RFK Jr. Calls Pennsylvania Measles Deaths Possibly 'Fabricated,' Coroner and State Give Different Accounts

Pennsylvania's health department announced two "measles-associated" deaths this month, calling them the first U.S. measles deaths of 2026 and the state's first in 35 years, according to NPR. By the time state officials asked the CDC for emergency aid, the tally had risen to four measles-associated deaths, according to MedPage Today.

The fight started over the word "associated."

What the Coroner Said

Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni told The Philadelphia Inquirer that one victim, a newborn, died shortly after birth from a lacerated spleen and had tested positive for measles acquired before birth. Diamantoni said he wasn't even aware of the state's second reported death, according to Axios reporting cited by Fox News.

Pennsylvania's Department of Health responded that not every death gets referred to a coroner under state law, and that it uses the term "measles-associated" whenever lab or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, even if a coroner doesn't list measles as the immediate cause of death.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told PolitiFact this kind of split isn't unusual. A coroner's job is to nail down the specific chain of events that killed someone. A state health department tracking an outbreak in real time uses broader criteria. The two findings, he said, aren't necessarily in conflict. But he also said the lack of clarity from officials let the gap "look to a reasonable observer like either incompetence or concealment" — a fair criticism of how the announcement was communicated, not a finding that anyone lied.

Measles can inflame and, in rare cases, rupture the spleen, according to Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News' senior medical analyst, who noted newborns and pregnant women face higher risk of severe complications.

Kennedy's Response

Kennedy didn't wait for that explanation. In a Wednesday post on X, he alleged Pennsylvania hadn't given the CDC relevant information and suggested the deaths "may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor's hopeful staffers." Speaking to reporters in Tampa, he said, "We're trying to figure out whether... who those deaths were and whether they actually happened," according to NPR.

Kennedy also accused Governor Shapiro of "gaslighting" and claimed the MMR vaccine contains fetal tissue. It does not. NPR states this plainly, and it isn't a matter of dispute among virologists or the vaccine's own ingredient list.

Skepticism about a confusing government announcement is reasonable. Public officials rolling out death counts during an outbreak owe the public a clear, verifiable account, and the coroner's finding on the newborn genuinely complicates a straightforward reading of "measles killed these people." That's a legitimate transparency question. Jumping from that confusion to an unproven allegation of fabrication by a governor's staff is a different thing entirely, and no source here shows any evidence for that claim.

NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin reported that Kennedy did not offer condolences to the families and did not urge unvaccinated people living in outbreak areas to get the MMR vaccine. HHS did not respond to NPR's question about whether Kennedy recommends the vaccine for the unvaccinated.

Former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who held Kennedy's job under President Obama, told NPR that Kennedy attending events on farming and school nutrition instead of directly addressing the outbreak amounts to "a very intentional refusal to confront" both the spread of measles and the effectiveness of vaccines.

The Bigger Numbers

The U.S. has logged more than 2,900 measles cases this year, a record for the modern era, according to PolitiFact's reporting for PBS. Pennsylvania alone counted more than 490 cases through Aug. 31, a number Dr. Paul Offit of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia called an almost certain undercount.

Days after the Pennsylvania dispute broke, Kennedy headlined a Washington, D.C. conference for Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group he ran for nearly a decade, according to The Guardian. He told attendees they have "a strong and steadfast friend at the White House" and addressed the measles outbreak only once in a 90-minute speech, saying, "I'd ask you to care about children who are dying or suffering or being injured by vaccine injuries." He described vaccine-injured children as "damaged" and claimed diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome, and anorexia can be vaccine side effects. Claims not supported by mainstream medical evidence and not substantiated in any source reviewed here. Andrew Wakefield, whose medical license was revoked after investigators found he fabricated research linking vaccines to autism, spoke at the same event, immediately before and after Kennedy.

Pennsylvania's health department has not released identifying details on the second adult death beyond confirming both patients were unvaccinated. Whether the state provided the CDC everything it needed, and whether Kennedy has evidence for his fabrication claim beyond the coroner's public statement, remain open questions neither HHS nor the Pennsylvania governor's office has resolved on the record.