A recent diagnosis for Kim Kardashian is worrying her inner circle.
In a Sept. 17 trailer for Season 8 of “The Kardashians,” the Skims founder, 45, is diagnosed with esophagitis. The condition involves inflammation of the esophagus, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The trailer, which did not detail the severity of Kardashian’s diagnosis, shows that the diagnosis prompted concern from friends and family. Kim’s late father, Robert Kardashian, died at age 59 in 2003 after battling esophageal cancer, a condition distinct from esophagitis.
“I have something called esophagitism,” she said in the teaser while getting her hair done. The trailer then shows the reality TV star in a hospital bed undergoing a medical examination, while an off-camera voice asks: “Didn’t your father… isn’t it what he died of?”
“I can’t, it makes me want to cry,” Kris Jenner said as she reacts to her daughter’s diagnosis.
Robert Kardashian and Jenner welcomed Kim in 1980, as well as Kourtney, 47, Khloé, 42, and Rob Jr., 39. Robert Kardashian Sr. was an attorney and businessman best known for representing former NFL player O.J. Simpson during his highly publicized murder trial.
What is esophagitis?
According to the Mayo Clinic, esophagitis is a “swelling and irritation, called inflammation, of the tissues that line the esophagus. The esophagus is the muscular tube that carries food and drink from the mouth to the stomach.
The inflammation can make swallowing difficult or painful and can also cause chest pain, the clinic says. Esophagitis can be caused by several factors, including stomach acid backing up into the esophagus, infection, allergies, and oral medications.
Treatment varies depending on its cause and the severity of tissue damage in the esophagus.
As the esophagus struggles to move food and liquid from the mouth to the stomach, the condition can cause dehydration, unhealthy weight loss, scarring or narrowing of the esophagus, or other serious health concerns, according to the Mayo Clinic.
What is esophageal cancer?
Esophageal cancer is when cancerous cells in the esophagus multiply and create tumors.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, symptoms of esophageal cancer are not always present in the early stages. When they do occur, symptoms can include difficulty swallowing, weight loss, heartburn, and hoarseness.
Other symptoms include heartburn, chest pain, vomiting, coughing up blood, or pain in the throat, back, behind the breastbone, or between the shoulder blades.
The Cleveland Clinic states there are two types of esophageal cancer, including the more common in the United States, adenocarcinoma, which develops in tissue that makes mucus to help people swallow and typically impacts the lower part of the esophagus.
The other is squamous cell carcinoma, which starts in the squamous cells that line the esophagus and affects the upper and middle parts of the esophagus, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

The average price for a gallon of diesel was still hovering around a record-high of $6.43 as of Friday morning, according to the latest data published by GasBuddy.
The historic increase in the price of diesel comes amid continued disruption in the Strait of Hormuz — sparked by the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in February — and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which in recent years has seen an intensification of long-range Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil facilities.
The sustained increases in oil and diesel prices have prompted concerns of rising costs across all sectors of the economy — from fuel and energy costs for drivers and homeowners to increased prices of food and travel as producers and companies grapple with narrowing margins.
The nationwide average price for a gallon of regular gas was at $4.47 as of Friday, according to GasBuddy — up $1.53 since the U.S. war with Iran started.
Rising prices are of particular concern for those households reliant on heating oil. They could face winter bills more than 31% higher than last year, according to a report published earlier this week by the non-profit National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
Even for those who do not heat their homes using oil, overall winter heating costs are expected to rise by more than 8.7% this year, the NEADA report said.
As of Friday, oil prices were edging lower but remained above $100 a barrel. Brent crude oil prices, a benchmark for global trading, were around $103 per barrel, down roughly 1.3%. WTI crude oil, used as the North American benchmark, was trading at around $102 per barrel down 0.4%.
Since diesel is the lifeblood of the supply chain, a rise in fuel costs may result in higher prices charged by wholesalers in response to elevated transport expenses. In turn, retailers could pass those costs along to shoppers, raising prices on shelves.
The price hike for any individual item would likely be modest, but the pileup of extra costs across an array of goods could weigh on wallets, analysts previously told ABC News.
