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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[–] 178 points 7 months ago (17 children)

This man is out there trying to murder his living family.

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  • [–] 41 points 7 months ago (14 children)

    It'll be manslaughter, unless they find evidence that he knew he was a shill.

    Though, I wonder if this sort of admission is anything welfare services can work with.

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  • [–] 35 points 7 months ago* (5 children)

    At what point does negligence/stupidity outweigh intent. If you go on YouTube and say you don't believe bullets kill people, and that's all a sham brought about by gun companies, "it's very clear people like 50 cent have been shot numerous times and it hardly effected him.". Then go and push someone in front of a shooter at a gun range, I can't imagine any judge would side with, well fuck he's just stupid enough to believe bullets don't kill people and call it manslaughter. Seems like premeditated murder attempts to me.

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  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    It’s illegal to intentionally infect another person with a disease, no matter what your beliefs are

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago

    Well, there used to be a thing where you would put your child in the way of mumps because a child getting mumps is much less severe than an adult. There may have been other such diseases that it was better to have as a child than as an adult.

    This was before vaccines which basically does the same thing.

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    [–] 75 points 7 months ago (25 children)

    The amount of absolute stupidity these days is shocking.

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  • [–] 41 points 7 months ago* (7 children)

    It was always there, the internet just gave them leverage to find each other and make professional sounding networks of absolutely rock stupid fucking people.

    It's honestly the biggest downside of the internet.

    Because pro-asbestos and anti-seatbelt people existed, but they didn't have megaphones to reach the whole world.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    I swear that America - well the world at large, but especially America - has a reality problem.

    I see the swell of anti-science anti-intellectual 'experts', the aggressive evangelicals beating queerfolk with holy books they haven't read, the facebook addicts praising pyramid oils and herbs and crystals instead of medicine, the pearl-clutching racists shouting off statistics as justification to expel the 'others' ... and I just wonder if we've collectively lost the ability to think.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago* (9 children)

    A reminder that the human brain has not changed since modern humans emerged about 300,000 years ago.

    Think about what that means.

    The people who spent millennia throwing rocks at the moon, drawing stick figures on walls and hunting mammoths with pointy sticks? That's just us. That is exactly what we would be doing in that time and place. The people that burned witches? That is us too. Those people had the exact same capacity for intelligence, compassion, and reason as we do.

    What I am saying is that the capacity for human stupidity is boundless. It is our intelligence and civilization that defies our nature. We can always be dumber. We might not be able to get any smarter.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

    There's this weird phenomenon that people tend to think those in the past were less intelligent than now, when really it was history being spun a certain way. For example: the witch burning thing, most people accusing witches, etc didn't actually believe that shit. Its coming to light in modern times, that they realized they could grab land and money by accusing vulnerable people, and then just taking their land when they couldn't defend themselves against a confession under torture.

    Keep in mind all the advancements and progress humans have made in mathemathics and sciences over the last few thousand years. Those people weren't stupid, if they were doing stupid things, its probably because they were evil (like burning witches for their own financial gain)

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  • [–] 51 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    In a sane world his children would be taken from him and he would be jailed for reckless child endangerment.

    Can't let your kid walk to school but can do this ? Fuck that

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  • [–] 47 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Normal people: I need to have a medical procedure.

    Republicants: I need for you to not have a medical procedure.

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  • [–] 36 points 7 months ago

    I Genuinely Am Upset That Your Kids Are Vaccinated

    That’s a you problem.

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  • [–] 32 points 7 months ago (3 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?

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    [–] 32 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    this guy belongs in some sort of highly controlled environment. Either prison or a secure psychiatric facility. I'm not sure which.

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    [–] 31 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    The main reason lifespans were so short in the past was because so many kids died of disease that it pushed the avg lifespan down with it. I used to work to restore old cemeteries with my local historical society. I'd find family plots that would have 3-4 kids all dying within a few months of each other.

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    [–] 30 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    I hope he dies of a horrible and preventable disease then

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    [–] 27 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Of the 4 Chaos gods of Warhammer, I could understand people being tempted by power, sex or violence, but disease never made sense to me. Who would want to be a Nurgle cultist? Now we know.

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    [–] 24 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Its completely insane this isnt legally child abuse. These people are allowed to try and kill their children for a cult.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago*

    Except the supreme court has said there needs to be a religious exemption to these things. So then it becomes voluntary. Then there's some kind of cultural association attached to it (MAGA, for instance.)

    Imo, other parents should be able to sue you/fine you if your kid gets the disease and your kid wasn't vaccinated. Its a type of reckless behavior like speeding in a school zone or shitting on a sidewalk in front of a public toilet.

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    [–] 24 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    I think the fact that we pretty much crushed so many diseases via vaccines and other care in the 20th century that many forgot what it was like to live in the shadow of those diseases all the time. That lack of familiarity (the one thay spurred the acceptance of vaccines and treatment) is what is fueling this shit today.

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    [–] 20 points 7 months ago

    Please be The Onion. Please be The Onion.

    Fucking damnit

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  • [–] 18 points 7 months ago

    If watching his son either die or become crippled is what he wants, then no, he should not have that. That is completely unfair to his son, and his children should be taken away from him. He’s a menace to both his family and society.

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  • [–] 17 points 7 months ago (4 children)
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    [–] 16 points 7 months ago

    Sounds like a job for child protective services. A father wants to intentionally infect his children with known fatal diseases, call CPS today!

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  • [+] 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)
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    [–] 13 points 7 months ago

    Platform the anti-vaxxers more, that'll get rid of them!

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago

    “I genuinely am upset that your kids are vaccinated, because it’s keeping my kids from getting chickenpox. It’s keeping my kids from getting measles,” he told me. “I believe their health depends on them catching those live viruses.” I asked him if he wanted his kids to catch all of the illnesses against which American children are routinely vaccinated. “Yes,”

    To me that really sounds a whole heck of a lot like an open admittance that he'd like his children to die painfully.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago

    I prefer letting my kids get hit by cars traveling at 100mph instead of having cars with brakes and speed limits.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago

    I'm genuinely upset that you are a dangerous moron.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago*

    remember the MAGATS that were posting "plague spreading memes" on thier social media. Its on anti-vaxxers who take advice from a heroin, cocaine, steroid addict.

    pertussis , rsv is one of those disease that is the reverse for adults, more severe in children than adults.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    What an idiot.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    This is the problem with vaccines, they've been so successful that demagogues and morons exploit the fading memory of diseases to play on people's ignorance and our fears from not understanding medicine and biology.

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    [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    He hit all the stupid branches on the way down that Bigtree.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    So ... he wants his family to get all those diseases because he thinks they don't exist, or because he agrees that a sufficient prompt to the immune system will prevent future infection?

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    [–] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    We can just call this guy a "virus advocate".

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    [–] 7 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I'm genuinely upset that media wastes attention on such idiots.

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    [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    JFC, people like this are absolutely infuriating.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Sorry. I prefer my children alive.

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    [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    Well how about you die mad you abusive piece of shit?

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