On the heels of a measles outbreak in Texas that killed two unvaccinated children, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he has opened an investigation into pediatricians who vaccinate because, he claims, they receive illegal financial incentives to do so.

“I launched an investigation into unlawful financial incentives related to childhood vaccine recommendations,” he said in a press release yesterday. “I will ensure that Big Pharma and Big Insurance don’t bribe medical providers to pressure parents to jab their kids with vaccines they feel aren’t safe or necessary.”

Purported denials of health care based on vaccination status

Without providing any evidence, Paxton, a Republican who has been state attorney general since 2015, said he is targeting a purported “multi-level, multi-industry scheme that has illegally incentivized medial providers to recommend childhood vaccines that are not proven to be safe or necessary. The wide-sweeping investigation will analyze an incentivization framework that has historically forced Texas kids to receive over 70 shots from birth to age 18 in order to continue receiving medical care.” 

But the Texas Health and Human Services website doesn’t support his claim of 70 required doses and discusses the availability of nonmedical exemptions for “religious or personal belief that goes against getting immunized.”

A large turkey producer in Meeker County, Minnesota, was the site of one of the avian flu outbreaks the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) noted last week.

In the past 30 days, APHIS has confirmed avian flu in 67 flocks across the United States, including 18 commercial flocks and 49 backyard flocks. A total of 1.48 million birds have been affected.

The Meeker County, Minnesota, January 16 detection involved 250,600 birds; that same county tracked avian flu in 77,300 birds the day before. Also noted were smaller outbreaks of 70 and 30 birds, respectively in Edgar County, Illinois and Yakima County, Washington. Minnesota and Kansas have had the most commercial poultry detections in the past month.

For wild bird detections, APHIS tracked 72 birds across the country this past week, many hunter harvested. Of note, six detections in Hyde County, North Carolina, included several American widgeons.