As a result, the rise in diesel costs threatens to worsen a surge of inflation set off by the outbreak of the Iran war nearly seven months ago.
The annual inflation rate stood at 3.4% as of August, the most recent month on record, putting inflation more than a percentage point above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since 2023 in an effort to contain price increases. Higher borrowing costs may constrain spending among businesses and consumers, staunching demand for products and slowing price hikes.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh acknowledged the rate increase would not directly address the surge in fuel prices. Rather, he said, elevated interest rates could help prevent price hikes from extending throughout the economy.
“We cannot affect any individual price, whether it be oil prices, whether it be food stuffs at the grocery store. But what we can do, and will do, is ensure that any change in relative prices don’t broaden out,” Warsh said.

In May 2026, the BFFs podcaster underwent emergency surgery after doctors discovered a large ovarian cyst that had been twisting her organs and causing internal bleeding.
“There was a half a liter of blood in my pelvic floor,” Brianna shared in a TikTok video after the operation. “I have five incisions all over my stomach. They went in through my belly button with a camera so they could find all the blood.”
The Total Bellas alum revealed that one of her breast implants shifted after an elbow slam from fellow WWE star Piper Niven during a July 2025 wrestling match.
“It’s OK,” she told sister Bella Garcia at the time. “We’re going to get it fixed one day. I told the doctor, I go, ‘Newly divorced, so the minute the boots are hung up, I’m going to come back to you and we’re going to make these girls look real good, because these girls are going to get some action in the future and that can’t look like that.'”
The 12 Years a Slave star was diagnosed with uterine fibroids—non-cancerous growths that develop in or around the uterus—in 2014, the same year she won an Oscar for performance in the movie.
However, it wasn’t until 2025 when she disclosed her diagnosis, writing on Instagram that she had been “suffering in silence” for more than a decade.
“When we reach puberty, we’re taught periods mean pain, and that pain is simply part of being a woman,” she shared. “We’re struggling alone with something that affects us most.”
The Jessie alum opened up about her “hellish” migraines, sharing how they’ve worsened after suffering five concussions over the course of her life.
“The brain injuries make things significantly worse,” Ryan shared during a September 2026 episode of Mythical Kitchen’s Last Meals. “I had a pretty crazy, life-altering brain injury a few years ago, and I was out of commission for six months.”
While Ryan described her first four concussions as “incidents,” she said her fifth one was trauma caused by “sustained shaking over a minute of time.”
Now, the former Disney Channel star needs to close her eyes to “think better.”
“Quite often the world is really loud. It’s really too bright. There’s a lot going on,” she explained. “The visual data that I’m taking in can be so distracting and so loud. Then, with the migraines—which are significantly worsened by that—it sort of is too much.”
The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum revealed in April 2025 that he was recovering from surgery after his appendix nearly burst.
“Last week, I started feeling some pain in my stomach,” Brian said in an Instagram video at the time. “I ended up going to the emergency room, and I had a perforated appendix. Not quite burst, but just before.”
He added, “I’m on the road to recovery. It’s not an easy process. This is my first major surgery.”
The Racing Louisville midfielder collapsed just a few minutes into her soccer team’s Sept. 14 match against Seattle Reign at Lumen Field in Seatle.
The United States Women’s National Team player could be seen slowly sitting down on the field with a teammate by her side, per Reuters, as the referee called for trainers to check her out. She collapsed seconds later.
“Savannah received immediate on-field care from medical personnel and was transported to a local hospital for further evaluation,” the National Women’s Soccer League wrote on X later that night. “She is stable and alert.”
Adam Devine shared that injuries he sustained after getting hit by a cement truck when he was 11 years old are still affecting him to this day.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Devine said in a 2025 episode of the In Depth With Graham Bensinger podcast. “I have spasms all over. For a while, [the doctors] told me I was dying—literally, within this last year.”
He noted that pain comes and goes, adding, “My body has all these things that are a little wonky and a little wrong with it.”
