on Tuesday afternoon, Kevin Griffis, who was until last week the communications director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote that he had resigned in part because of Mr. Kennedy’s handling of the outbreak.
“In my final weeks at the C.D.C., I watched as career infectious-disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy’s preferred treatments,” Mr. Griffis wrote.
In the weeks after the Fox News interview, drugstores in West Texas struggled to keep vitamin A and cod liver oil supplements on their shelves. “I did not hear anything about vitamin A until he said it on television,” said Katherine Wells, the director of public health in Lubbock...
Unlike other vitamins, which are flushed out of the body through urine, excess vitamin A accumulates in fat tissue, making it more likely to reach dangerous levels over time.
“That kind of preventative use I think is especially concerning,” said Dr. Lara Johnson, another doctor at the Lubbock hospital.
“When we have kids taking it for weeks and weeks, then you do potentially have a cumulative impact of the toxicity,” she added.
Dr. Johnson added that local physicians were particularly concerned about parents’ relying on over-the-counter supplements — whose labels don’t always accurately reflect the amount of vitamin they contain — and accepting dosage recommendations from unverified sources.
"Unverified sources" now includes the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services.
