NBC News
The building where hundreds of families line up to receive attention against measles in the middle of a rapid growth in western Texas looks more like an abandoned car dealership than a medical office. There is no signage, nothing that says “open” or indicates the consultation schedule.
But almost every day, dozens of trucks from all Gaines County fill the parking lot using any available space.
Inside the building, there are groups of tables and chairs. The sick families, mostly Mennonites, sit in an impromptu waiting room at the end, and Dr. Ben Edwards is on a table at the end.
One by one, families are called to meet with the doctor.
Edwards asks them about their diet and nutritional intake, but does not make blood tests to see specific vitamins or nutrients. Based on conversations with parents and the child, he decides if the patient could benefit from the cod liver oil, rich in vitamins A and D. At the room tables there are product bottles, which is offered for free.
If children have important respiratory problems, Edwards recommends Budesonide, an inhaled steroid that is usually used for asthma. But it does not offer vaccines.
Gaines County, where Seminole is based, has one of the highest state vaccine exemption rates, almost 18%, compared to the national 3%. The adoption of unproven remedies demonstrates that many community members also reject conventional medical methods.
“We have to help these children,” says Edwards, a family doctor who lives an hour away, in the city of Lubbock. Part of that help, he said, consists of providing children with their families cod liver oil and nutritional information, “as Bobby Kennedy tries to do.”
Edwards refers, of course, the newly confirmed Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has manifested against conventional medical practice. It has encouraged vitamins and cod liver oil above vaccination and isolation to control the outbreak.
There are no antivirals or measles cure. Hospitalized children are usually administered oxygen to help them breathe. Studies conducted in other countries have suggested that vitamin A can be useful in the treatment of malnourished children with the disease. There is no credible evidence to suggest that cod liver oil is effective.
Although doctors can administer vitamin A for measles, it is usually used for serious hospital cases. Most Americans have normal vitamin A levels and do not need more.
An excess can be toxic, says Ronald Cook, head of Health of the Center for Health Sciences of the Texas Technological University, in Lubbock, and city health authority. “Before administering vitamin A megadosis, it would undoubtedly measure the level of vitamin A” in the blood, he said.
Any message that suggests that vitamin A, including cod liver oil, could be an alternative to vaccination is “misleading,” said David Higgins, a pediatrician and specialist in preventive medicine of the Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado. “The objective is to prevent measles from occurring. Each and every one of the diseases, hospitalizations and deaths (by measles) are totally preventable with vaccines.”
Edwards said he has spoken with Kennedy about how he treats measles cases, but said he did not know him and that he was not involved with the anti -vacussion group that Kennedy founded, Children’s Health Defense, before the outbreak began several weeks ago. Both, however, have long advocated vaccines.
The improvised clinic and the treatments not tested in Texas echo another mortal measles outbreak in which Kennedy was involved. In 2019, while measles havoc in Samoa, Kennedy, who at that time was the president of Children’s Health Defense, put in contact with the United States alternative medicine doctors with a self -denominated “natural healer” local, who administered his vitamin protocols for sick children and sowed fear about the vaccination campaign of the insular nation of the Pacific. A total of 83 people, mostly children, died at the outbreak. Kennedy has repeatedly denied any implication in deaths and doubts that they were caused by measles.
Until Friday, the Texas State Health Services Department reported 198 confirmed measles cases in western Texas, mainly in Gaines County. On the other side of the state border, in Lea County, New Mexico, 30 cases have been notified.
Twenty -three people – mostly undesidated children – have been hospitalized in western Texas, according to state data. Two people have died, a 6 -year -old boy in Gaines County and an adult in Lea County who tested positive for measles tests after dying.
The news of the child’s death – the first one that dies of measles in the United States in more than two decades – was received with skepticism by anti -vaccine activists. In last Friday’s edition of the morning program of the Internet Children’s Health Defense, the group’s scientific director Brian Hooker repeated the false statements that have been spreading on social networks that the child had really been sick of vsr and pneumonia, and had denied the appropriate treatment in the hospital.
“It’s really disastrous,” said Hooker. “He feels like covid again.”