The Bachelor Nation alum shared that he went to the hospital “crawling on all fours” due to overwhelming back pain that was aggravated during an RV trip with a friend.
“Right now, knees to my toes, it’s, like, still tingly, which is crazy,” he said on a March 2025 episode of his Trading Secrets podcast. “And to put in perspective, I don’t know, man, like not to sound douchey, but like two, three weeks ago, maybe a month ago, I was squatting probably like 295 pounds. And right now, I can’t do a squat on my foot. I can’t do a one legged squat, I fall. It’s like I had a stroke or something.”
But with the help of a back specialist and some steroids, he added, “We’re on the mend.”
The Even Stevens alum shared in February 2025 that she was shot in the face while on a trip to shoot clay pigeons to celebrate husband Brendan Rooney’s birthday.
“There was another party with us and they unsafely fired in the wrong direction and shot me in the face,” she wrote on Instagram. “@thebrendanrooney immediately sprung into action, assessed me, and rushed me to the hospital. I was hit in 5 places, one was less than an inch from hitting me directly in my right eye.”
The Kim Possible alum continued, “Unfortunately a fragment got lodged behind my eye and it is too risky to remove surgically at this time. Doctors will continue to monitor me (I can see normally at the moment).”
The actress said she was grateful to be alive. “I love my daughters, husband, family, and friends so much,” she said. “I saw my life flash before my eyes and I’m telling you, hug the people around you every chance you can. Life can change in an instant.”
While the internet isn’t always a kind place, Amy Schumer is happy that, in this case, it helped her get answers.
“The internet really came for me after doing a bunch of press, and I was like, ‘OK everybody, relax,'” Amy recalled of her “puffier” face on a January 2025 episode of Call Her Daddy. “But then doctors were chiming in in the comments and they were like, ‘No no, we think something’s really up. Your face looks so crazy that we think something’s up. And I’m like, ‘Wait, I’m getting trolled by doctors?’”
After these doctors said they thought she had Cushing syndrome and that it may be caused by spiking coritsol levels or steroid injections, the Life & Beth creator thought, “Wait, I have been getting steroid injections in my scars.”
“I had a breast reduction, a C-section, whatever, and so I was getting these steroid injections,” Amy said. “So it gave me this thing called Cushing syndrome, which I wouldn’t have known if the internet hadn’t come for me so hard.”
Toda, Amy is just relieved she’s OK. As she shared in a February 2024 News Not Noise newsletter, “Finding out I have the kind of Cushing that will just work itself out and I’m healthy was the greatest news imaginable.”
Hailey Bieber had the “scariest moment” of her life when she was having breakfast with husband Justin Bieber and started experiencing stroke-like symptoms in March 2022.
“Justin was like, ‘Are you OK?'” the Rhode skincare mogul shared a month later on YouTube, “and I just didn’t respond because I wasn’t sure. And then he asked me again and when I went to respond, I couldn’t speak. The right side of my face started drooping. I couldn’t get a sentence out.”
While Hailey said the facial drooping stopped and her speech came back, she went to the hospital to make sure she was OK.
“They did some scans and they were able to see that I had suffered a small blood clot to my brain,” the model added, “which they labeled and categorized as something called a TIA [Transient Ischemic Attack].”
Later, Hailey went to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she found out she had a hole in her heart called a patent foramen ovale (PFO).
She explained the blood clot had traveled into her heart, “escaped” through the hole and went to her brain, leading to the TIA.
Hailey said she had a successful PFO closure procedure and was now feeling great.
The same year Hailey had her health scare, Justin experienced one of his own.
In June 2022, the “Baby” singer shared he was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a condition that caused temporary paralysis to parts of his face and forced him to cancel the remainder of his Justice World Tour.
“It is from this virus that attacks the nerve in my ear and my facial nerves and has caused my face to have paralysis,” Justin explained in an Instagram video at the time. “As you can see, this eye is not blinking. I can’t smile on this side of my face. This nostril will not move. So, there’s full paralysis on this side of my face.”
In fact, he told his followers it had gotten “progressively harder to eat.” But after a while, the paralysis went away.
