RFK Jr.’s Chimpanzee Conspiracy Theory

You’ve almost certainly had RSV.

Most of us catch it before we turn 2.

Usually it feels like a cold: runny nose, cough, maybe a fever.

But RSV (short for “respiratory syncytial virus”) can take a dangerous turn.

In the United States, it puts more babies in the hospital than any other virus and kills thousands of seniors each year.

Cases tend to climb as the weather cools—so, right about now.

Health Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr. seems to be intent on spreading the word about RSV: He brought up the virus during interviews on both CNN and Fox News in August.

He could have used those appearances to remind viewers about the RSV vaccine , which the FDA first approved in 2023 and the CDC recommends for older adults and for women in the later stages of pregnancy during the fall and winter.

Instead, Kennedy made two false statements.

First, on CNN, he called RSV “the biggest killer of kids in this country today.” (According to the CDC, it isn’t; cancer claims more children’s lives.) His other whopper was weirder: In both appearances, he blamed RSV on a scientific experiment gone wrong, saying on Fox that it “came from a laboratory” and on CNN that it came from gain-of-function experiments, or something like them.

To be clear, RSV did not leak from a lab.

But Kennedy has been repeating this fiction on podcasts for years, and he included it in his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci .

Even in that compendium of dubious and debunked assertions, Kennedy’s theory about RSV—which involves nonhuman primates, a military research facility, and, of course, vaccines—stands out.