Do not let Darla Shine babysit your child.
Do not let Darla Shine babysit your child. SOUTH_AGENCY/GETTY

Darla Shine, the wife of a Trump administration official, spent Wednesday morning going on a little Twitter tear about measles, an highly infectious disease she seems to think more people should get.

This rant, which was first reported by the Daily Beast, was apparently inspired by a CNN report on the measles outbreak currently hitting Washington and Oregon. The outbreak has infected at least 52 people and has prompted the Washington legislature to consider a bill banning personal measles/mumps/rubella vaccine exemptions.

Behold…










One of the more insane claims Shine—who has been married to Bill Shine, the current White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, for over 20 years—makes is that measles can kill cancer. This is based on a widely publicized study in which a 49-year-old American woman with blood cancer was seemingly cured after getting a dose measles. Sounds exciting, right? But, as British science writer Kat Arney pointed out in a blog post about this so-called miracle cure, the patient's treatment involved a huge dose of a genetically modified measles virus. Just contracting measles, as Shine seems to be claiming here, won't cure cancer, but it sure as shit will make you sick.

Shine is not the only anti-vaxxer connected to the administration: Soon after Trump's "election," he named environmental activist and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr to head a commission looking at vaccine safety. (Kennedy also made an appearance in Olympia recently, where he testified against the bill that would end personal MMR vaccinations.)

The vaccine safety commission was abandoned after an outcry from the general populace as well as the medical community, but Trump "Climate Change is a Chinese Hoax" isn't exactly known for trusting empirical evidence. Expect Shine to be appointed Health Czar at any moment.