Editor apologises for publishing RFK Jr anti-vaxx screed: ‘I should have been fired’

Democratic candidate has long record of dubious claims on vaccines

A magazine editor who publish an op-ed where presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr, aired scientifically disproven anti-vaccine conspiracies has apologised and says she should’ve been fired.

“It was the worst mistake of my career,” said Joan Walsh, the former editor of Salon, which co-published Mr Kennedy’s op-ed “Deadly Immunity” 18 years ago.

In the piece, Mr Kennedy blamed autism on childhood vaccines.

Writing in an op-ed in The Nation, Ms Walsh said Salon eventually retracted the story, after receiving an avalanche of criticism.

“We were besieged by scientists and advocates showing how Kennedy had misunderstood, incorrectly cited, and perhaps even falsified data,” she wrote. “Some of his sources turned out to be known crackpots.”

Mr Kennedy, who is running a longshot bid to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2024, has continued to maintain his anti-vaccine theories, despite voluminous evidence they are incorrect.

The candidate, nephew of John F Kennedy and son of Robert F Kennedy, recently appeared on the controversial Joe Rogan podcast and continued to question vaccines.

The pair challenged Dr Petez Hotez, a noted medical expert and virologist, to debate vaccine science.

Mr Hotez, author of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad, declined, saying he’d be happy to speak with Rogan but didn’t want to create a talk show-style media spectacle.

“I’ve offered to come and talk to Joe Rogan again, and have that discussion with him, but not to turn it into the Jerry Springer with having RFK Jr on,” he told MSNBC.

“In science, we don’t typically do debates. What we do is we write scientific papers … one doesn’t typically debate science.”

YouTube recently removed a video interview between Mr Kennedy and right-wing theorist Jordan Peterson, where the presidential candidate made conspiratorial claims that chemicals in the were were “turning the frogs gay” and making people transgender.