RFK Jr. Calls Pennsylvania's Two Measles Deaths 'So-Called,' Accuses State of Possible Fabrication

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent this week accusing Pennsylvania officials of possibly making up two measles deaths. Pennsylvania officials say Kennedy is confusing a technical medical-reporting term with a lie.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed on Tuesday, Aug. 25, that two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents, including an infant, had died from measles-associated causes. State health secretary Dr. Debra Bogen, a pediatrician with more than 30 years in practice, said she personally reviewed the case files and reported the deaths to the CDC's measles response team. Pennsylvania hadn't recorded a measles death in 35 years.

Kennedy went after the report almost immediately. In an Aug. 26 post on X, he wrote that "the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor's hopeful staffers," pointing to Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamantoni, who said his office had no record of a death he'd classify as caused by measles, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Diamantoni told the paper his office did see an infant who died shortly after birth from a lacerated spleen and tested positive for measles contracted before birth, but the pathologist who did the autopsy didn't attribute the death to measles. Diamantoni also said, per Axios, that he wasn't aware of the second reported death.

Pennsylvania's health department says that gap isn't evidence of fraud. It uses the term "measles-associated" whenever lab or epidemiological evidence of measles is present, even when a coroner doesn't list the virus as the immediate cause of death, and notes that state law doesn't require every death to go through a coroner. Doctors point out why that classification exists: measles can cause spleen enlargement and, in rare cases, rupture, particularly dangerous in newborns and infants too young to be vaccinated, according to Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News' senior medical analyst.

Kennedy didn't let it go. On Saturday, Aug. 29, during a Fox News town hall, he called the fatalities "so-called measles deaths" again and told the audience he'd spoken that morning with "the county coroner or the county commissioner," who told him "there were no measles deaths." He also compared Gov. Josh Shapiro's handling of the announcement to "the COVID playbook," the same phrase he's used to criticize inflated COVID death counts. Asked directly whether the MMR vaccine should be mandatory, Kennedy pivoted to broader skepticism of infectious-disease messaging: "In 10 years, there have been three measles deaths in America. There are now about 1.2 million deaths every year from food-induced illness. The media and certain demagogic politicians are constantly trying to scare us about infectious disease."

Shapiro isn't backing down either. He told reporters he confronted Kennedy directly in a phone call this week: "I was very, very blunt with him," he said, adding that Kennedy's "actions and the rhetoric coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across America, particularly right here in Pennsylvania." Shapiro has declined to release further medical details on the two deaths, citing patient privacy, a decision Kennedy has cited as further reason for suspicion.

The fight has split cleanly along party lines. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) posted that "RFK Jr.'s lies and conspiracy theories are making Marylanders sick" and called for him to resign or be fired. On the other side, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya defended Kennedy on Fox News Saturday, arguing Shapiro was "playing this out over the airwaves for political purposes, just like what happened during COVID. This is why there's such deep distrust in public health."

Outside government, the pushback on Kennedy's framing has been sharp. Dr. Jake Scott, a clinical infectious-disease professor at Stanford, wrote on X that "measles deaths are rare in America for one reason: MMR coverage has been near-universal for decades. Before the vaccine, this country lost 400-500 people to measles every year, with 48,000 hospitalizations. He's citing the vaccine's own achievement as evidence we never needed it." That's a fair point on the numbers: rarity of deaths under a vaccination program isn't proof the program wasn't needed.

Kennedy has testified as HHS Secretary that vaccination is the best way to prevent measles and has publicly urged people to get the MMR shot. His objection is specifically to mandates, not to the vaccine itself. States, not HHS, set school vaccination requirements. Pennsylvania requires the MMR shot for school enrollment, with medical, religious, and philosophical exemptions.

The outbreak driving all of this is real regardless of who's right about Lancaster County. The U.S. logged roughly 2,300 measles cases in 2025, a 35-year high, and is already around 2,800 cases in 2026, up from just 285 in 2024, according to figures cited by Breitbart. Kennedy attributes the global surge to pandemic-era school closures that dropped worldwide MMR coverage from 97% to 92.3%. That explanation doesn't address why U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates specifically have also slipped in recent years, a trend public health researchers have tied in part to rising vaccine hesitancy.

What isn't resolved: whether the Lancaster County coroner's office, which says it's still investigating the cause of the infant's ruptured spleen, will issue a finding that either confirms or breaks the measles link Pennsylvania's health department has already reported to the CDC. Until that investigation closes, the argument over what killed two Pennsylvanians remains a dispute over medical classification, not a proven case of either state fabrication or federal denial.