Edwards received Hooker in his podcast in February, about a month after the Texas outbreak.
“Offering non -traditional therapies to individuals looking for something different from science -based medicine or evidence makes that group that my science is better than yours,” Cook said.
Move away from conventional medicine
Edwards received conventional training at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Texas-Houston and initially opened a clinic in a small town where family medicine practiced.
In recent years, however, he has become on the sidelines of conventional medicine, acting as an integrative or medical medical medical medical and promoting what he calls as the “four pillars of health”: nutrition, hydration, movement and peace. Through its website, Edwards sells dietary supplements, blood analysis and affiliation plans of $ 35 per month to access its online educational material.
Edwards declared NBC News that he works as a volunteer in the measles outbreak.
During the Covid-19 Pandemia, Edwards participated as an expert in the legislative hearings of the State of Texas, where he shared doubtful statements about generalized injuries and deaths that, according to him, were caused by vaccines. In 2020, Edwards said the masks were ineffective.
In recent episodes of Podcast, Edwards said that after practicing for several years, he came to believe that vaccines and modern medicine were not responsible for historical decreases in deaths from infectious diseases. Instead, it attributed merit to sanitation, nutrition and other lifestyle related factors, factors that were decisive in decreasing mortality, but do not explain how vaccines have reduced or eliminated infectious diseases.
In his podcast, he has received influential people and anti -vaccine activists, such as Barbara Loe Fisher, from the National Center for Information on Vaccines, and Hooker, from Children’s Health Defense; He has defended Andrew Wakefield, the discredited doctor responsible for retracting study that falsely related autism to the triple viral vaccine; And he has recommended books of the JB Handley Anti -Vacunas activist and the 2016 Anti -Vacunas Film, Vaxxed.
A community approach
The total magnitude of the measles outbreak in western Texas is not collected in the official reports.
Edwards made a quick count of the number of cases he has seen in the Seminole warehouse: approximately 188 in the last week. This estimate is based solely on symptoms, without confirmation tests. The degree of coincidence between its estimates and the official figures of Texas is not clear.
The number of hospitalizations is also exceeding the official state count. Lubbock Covenant Children’s Hospital has treated 36 measles cases, according to Meredith Cunningham, hospital spokesman.
Katherine Wells, Director of Public Health of the Department of Health of Lubbock, said her level of concern for the outbreak is “in a 10”.
“The longer, the more likely we will have that people travel from one community to another and begin an outbreak in another area,” he said.
Measles is one of the most contagious viruses on the planet. Viral particles can remain in the air up to two hours and infect unaccoured vulnerable people. The great meetings in closed enclosures are conducive to propagation.
Edwards said he was not worried that patients congregated at their Gaines County clinic because “everyone was ill of measles.”
A close healthy food store called Health 2 U is also a meeting place for community members. Cod liver oil is distributed, sometimes free, thanks to donations.
“The cod liver oil is distributed free of charge,” explains Edwards. “The local community and people from all over the country make donations to help pay it” ”
On Thursday, a constant flow of parents entered the store in search of advice for their sick measles, including a woman who took a girl wrapped in a blanket. I was flaccid, with skin spots and a stunned look that any father knows what it means: “I am not well.”
The scene worries doctors, who usually advise parents to call their pediatricians before taking children to children who may have been infected.
Tina Siemens, a local Gaines County historian who has helped Edwards in the clinic, opposed the idea that the Mennonites in the area are not informed about the disease or about their decision not to vaccinate.
“These moms, these parents, make their reading. They have made that choice based on what they read,” Siemens said. “Painting everyone with the same fat brush is a misrepresentation of our incredible community.”
An expert in measles of the centers for disease control and prevention met personally with Siemens on Friday, he said, to know more about attitudes towards the vaccine in the community, while encouraging to vaccinate.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that the measles vaccine, paperas and rubella is safe, both Edwards and Kennedy insist that families must decide for themselves if they vaccinate their children or not. This is very applauded in Gaines County.
Seminole people are irritated the questions about whether or not they vaccinate their children. Recently, a group of mothers gathered in a cafeteria did not want to speak in public, and instead offered this message: “get into their affairs.”
