Measles killed 6-week-old baby, coroner confirms after RFK Jr. disputed deaths - Ars Technica

Overview

Measles killed 6-week-old baby, coroner confirms after RFK Jr. disputed deathsvar abtest_2170552 = new ABTest(2170552, 'click');

“It’s long past time for RFK to stop playing games with people’s lives.”

Details

A six-week-old baby girl in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, died from measles, the county coroner confirmed to local press Friday.

Stephen Diamantoni, a Republican first elected coroner in 2007, told Lancaster Online that the baby died at home. “I believe it was the 18th of August,” he said.

He also noted that the baby had a genetic condition called Amish lethal microcephaly, in which babies are born with unusually small heads and underdeveloped brains. The condition is caused by a mutation in the SLC25A19 gene, which codes for a protein involved with energy-producing enzymes in the mitochondria and is thought to be important for brain development. About 1 in 500 babies in the Old Order Amish population of Pennsylvania are born with the condition. Infants with the disorder only survive for about six months.

Diamontoni confirmed to Lancaster Online that while microcephaly was present, measles was the cause of death.

The death is thought to be one of two that the state’s health department announced last week as being from measles. The state health department did not immediately respond to a request from Ars Technica regarding the coroner’s announcement. But on Thursday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro shared a local news report about the coroner’s confirmation on social media. In the post, he seemed to confirm that it was one of the deaths reported by state health officials.

The tragic deaths—both in infants, the other a newborn boy—have been engulfed in a firestorm of controversy sparked when anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed without evidence that the state may have “fabricated” them. The controversy was fueled by Diamantoni himself, who said he had not received the death reports at the time of the state’s announcement, seemingly adding to Kennedy’s false claim that the deaths were not real. But Lancaster County does not have its own health department and relies on information sent from the state health department.

Earlier this week, Diamantoni said his office had only recently received the report from the state about the baby girl’s death, telling reporters at the time only that it was of a “child.”

Amid a heated exchange with Shapiro, Kennedy ordered Erica Schwartz, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to remove the deaths from the agency’s data. CDC staff had already accepted the deaths as being from measles and had reported them as such. Schwartz reportedly removed them from the public website without objection, though a report on Thursday revealed they are still included in an internal CDC database.

The deaths remain excluded from the CDC’s public-facing data as of Friday afternoon, with only an asterisk in the chart where 2026 measles deaths would be reported. But the page was updated Friday to change the meaning of the asterisk. Previously, the asterisk linked to a note that read, in part: “available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.” That note is gone, replaced by one saying: “The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) does not currently have any death records from 2026 that indicate measles is the underlying cause.”

Ars Technica reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services regarding the new note, asking whether it’s a new requirement that CDC can only report outbreak-linked deaths after NCHS has received death records and whether NCHS had death records at the time the CDC reported three measles deaths last year in Texas and New Mexico. It did not immediately respond.

Prior to Kennedy’s interference, state and local health departments were solely responsible for making determinations of measles-associated deaths, and the CDC reported the information it received.

The other death reported by the state health department was in a newborn baby boy, also from an Amish family in Lancaster County. At birth, his mother was severely ill with measles. She told The Atlantic that she became so ill, she could not speak above a whisper and “didn’t have a single piece of energy” as she went into labor. She became ill amid an ongoing state outbreak that has hit Lancaster County hard. Several of her other children became ill prior to her infection. The baby boy was born with a pulse but was not breathing. He was declared dead less than a half-hour later, after paramedics had been called and attempted to give the newborn oxygen and chest compressions. The parents believed without question that he died of measles. Their midwife thought the same.

Medical evaluations found the baby was positive for measles and had evidence of the infection in his lungs. But Diamontoni claimed that a pathologist determined that the cause of death was a ruptured spleen, which did not appear enlarged, and that measles didn’t contribute to the death. Paul Offit, a vaccine and pediatric infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has challenged the assessment. Offit has explained that measles can cause the spleen to become enlarged and vulnerable, and that birth could cause a rupture in that state. Once a spleen ruptures, it’s difficult to determine whether it was enlarged or not, much like determining how inflated a balloon was before it popped. Offit further pointed out that ruptured spleens are extremely rare in newborns, and if measles wasn’t the cause, Diamontoni should provide an alternative explanation. To date, no other explanation has been made public.

Overall, Offit said that based on information he had gotten from state health officials, it’s clear that the two babies wouldn’t have died if it weren’t for measles.

In his social media post Friday on the confirmation of the baby girl’s measles death, Shapiro criticized Kennedy for sowing doubt about the tragedies.

“It’s long past time for RFK to stop playing games with people’s lives, report these deaths accurately on the CDC dashboard, and heed the guidance of actual medical experts so people get accurate information to discuss with their trusted health care providers and can best protect themselves and their children against this deadly disease,” he wrote.

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Key Takeaways

• Measles killed 6-week-old baby, coroner confirms after RFK Jr

• “It’s long past time for RFK to stop playing games with people’s lives

• A six-week-old baby girl in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, died from measles, the county coroner confirmed to local press Friday

• Stephen Diamantoni, a Republican first elected coroner in 2007, told Lancaster Online that the baby died at home

• He also noted that the baby had a genetic condition called Amish lethal microcephaly, in which babies are born with unusually small heads and underdeveloped brains