Pediatrician Responds to Parents Whose Child Died from Measles (Exclusive)

• The parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old who died during the Texas measles outbreak called the highly contagious virus that infected all five of their children “not that bad”
• In a controversial interview conducted by an anti-vaccine group, the parents said they “absolutely” would not get the shots — which pediatrician and infectious disease specialist Dr. Adam Ratner tells PEOPLE are the best way to prevent the infection
• Dr. Ratner also responded to claims about how alternative remedies can help — and how the parents’ statements that measles is good for the immune system are medically incorrect

The Texas parents of a child who died of measles in February have given their first, and only, filmed interview — a highly controversial one in which they refer to the disease that took their child’s life as “not that bad.” 

In the March 17 interview with the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense (which was founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) the parents, sometimes speaking Low German through a translator, defended their decision to not vaccinate their children against measles.

Instead, they explained that their six-year-old’s death showed “it was her time,” and “she was too good for this earth.” The family also said they would “absolutely not take the MMR vaccine” — which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella — and shared that their four other children recovered quickly, crediting alternative solutions.

The child’s death is the first U.S. fatality from the highly contagious illness in a decade, the Associated Press reports. According to the parents’ interview, the child developed a fatal case of pneumonia, a common complication from the airborne virus.  

To learn more about the controversial statements raised in the interview, PEOPLE spoke to pediatrician and infectious disease specialist Dr. Adam Ratner, author of Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children’s Health.

The parents said their other four children who had the measles “got over it pretty quickly,” adding, “the measles wasn’t that bad.” Why do some people get sick from measles — and some die?

“In a lot of cases ,we don’t know why one particular child will get sicker than another. There’s not usually a good way of predicting that, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s so important for everyone to get vaccinated, because if you protect everybody, then you don’t have to worry about that,” Dr. Ratner explained.

While “the vast majority” of kids are sick for about a week, he says, “some kids, including this six-year-old who died, can develop pneumonia or other adverse events, and they can end up needing to be hospitalized and can be sick for much longer — or, as she did, can go on to die.”

The parents said they would “absolutely not” get the MMR vaccine, and her father shared that measles “are good for the body,” and can help protect people from getting cancer. 

“None of that is true,” Dr. Ratner tells PEOPLE. “Measles are not good for people in any way. They put children in grave danger as they did for that family’s daughter. They put children at risk of other infections for a couple of years after measles. And there is no evidence that measles has any effect on risk for cancer or risk for anything else later on.”

As he explained, “We now know that there are also some later onset issues that can come up with measles. There’s a degenerative neurological condition called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis or SSPE,” which he explained can begin as early as seven years after a measles infection. “That is a very serious disease that leads to death in almost all cases.” 

She died from pneumonia — was that caused by measles or was it a secondary infection?

“You can get pneumonia from measles or kids with measles can develop a super infection, meaning bacterial pneumonia on top of measles,” Dr. Ratner tells PEOPLE, explaining that they could also get influenza or COVID. “It’s because they have the original viral infection. That sets them up to have a bacterial infection on top of it.”

“This is a very typical story,” he said. “Kids with measles can seem like they’re getting better and then can develop pneumonia later. Pneumonia can be from measles alone or measles plus a bacterial infection. But in either case, this whole course is preventable by vaccination.”

The family talked about how the other children had breathing treatments and made a point that their daughter who died wasn’t offered one. Why would breathing treatments be offered and would they be helpful?

“There’s no evidence for either inhaled steroids, which is what budesonide is, or inhaled beta agonists like albuterol in measles,” Dr. Ratner explained. “There’s simply no evidence that they do anything.” As for the other children, whom the parents said benefitted from treatments, Dr. Ratner said “it sounds like the other children had a more benign course so I think they were simply not as sick.”

What about other treatments that have been mentioned, like vitamin A and cod liver oil? Are they helpful in treating or preventing measles?

“The vitamin A thing is a little complicated because there’s a kernel of truth in there,” he explained. “Children who are malnourished are at higher risk of severe courses and death from measles, and we know from studies from decades ago that vitamin A supplementation for people who have measles can decrease — but not eliminate— the risk of death and severe disease.” 

Dr. Ratner explained that if you’re treating a patient with measles, “it is reasonable to give two doses of vitamin A — just 2 doses, and under the supervision of a doctor — and that can help decrease the risk of severe disease and death from measles. It doesn’t prevent either of those things, and it certainly does not prevent people from getting measles.”

There is also the risk of taking too much vitamin A, he explained. “It accumulates in the body. It can cause liver damage. It can cause central nervous system damage. It can cause issues with skin — it is not a benign treatment.”

And as for cod liver oil, while it “does, in fact, contain some vitamin A” Dr. Ratner explained, there is “no evidence that that helps in any way and giving a supplement that has an unknown amount of things in it is unlikely to be helpful.” 

The mother said she believes she had been vaccinated, and she still developed symptoms of measles. Why would that happen?

“Especially for someone who got a single dose of vaccine, there is some chance that, if they are exposed to measles, they can develop measles,” said Dr. Ratner, who explained that one dose of the MMR vaccine is “about 93% effective,” and the two-dose regimen is “about 97% effective.” 

“Often those people have milder disease than people who haven’t been vaccinated,” he said, “and it sounds like her course was pretty mild.”

What do people need to realize about measles and their risk of infection?

“The only way to prevent measles is by vaccination. The vaccine is safe and it is highly effective, and we have been using it for 60 years at this point,” Dr. Ratner says. “There is a lot of misinformation out there and what happens when you have that level of of misinformation, is that vaccine rates drop, you end up with large outbreaks like you have in West Texas now.”

“We’ve lost a child already in this outbreak and an adult has died in New Mexico. Both of those deaths were preventable,” he said. “Measles is not supposed to be causing deaths in people in the U.S. in 2025, and so this is all preventable.”

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