On April 9, 2025, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely stated that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine has not been “safety tested.” Kennedy also described the MMR vaccine as offering only short-term protection against measles, saying, “We’re always going to have measles, no matter what happens, as the vaccine wanes very quickly.”
Public health experts disagree. Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of an independent vaccine advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration told reporters that two doses of the vaccine offer lifelong protection, and that measles had been eliminated in the U.S., which “could never happen if immunity waned.”