It turns out that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is responsible for most of the anti-vax ads on Facebook.

I always knew that he was a nut-job about this, but I underestimated the depth of his influence:

Just two organizations were responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook before the social media giant restricted such content in March of this year, according to a November 13 study in the journal Vaccine.

Of 145 anti-vaccine Facebook advertisements that ran between May 31, 2017 and February 22, 2019, the World Mercury Project and a group called Stop Mandatory Vaccination together ran 54% of them. 

The World Mercury Project, which ran the most ads of any single source, is an organization closely aligned with the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense. Both are spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer turned prolific peddler of dangerous anti-vaccine misinformation. He and his organizations promote conspiracy theories about vaccine safety, including the roundly debunked claim that safe, life-saving immunizations are linked to autism. More recently, Kennedy has become a prominent opponent of laws aimed at increasing vaccination rates among school children.

Stop Mandatory Vaccination is a for-profit venture run by a man named Larry Cook. He, too, trumpets vaccine misinformation and fear-mongers. On Facebook and other platforms, Cook runs advertisements and campaigns making dubious links between the vaccines and tragic baby deaths. One such ad was banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority last year. The regulator determined the ad to be “misleading,” “unsubstantiated,” and “likely to cause undue distress.” In other instances, he has claimed that the pro-vaccine medical community is covering up the “slaughter” of children.

These folks need to be shunned by all people of good conscience, and a fraud investigation or three might be good too.