“He’s doing really well,” Hailey said on a June 2022 episode of Good Morning America, later adding, “He’s feeling a lot better. Obviously, it was just a very scary and random situation to happen, but he’s going to be totally OK and I’m just grateful that he’s fine.”
While Jamie Foxx initially kept details of his April 2023 hospitalization private, he later opened up about what he went through.
One day in Atlanta, “I was having such a bad headache, so I asked my boy, I said, ‘Listen, I need an aspirin,’” the Oscar winner said in his 2024 Netflix special What Had Happened Was… “Before I could get the Aspirin, I went out. I don’t remember 20 days.”
Jamie said he was initially taken to a doctor who gave him a cortisone shot and then sent him home. However, his concerned sister Deidra Dixon then drove him to a hospital, where they got an answer: He had a brain bleed that led to a stroke.
Twenty days after undergoing an operation, the Django Unchained woke up May 4 in a wheelchair and couldn’t walk. He then went to Chicago for rehabilitation and therapy.
“All I can tell you is that I appreciate every prayer,” he said, “because I needed every prayer.”
The reality star revealed that she “died” while running a mile during the first challenge of the NBC competition series.
“I don’t remember a lot,” she explained on Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser. “I remember hearing the helicopter. I just felt like I was floating. And then my grandpa was there. And then I saw darkness. But then I saw light. So I knew, I knew I died that day.”
“My organs were literally shutting down,” she continued. “I didn’t realize that I had rhabdomyolysis. And rhabdomyolysis is your body’s way of saying, ‘I’m going to shut down on you.’”
Emilia Clarke filmed battle scenes for Game of Thrones, but in 2019, she published an essay in The New Yorker titled “A Battle for My Life.”
Having a bad headache at the gym, “I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill,” the actress wrote. “Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.”
She was taken to the hospital for a brain scan.
“The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain,” the Emmy nominee added. “I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture.”
Emilia had immediate surgery to seal the aneurysm, calling the pain “unbearable.” While she was recovering, she continued, she experienced aphasia and was “muttering nonsense.”
A week later, “the aphasia passed,” Emilia added, and she left the hospital a month after being admitted.
At a 2013 brain scan, she learned a growth “doubled in size” and that she needed surgery again.
“When they woke me, I was screaming in pain,” she wrote. “The procedure had failed. I had a massive bleed and the doctors made it plain that my chances of surviving were precarious if they didn’t operate again. This time they needed to access my brain in the old-fashioned way—through my skull.”
Thankfully, Emilia shared, she’s now “at a hundred per cent.”
Snoop Dogg’s daughter Cori Broadus is grateful for her family.
Because after she suffered a “severe stroke” in January 2024, her loved ones rushed to be by her side.
“I texted them that I just had a stroke and sent them a picture,” she told E! News correspondent Will Marfuggi in December 2024. “Everybody just came to my rescue.”
Because of other medical concerns, Cori ended up staying in the hospital longer than she initially expected.
“I could have went home after my stroke, but my lupus wasn’t doing so well,” the Snoop’s Fatherhood: Cori and Wayne’s Story star continued. “My kidneys were failing. It was a lot going on.”
Today, Cori is on the mend.
“I’m doing great,” she added. “I just had a little bit of motor skills that I had to work back on. But other than that, I was fine.”
Shailene Woodley’s early 20s were not an easy time health-wise.
“It got to the point where I was losing my hearing. I couldn’t walk for longer than five minutes at a time without having to lay down for hours, and hours and sleep. Everything I ate hurt my stomach,” the actress said on a September 2024 episode of the SHE MD Podcast. “It was this conflation of issues and diagnoses and different doctors telling me different things.”
So Shailene—who chose to keep the exact condition private—set out to find answers.
“I come from a very holistic background and study herbalism,” she added. “So I was very keen on, ‘I’m going to work with real MDs, [and] I’m also going to work with independent kind of healers.’ Just trying to search for some sense of comfort in my own skin.”
It was a long journey—one that lasted for 10 years.
