News of the child’s death — the first child in the U.S. to die of measles in over two decades — was met with skepticism from anti-vaccine activists. On last Friday’s edition of the Children’s Health Defense internet morning show, the group’s chief scientific officer, Brian Hooker, repeated false claims that have been spreading on social media that the child had actually been sick with RSV and pneumonia, and denied proper treatment in the hospital. 

“It’s really nefarious,” Hooker said. “It feels like Covid all over again.”

Edwards hosted Hooker on his podcast in February, about a month into the Texas outbreak. 

“Offering nontraditional therapies to individuals who look for something other than science-based or evidence-based medicine makes it really hard to convince that group that my science is better than his science,” Cook said.

A turn away from conventional medicine

Edwards was conventionally trained at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School and initially opened a small town clinic where he practiced family medicine.  

In recent years, however, he’s made a switch to practicing outside of conventional medicine, operating as a so-called integrative practitioner or functional medicine doctor and promoting something he called the “Four Pillars of Health” as the key to health: nutrition, hydration, movement and peace. Through his website, Edwards sells dietary supplements, blood tests, and $35-a-month membership plans for access to his online education materials. 

Edwards told NBC News that he’s volunteering his time in the measles outbreak. 

During Covid, Edwards appeared as an expert at Texas state legislative hearings, where he shared dubious claims about widespread injuries and deaths he said were caused by the vaccines. In 2020, Edwards said that masks were ineffective.

On recent podcast episodes, Edwards said that after practicing for several years, he came to believe that vaccines and modern medicine were not responsible for historical declines in infectious disease deaths. Instead, he credited sanitation, nutrition and other lifestyle factors — factors that were instrumental in decreasing mortality, but do not account for how vaccines have reduced or eliminated infectious diseases.

On his podcast, he’s hosted anti-vaccine influencers and activists, including Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center and Hooker of Children’s Health Defense; defended Andrew Wakefield, the discredited doctor behind the retracted study that falsely linked autism to the MMR vaccine; and recommended books from anti-vaccine activist J.B. Handley and the 2016 anti-vaccine film, “Vaxxed.”

A community approach 

The full scale of the measles outbreak in West Texas isn’t captured by official reports.

Edwards did a quick tally of the number of cases he’s seen at the warehouse in Seminole: approximately 188 in the last week. That estimate is based on symptoms alone, without confirmatory testing. It’s unclear how much overlap there is between his estimates and the official Texas numbers.

The number of hospitalizations is also outpacing the state’s official count. Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock has treated 36 measles cases, said hospital spokesperson Meredith Cunningham.

Katherine Wells, director of public health at the Lubbock Health Department, said her worry level about the outbreak is “at a 10.”

“The longer it goes on, the more likely we are to have people travel from one community to another and start an outbreak in another area,” she said.