Jane Orient began her March 6 WorldNetDaily column — her first at WND in about six months — this way:
Measles has been found in Florida as well as Texas, and you may be wondering where next?
Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo is under fire for allowing unvaccinated students to attend school during an outbreak. Dr. Ladapo, and also HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., support requiring informed consent for vaccines, and respecting parents’ choices.
RFK Jr., like Orient, is an anti-vaxxer, and when they talk about “informed consent,” the goal is to scare people about vaccines. Indeed, that’s what Orient goes on to do:
Some facts to remember: No vaccine is 100% effective. Persons vaccinated with MMR may still be susceptible to measles, either because the vaccine did not work for them, or immunity has worn off. You cannot catch measles from a person who does not have it, even if that person is unvaccinated. Vaccinated persons may be carrying infectious virus in their secretions even if they don’t get sick. Persons who recently received MMR (a live virus vaccine) may be contagious.
All vaccines have side effects. One cannot obtain a single-antigen measles vaccine in the U.S., but only Merck’s MMR. The rubella component, for example, can cause arthritis (usually but not always transient) in up to 26% of adult women. Mumps vaccine can cause inflammation of the testicles, nerve deafness, Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), and other rare but serious effects.
Orient then goes on to detail “sensible actions” to take — none of which, of course, involve getting vaccinated.
She concluded with a link to information about measles and the MMR vaccine from a group called Physicians for Informed Consent, which is an anti-vaxx group despite portraying themselves otherwise. Once again, Orient is more interested in cranking out inflammatory misinformation rather than being truthful.