“Throughout that decade, a lot of other things came from feeling so much discomfort physically,” the Big Little Lies star noted, “which was, ‘My gosh, if everything I eat hurts my stomach, I’m now suddenly afraid of food.’ And then going into the kind of mental f–ckery that can happen with that of body dysmorphia and confusion about identity and feeling safe in my own capsule, in my own skin, what that meant, and what that should be.”
After tending to both her physical and mental health, Shailene is feeling much better.
“It was a journey that ultimately physically resolved itself, and I am very healthy,” she shared. “I’m so happy to be able to say that.”

For around 15 hours, immigration detention officers kept Raúl Suárez Herrero confined in a cage slightly larger than a phone booth, where he feared snakes and endured mosquitoes in the middle of Florida swampland, the former detainee alleged.
Suárez, 59, told José Díaz-Balart in an interview for Noticias Telemundo’s “Ahora 360” that he was forced into the cage, measuring 7 feet, 9 inches high and 4 feet, 3 inches square, for praying out loud for an ill young man at “Alligator Alcatraz,” an ICE detention site.
“I feel like I was in hell,” Suárez later told NBC News in a phone interview from Mexico, where he was deported.
Suárez spoke days after a Department of Homeland Security watchdog confirmed the use of the phone booth-sized cages at the now-shuttered Florida detention camp in a Sept. 11 report.
“The use of such restrictive spaces is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment,” the report said.
The DHS Office of Inspector General report documented its inspectors’ findings during an unannounced January visit to the Ochopee, Florida, site.
In December, Amnesty International issued its own report on conditions at the detention site based on interviews with detainees and its own tour of the facility. The organization detailed the use of the small cages and said it amounted to torture.
The facility staff told inspectors that the cages were “calming areas” where immigrants could de-escalate and have time alone and that no one spent more than two hours inside them.
But Suárez told Noticias Telemundo that “they took me there and I spent more than 15 hours inside in that little hole,” referring to the small cage. He said he was forced in around 1 p.m. and taken out at about 5 a.m. “when morning was breaking.” According to Suárez, the cage was in a recreation area where detainees took exercise time. Suárez said he couldn’t stretch out on the cage floor and got little sleep for fear of what might slither into the cage.
“I had to be careful because on the ground there were snakes and you don’t see them. You can’t fall asleep because they can come into the cage,” Suárez said in a video interview.
DHS did not directly address Suárez’s allegations or case in response to questions from NBC News. But a spokesperson rejected “claims that there were ‘inhumane’ conditions” at the immigrant detention center. Those claims are “categorically false” and any allegations of excessive use of force are “FALSE,” the spokesperson said in an email.
“No detainees were being beaten or abused,” the DHS spokesperson said. DHS provides long-standing medical, dental and mental health services, three meals a day that are evaluated by certified dietitians, clean water, clothing, bedding and hygiene products and access to phones to talk with family and lawyers, the spokesperson stated.
Alligator Alcatraz’s standards were consistent with those under other administrations, the spokesperson also said. Further questions were referred to the state of Florida, “as this facility was managed by the State of Florida through the Division of Emergency Management.”
The facility in the heart of the Everglades was built by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as part of the state’s push to support President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown.
Alex Lafranconi, a spokesman for DeSantis, has dismissed criticism of the small cages. Lafranconi has described the small cages as a confinement area for “violent criminal aliens who have proven they cannot remain peaceful,” and said “we’d make them smaller, if we could.”
Although DHS said the inspector general “indicated” all recommendations have been administratively closed, the OIG said in its report that the administration did not address its 10 recommendations, including that it “discontinue the use of the small metal enclosures to hold detainees for any reason or amount of time.”
The OIG also said that at the time of the inspection, all the detainees were ICE detainees and there was evidence that ICE had some degree of oversight authority and engagement at the facility.
Originally from Cuba and in the U.S. since he was 12, Suárez was detained by ICE in July 2025 during an ICE check-in.
Before it was recently ordered closed, Alligator Alcatraz had been denounced by multiple detainees and legal and immigrant advocates for its conditions.
