US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr headlined the Washington DC conference of Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization he led for nearly two decades, and promised the activists gathered there that they have an ally in the building he now runs. "Let me be clear. You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House," Kennedy told the conference in a nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech. The pledge came as the death toll from the worst measles outbreak in decades continues to rise. The outbreak recently killed four people in Pennsylvania, after killing three in Texas and Arizona last year. Kennedy addressed the outbreak only once in the speech, telling activists: "In our country we care about rare illnesses and deaths. We care about every child who dies from measles. They get headlines. I'd ask you to care about children who are dying or suffering or being injured by vaccine injuries." ## Patience Promised, Sweeping Change Delayed Kennedy urged the audience to be patient with the pace of policy change. He said he would have made sweeping changes "on day one" but 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," he said. The health secretary described "vaccine-injured children" as "damaged" because of diagnoses of allergies, asthma, ADHD and autism, among other conditions. He claimed that diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome and anorexia can be side effects of routine vaccines, and said the system to track such effects is "broken". Decades of scientific research have found no connection between vaccines and autism, and routine vaccines are subject to continuous safety monitoring. There is little daylight between the secretary 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 friends who remain at Children's Health Defense. ## A Movement Elevated To Government Longtime activists celebrated their unprecedented role in the national conversation, at times expressing astonishment at how 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," said Mary Holland, the organization's chief executive. Andrew Wakefield, a former gastroenterologist whose medical license was revoked after he was found to have fabricated research linking vaccines and autism, spoke immediately before and after Kennedy. "I could not have imagined two years ago that Bobby would be in the White House and that President Trump would be saying 'divide up the MMR into three different'," said Wakefield, who proposed a similar strategy years earlier when he attempted to patent his own single measles shot. "What drug was I on that morning?" he added, laughing. Activists had grown nervous earlier this year after the White House reportedly muted vaccine talk ahead of the midterm elections. "February, March, April, May, vaccine reform got a little quiet, a little scary," said Michael Kane, the organization's director of advocacy. "Just a few years ago, we were the hated stepchild in the corner. Now we are a national movement that isn't going anywhere." The movement's new confidence was summed up by Tony Lyons, the publisher of Kennedy's books, who now heads Maha Action. Coverage of the measles outbreak is a "psy op" meant to control what he thinks and what his attitude toward Kennedy ought to be, Lyons said, before adding, to a burst of applause: "I think Bobby Kennedy is the most dangerous individual to this system who's come along in a generation." Mark Gorton, president of the Maha Institute, called himself "the boldest anti-vaxxer in the anti-vax conference", saying only anti-vaxxers can speak clearly enough to raise awareness. The conference laid out a policy agenda that includes challenging state-level immunization requirements for school attendance, recruiting younger members, and campaigning against cell phone towers over 5G and 6G fears. Several speakers explicitly linked vaccination to autism, despite the research consensus. Republican senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul both rehashed grievances over the Covid pandemic, and congressman Thomas Massie recounted calling Donald Trump after the election to ask for the agriculture secretary job, only to hear the president ask: "Are you friends with Bobby? Is he too much for HHS? Don't you think we need some vaccines?" Kennedy also praised researchers at the University of Southern Denmark, who are now under investigation by their own institution, as "the deities of vaccine research". He attempted to fund their project in Guinea-Bissau studying mortality after hepatitis B vaccination before local authorities cancelled it, and their prior vaccine work has been called "a house of cards" by other researchers. The stakes of the rhetoric are visible in the outbreak numbers. Polling that shows a quarter of Americans doubting the MMR vaccine tracks with an outbreak that has now killed seven people across two years, and public health officials say confidence in immunization is falling precisely as the disease spreads. For a health secretary sworn to protect the nation's health, standing before the movement's largest conference and calling its members friends marks a convergence of activism and government that has no modern precedent in American public health.