As Measles Spreads, Kennedy Embraces Remedies Like Cod Liver Oil

As a measles outbreak expands in West Texas, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, on Tuesday cheered several unconventional treatments, including cod liver oil, but again did not urge Americans to get vaccinated.

In a prerecorded interview that aired on Fox News, Mr. Kennedy said that the federal government was shipping doses of vitamin A to Gaines County, the epicenter of the outbreak, and helping to arrange ambulance rides.

H.H.S. officials previously said they were shipping doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to Texas, but Mr. Kennedy did not discuss vaccination.

Texas doctors had seen “very, very good results,” Mr. Kennedy claimed, by treating measles cases with a steroid, budesonide; an antibiotic called clarithromycin; and cod liver oil, which he said had high levels of vitamin A and vitamin D.

While physicians sometimes administer doses of vitamin A to treat children with severe measles cases, cod liver oil is “by no means” an evidence-based treatment, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases.

Dr. O’Leary added that he had never heard of a physician using the supplement against measles.

In comments that seemed to refer to conventional measures against measles, Mr. Kennedy said, “We’re going to be honest with the American people for the first time in history about what actually — about all of the tests and all of the studies, about what we know, what we don’t know.”