The detention facility’s records state the average time people were placed in the smaller cages with metal fencing was 59 minutes and 27 seconds, according to the OIG report. But the OIG said it could not confirm or refute ICE officials’ assertions regarding use of the enclosures or detainees’ allegations they had been denied food or other abuses.
The small cages at the facility were supposed to be a “safe and secure place” where people could “reflect on their behavior choices, manage their emotions, reduce stress, and practice self-directed behavior,” according to the detention camp’s policies, the report stated.
According to detention center records cited by the OIG, 79 people were held in the small cages during the period of July 17, 2025, to Jan. 18, and none were held more than two hours. Detainees in the small cage “may leave at any time by detainee request or per staff directive,” according to the report.
But Suárez was adamant that his confinement was not voluntary and lasted far more than two hours.
“Everybody lied” about the small cages, Suárez said, disputing that he could have gotten out or requested to be let out.
He said he was forced into the cage after praying out loud for a man who had an epileptic seizure as they were waiting to get registered at the detention camp.
Help for the man was taking “too long,” according to Suárez. That’s when he said he started praying aloud, as he used to do at the evangelical church he attended before his arrest.
“I asked God for the young man’s life,” he said.
Suárez alleged two guards then forced him to stand up, asked where he was from and then grabbed him and dragged him “all the way back to where that little cell was.” He said he was kicked in the leg so hard he thought they broke it. “My leg was so big and black.”
“They just dropped me over there and locked the doors,” he said. He said he got no medical treatment for his leg or a medical evaluation after the confinement.
Suárez said his experience has left him psychologically “shattered.”
Suárez was removed to Mexico in February after more than four decades of living in the United States. He was detained on July 16, 2025, when he went to an immigration check-in.
Suárez had been ordered removed from the U.S. in 2000 after serving a prison sentence stemming from a plea agreement on a drug charge. Because Cuba was not accepting U.S. deportees then, Suárez was released and told to check in with ICE annually, a court document states. Cuba has allowed few of its citizens to return after U.S. deportation.
An attorney attempted to get Suárez released from detention. The federal judge had given DHS until late January to remove him or release him, but the judge then extended the government’s time for two weeks. On the deadline date, Feb. 11, DHS deported Suárez to Mexico and the judge closed the case.
“Forty-seven years. They took me to the U.S. as a 12-year-old, when I was a child,” Suárez said. “I was raised my whole life there [in the U.S.]. I’m bilingual and everything. I went to school there and everything. And everything happened from one moment to the next. I still can’t absorb what happened.”
Suárez said he had been a truck driver since he was 17 and had built his own truck driving business with his brother, an American citizen, who died in 2021 from Covid. His father had died in Cuba when he was 3 and his mother, who became a U.S. citizen, died about a decade ago.
When immigration laws were toughened in 1996, making legal residents deportable for certain crimes, he could no longer seek U.S. citizenship, he said.
His mother had urged him to get citizenship, but he didn’t do it, he said.
“I was pretty young. When you are pretty young, you don’t listen to anybody,” he said. He had no other encounters with law enforcement, he said. He said he’d been living a normal life, preparing to buy a house and had a girlfriend.
“Life is changed. I don’t know what is going to happen here in Mexico.”

As the death toll from the worst measles outbreak in decades rises, Robert F Kennedy Jr headlined the Washington DC conference of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense, which he led for nearly two decades.
“Let me be clear. You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” Kennedy, now serving as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told anti-vaccine activists at the conference in a nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech. He urged patience, saying that he would’ve made sweeping changes “on day one” but that he had to follow the law in order to make permanent change.
“But as I said, you have friends in the White House, and we are doing this one day at a time,” Kennedy said.
He only addressed the measles outbreak, which recently killed four people in Pennsylvania, once.
“In our country we care about rare illnesses and deaths. We care about every child who dies from measles. They get headlines,” he said. “I’d ask you to care about children who are dying or suffering or being injured by vaccine injuries.”
Recent polling suggests that one quarter of Americans now have doubts about the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines following a years-long campaign against immunizations by once-fringe actors. But the majority of Americans also disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of the widening measles outbreak, which killed three people in Texas and Arizona last year in addition to those inPennsylvania.
