Media Must Cover the MAHA Conference as Dangerous Disinfo

RFK Jr. — the nation's top health official — headlined a Children's Health Defense conference alongside Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced researcher who fabricated vaccine safety data and lost his medical license. The MAHA Institute's own president told attendees that the polio vaccine was "a massive medical fraud." RFK Jr. announced the federal government is investigating chemtrails. This happened while measles deaths in 2026 have reached their highest level since 1992 — a direct consequence of the anti-vaccine movement these speakers lead.

This is not a fringe gathering. It is the U.S. Secretary of Health legitimizing conspiracy theorists from a government-adjacent podium, using federal authority to blur the line between settled science and dangerous fiction. When the man responsible for American public health tells anti-vaxxers "you have a strong and steadfast friend" — in the middle of a measles outbreak — that is a public health emergency, not a political story.

We call on the media to cover the MAHA conference not as a culture war footnote, but as what public health experts say it is: a taxpayer-funded platform for medical disinformation that is already killing people. The public deserves reporting that names the harm being done — and holds the 52 Republican senators who confirmed RFK Jr. accountable for every outbreak that follows.