this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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Del Bigtree, a longtime ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., isn’t just anti-vaccine. He’s pro-infection.

Over coffee at a Starbucks just outside Austin, Texas, Del Bigtree told me he wants his teenage son to catch polio. Measles, too. He’s considered driving his unvaccinated family to South Carolina, which is in the midst of a historic outbreak, so that they can all be exposed. He prefers pertussis—whooping cough—to the pertussis vaccine, which he later described to me as a “crime against children.” It’s not the diseases that Americans should be afraid of, Bigtree insists: It’s the shots that stop them.

Spreading that message is Bigtree’s lifework. He produced Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, a 2016 documentary that helped mainstream the modern anti-vaccine movement by alleging—spuriously—that the CDC suppressed evidence of vaccine harms. His weekly internet show, The HighWire With Del Bigtree, mostly targets the pharmaceutical industry and has helped raise millions for his nonprofit, the Informed Consent Action Network, which files lawsuits to overturn school vaccine mandates around the country. He’s been a close adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and served as communications director for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.

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[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 23 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Did you know that Gandhi was an anti-vaxxer?

Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time. Conscientious objectors should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defence of their conviction.

And

…there is absolutely no need to be afraid of small-pox.

I cannot also help feeling that vaccination is a violation of the dictates of religion and morality.

The vaccine is a filthy substance, and it is foolish to expect that one kind of filth can be removed by another.

Until he wasn't.

I can’t sleep. These kiddies are fading away like little buds. I feel the weight of their deaths on my shoulders. I prevailed upon their parents not to get them vaccinated. Now the children are passing away. It may be, I am afraid, the result of my ignorance and obstinacy; and so I feel very unhappy.

It turns out that if you expose children, unprotected, to deadly diseases, they die.

I wonder who this fucknut is gonna blame when his kids take an "unexpected" turn for the worse?

[–] Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago

Well, seems like he learned his lesson. Would have been better if he had learned it before his bad advice got children killed, but at least he learned instead of doubling down.