Kennedy described “vaccine-injured children” as “damaged” because of diagnoses of allergies, asthma, ADHD and autism, among other conditions. He also claimed that diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome, and anorexia can be side effects of routine vaccines, and he said that the system to track such effects is “broken”.
There is little daylight between Kennedy and his former organization. “I spent 40 years in these battles,” Kennedy said. “I intend to stay in this fight as long as I am able.” He thanked his friends who are still at CHD.
Longtime anti-vaccine activists celebrated their unprecedented role in the national conversation, at times expressing astonishment over the ways anti-vaccine sentiment has been elevated to the highest levels of the US government.
“We have an opportunity today to speak to our colleagues and our friends in mainstream media,” the CEO of the Children’s Health Defense, Mary Holland, said at the event on Thursday.
Andrew Wakefield, a former gastroenterologist whose medical license was revoked after he was found to have fabricated research indicating a link between vaccines and autism, spoke before and immediately after Kennedy.
“I could not have imagined two years ago that Bobby [Kennedy] would be in the White House and that President Trump would be saying ‘divide up the MMR into three different’,” said Wakefield, who proposed the same strategy years earlier when he attempted to patent his own single measles shot to compete with the MMR. He stopped to laugh. “What drug was I on that morning?”
Anti-vaccine activists had become nervous earlier this year after the White House reportedly put the kibosh on speaking about vaccines before the US midterm elections. “February, March, April, May, vaccine reform got a little quiet, a little scary. You know, behind the scenes, we’re like, “Yeah, what happened?” said Michael Kane, CHD’s director of advocacy.
But recent months have shifted vaccines back into the spotlight.
“Just a few years ago, we were the, you know, hated stepchild in the corner,” Kane said. “Now we are a national movement that isn’t going anywhere.”
The organization laid out its policy agenda, including plans to challenge state-level immunization requirements for school attendance, to recruit younger people to the aging organization, and to combat the installation of cell phone towers for fears of 5G and 6G. Several speakers explicitly linked vaccination to autism, despite decades of research showing no connection.
Meanwhile, Kennedy also focused on the role of food systems in health, and touched on efforts to study electromagnetic fields and chem trails.
He praised researchers at the University of Southern Denmark, who are now under investigation by their institution, as “the deities of vaccine research”. Kennedy attempted to fund their project in Guinea-Bissau looking at mortality after hepatitis B vaccination before local authorities cancelled the project. Their prior work on vaccines has been called “a house of cards” by other researchers.
Mark Gorton, president of the Maha Institute, referred to himself as “the boldest anti-vaxxer in the anti-vax conference”, adding that “only anti-vaxxers can speak clearly enough to raise awareness.”
Being called the “largest anti-vaccine conference, probably in the world” is “a red badge of courage”, said sen Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin. Johnson and Sen Rand Paul, a Republican and physician from Kentucky, both rehashed grievances over the Covid pandemic and the immunizations that were rapidly deployed to stem the tide of illness and death.
Republican congressman Thomas Massie said he called Donald Trump soon after the election to ask for the agriculture secretary position. Trump asked, “Are you friends with Bobby? Is he too much for HHS? Don’t you think we need some vaccines?” Massie recounted. Kennedy was nominated to HHS the next day, he said.
Massie offered two pieces of advice to the anti-vaccine activists: Instead of trying to get rid of “clowns”, he said, “get the clowns who are here to do what you want. Get them to get in the clown car you want. And use pressure. Treat them like cattle.”
Coverage of the measles outbreak is a “psy op” that is “meant to control what I think, what I do, what I believe, and what my attitude towards Bobby Kennedy ought to be,” said Tony Lyons, the publisher of books from Kennedy who now heads Maha Action.
Kennedy was frequently invoked as a hero of the movement at the conference. “The truth is, he really is dangerous,” Lyons said, invoking the common refrain from scientists and experts. “I think Bobby Kennedy is the most dangerous individual to this system who’s come along in a generation,” he said to a burst of applause.