Father of unvaccinated girl who died of measles makes staggering claim (2025)

The father of a West Texas girl who died of measles last week said he doesn’t regret his choice of keeping the 8-year-old unvaccinated.

“Absolutely not,” Peter Gildebrand told the Child Health Defense, an anti-vaccination nonprofit founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

“And from here on out, if I have any other kids in the future, they’re not going to be vaccinated at all,” Gildebrand said.

He added that his daughter, Daisy, “was always happy, always playing. ... She always cared about other other kids, too. You know it’s going to be hard moving forward. I know that for sure. But I guess that’s our only option we got.”

Child Heath Defense leads a conspiracy-theory fueled movement that seeks to “uncover the intricate web of scientific corruption and deceit woven by government and corporate entities,” its website says. Its mission is “ending childhood health epidemics by eliminating toxic exposure.”

Roughly one in 1,000 unvaccinated people who contract measles will die from the disease.

Gildebrand’s seemingly lackadaisical reaction to his daughter’s death set social media ablaze with fiery comments from heartbroken Americans.

“Imagine caring so little about your children that you’d rather see them in a coffin over admitting that your conspiracy theories were wrong,” one user wrote.

“That’s a helluva take: i don’t care that my child DIED,” another wrote. “Father of the year right there.”

“No regrets? A preventable death isn’t a parenting philosophy — it’s a tragedy,“ wrote another. ”... Vaccines aren’t politics — they’re protection. Common sense says: protect your kids, not your pride."

Commenters called it neglect and abuse: “When does this become negligent homicide?” asked a Twitter poster.

“He is responsible for protecting his family. He failed,” was another comment, to which someone added, “Please do not have any more kids.”

Last week, Gildebrand said he met with Kennedy, who insisted, “‘You don’t know what’s in the vaccine anymore,‘” Hildebrand told Yahoo! News just hours after the girl’s funeral. “I actually asked him about it.”

“He never said anything about the vaccine being helpful,” Hildebrand added.

His daughter’s death aside, Hildebrand claimed that children of another member of his family, who were vaccinated, got sicker than two of his own children who had gotten measles and recovered — “so the vaccine ain’t about sh-t,” he said.

More than 600 people in the U.S. have been infected with measles and three have died. America’s first deaths from the measles in a decade have been blamed on Kennedy, who for decades has been the world’s most prominent anti-vaccine activist.

Americans have been “misled by the pharmaceutical industry and their captured government agency allies into believing that measles is a deadly disease and that measles vaccines are necessary, safe, and effective,” RFK Jr. wrote in a 2021 book.

Since taking office, Kennedy has timidly endorsed the measles vaccine’s importance to public health. But those in the anti-vaccination movement believe he is only saying what he needs to say to remain in the job while he works behind the scenes to dismantle the nation’s vaccine infrastructure and sabotage the nation’s — and the world’s — wide acceptance of medical science.

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